Tegu cage building thread

Well the time has come. When I got riley in his 40b(35"x18") enclosure he was a little more than 12in. Now at just over 24in he has officially outgrown his cage. So I will be building his 8x4 now(atleast most of it). I went to lowes yesterday and today to gather most of his supplies. I am still missing some things, but we will get to that later. Now today was grueling and I learned alot. I had to do the hardest part which was build the roof and floor. Since my room is in the basement I can't apply paint down there. So I must paint the cage outside and then assemple it inside. So today I basically built the floor and roof frame and put plywood on it. Easy enough right?...

I will be refering to the pieces as numbers to make things easier for me. They will be as followed.
(1)Floor
(2)roof/top
(3)back panel
(4)front panel
(5)left side panel
(6)right side panel

Please ask any questions and leave any advice. This is my first time doing this so I need the help.
Now for the pics...

A couple things I learned today...
1. Take weather into account

I was working at about mid day which was exausting(hot!). Don't kill yourself and work in the mornings and evenings.

2. Bits are there for a reason

I must have striped like 5 nails because the bit did not quite fit and I didn't relaize that until like an hour later. Make sure your bit fits snuggly into the nail. It will save alot of headache.

3.Take into consideration the thickness of the wood.

We all make mistakes right? I mean you can't learn unless you make mistakes. My board(as you can see above) did not fit completely on the 2x4's because of me. It still works close enough I just have to glob silicone in some places. But that's something to think about.

Thanks you guys for the comments. I will be getting up nice and early to start again. I just tried my hand at wiring the lighting which I had limited experience with. It was REALLY easy. I plugged it in and it worked! WHooo! I am pondering weather to use a housing unit. I bout one and it dosen't really fit. I suppose we will see. Tommorrow I will be drilling parts 3,4,5,and 6 for the door and vents as well as applying paint to the wood. I still have to get plexi glass and I hope it's cheap. I will probably drill the lighting tommorrow too. If this goes well I might build my stand for my 90 which will be much cheaper than buying it. I bet I could do a half descent job at it

Lepisosteus platyrhincus;4207988; said:

plexi isnt the cheapest depending on window size. not too bad though. If i may make a suggestion, i got plexi for my windows in my caiman enclosure. I regret it. wish i got glass instead. but plexi was easyer to work with.

Click to expand...

Do you think glass might be cheaper? Yeah I have been getting that plexi glass gets sctratched real bad by larger lizards and that it can "fogg up". Where would I get a larger sheet of glass from and how can I incorporate it into my door? I don't need a really thick piece.

Well good news! I found glass! I found two glass sheets which are approximatly 30"x15" and it's about 1/4". So I am almost positive I will use this in my door(saves money and recycling helps the planet ). Again though I have no idea how to incorporate it into my door. The wood I am using is 1/2" thick. Even though the enclosure is 3ft tall I will have a 1ft lip for substrate. So really it's only like 2ft tall. Any links or suggestions.

Pics...