Oh yes, another great bargin unit for a diamond enclosure :D

[shea_and_ruby]

After this one is done there will literately be no more room in the house for large scale enclosures. This one was $20 So planning to pick it up Saturday but wont be working on it for a while as the diamond is only 5 months now.

So anyways, the plan is to cut the front away completely, and have it as one tall tank without the cupboards on the bottom. the front will be perspex again as with the others, and the doors will be on the side. this one is going to take more work as we (when i say 'we' i really mean hubby and i will stand there passing tools and drinking coffee) will need to add backing to it.

so will be a good couple of months away, but thought i would get this started.

 

[abnrmal91]

God damn. You definitely a bargin hunter. But I think your and addict for conversions lol.

 

[pythonmum]

Nice score! I like to leave the cabinet in the bottom because there is always so much herp stuff to store there. My last unit has nest boxes, click clacks, spare thermostats, newspaper, sphagnum moss and other odds and ends in the cupboard.

 

[shea_and_ruby]

its my hubby that really gets into doing them up, he's really artistically minded when it comes to things like this. plus it helps being a tradie! i attempted to do some 'finishing touches' on the jungle tank and i messed up. needless to say i am no longer allowed near the brushes....

yeah thats what we have done with the bottom of our bredli and bluey enclosures pythonmum.

ok, so we picked it up this morning, and since we have almost done the bredli enclosure, we are going to get started on this one tonight after kiddies are in bed. so we are cutting out the bottom shelves and gutting it. was thinking of having that top shelf as a basking spot, but as it would be too close for a heat lamp, was thinking we might put downlights in. question is how many? it is about 15 - 20 cm between the roof of the enclosure and the basking spot. also, can you different watts for downlights??

 

[shea_and_ruby]

so we have cut away the shelves and gut the inside. last night we added the foam to make the brick work for the ruins and also the trees which runs from top to bottom of the enclosure. we wont render until friday i dont think as i am back to full time uni and hubby is all over the place. but here is a pic of the work so far.

 

[Beloved_Reptiles]

Looking great Shea! Can't wait to see the end result, he's getting them done so quickly!

 

[shea_and_ruby]

he has a lot of free time during the day once the kids are at kindy and im at uni. plus he really enjoys doing them

 

[J-A-X]

that's what I need, a couple of days (or better yet, a couple of weeks :lol: ) home instead of going to work, it sucks only being able to do 2 -3 hours a night, and because its so wet and cold here lately stuff is taking forever to dry.
and if I could stop people visiting on the weekend, that would be great too ! I have way too many interuptions and it drives me nuts !! maybe i should tell people i'm going away on holiday and hide the car somewhere (there's no room in the shed to hide it - too many bags of foam and enclosures-in-waiting ......and its a double garage PMSL)

 

[shea_and_ruby]

oooo speaking of foam, we drove past harvey normans on sunday afternoon amd they have a skip bin FULL of foam! we scored big time i am assuming they were going to throw it out anyway......

 

[J-A-X]

a lot of foam is now recyclable, so they usually have a bin allocated for it, thats what we have at our work, i've probably saved them heaps by not having to pay to get it picked up. LOL, got to love freebie foam, and i bet you scored some nice chunky bits too, with a little bit of imagination you can come up with some really great ideas as to "what'' the foam can be. oh and when i said 'bags' of foam, im not talking shopping bags, theyre the big hessian bags that sit in the metal frames, probably about a metre tall, :shock:

 

[shea_and_ruby]

lol thats a lot of foam! you can get out of making these tanks relatively cheaply if you know where to look and what to get.

we wont be rendering until friday which is a bummer, but at least then it should b ready for hubby to dry brush early next week

 

[Jewyy95]

looking good, but how are you goign to get the snake out of the pipe when it goes up higher?

 

[shea_and_ruby]

pipe will be totally sealed off, think hubby has already done it acutally. we/he is going to totally render over it so no one can sneak in (hopefully!)

 

[patonthego]

Here is a dummy question what is rendering?? I amm hopeless at carpentarty and my hubby is worse than me!! I am a clean expert and he is the gardening worker

 

[shea_and_ruby]

hubby does it all and i just watch lol its like a type of cement, but its an acrylic version, maybe some one more qualified can answer that better than I. but bascially we are going to sculpt it with coloured cement/acrylic and then add more paint with a brush to detail it further. hoept hat makes sense!

 

[J-A-X]

rendering on these projects is the same theory as rendering a house, houses use to be cement rendered, but now there is an acrylic render which is more flexible and dries quicker, it is reasonably easy to work with, when i get home i'll flick you the link to the DIY group discussion on render/cement/grout coatings.

here you are patonthego.. the pleasure and pain of picking a coating for your project.
http://www.aussiepythons.com/forum/...rounds-furniture-225/cement-grout-render-432/

I would have left the pipe open both ends, would have made for a great game of hide and seek (joking.)

 

[shea_and_ruby]

ok, so rendering and staining done. we have only done one thinish coat of render, i suggested to hubby we do a second but he only wants to do one. So we shall see. I freaked otu today and realised we hadn't put doors in, but then hubby reminded me the whole front is a door! lol

 

[J-A-X]

Might pay to tell hubby that doing only one thin coat makes it look like render covered foam, it the addition layers that disguise the fact that it's foam blocks it sounds like he's losing interest and is just rushing to get them finished

 

[shea_and_ruby]

well he thinks that it will loose detail if we do another. will try and talk him out of his one coatedness lol

 

[J-A-X]

Does he use a gas torch to make the flat pieces look more like rock and take some of the squareness off the edges?