Wood-working for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs. Charles G. Wheeler

      Fig. 174.

      It may be a convenience to screw castors on the bottom. A door (with a door-bell or knocker) can be added to the front of the hall, if thought best.

      A house which can be closed is shown in Fig. 174. The construction is quite similar to the preceding. A strip must be fastened above and below the large doors, as shown, that they may open without striking either the roof or the floor on which the house stands. The little door, representing the entrance to the house when closed and shown in the closed half, can be made to open independently and can have a bell or knocker.

      If this house is made quite deep (from front to back) it can easily be divided lengthways by a partition and made into a double house, the back side being made to open in the same way as the side here shown.

CHAPTER VIII

       HOUSES FOR ANIMALS

       Table of Contents

      The sizes and shapes of these houses and cages will depend upon the animals for which they are built and the places you have to put them. Frequently they can be built to advantage against the side of a building, or a fence, or in a corner, and boxes can be utilised in various ways.

      Make the houses, cages, and runways as large as you can afford, for there is much more danger of the pets being cramped and crowded than of their having too much room.

      Wire netting or wire cloth (held in place by staples) should be freely used, as ventilation is very important for the health and comfort of the animals. Special openings should always be made for cleaning the houses or cages in case all parts cannot be conveniently reached from the doors, for cleanliness is of the utmost importance in all such structures. The floors of the larger houses should always slant or have holes provided for drainage. Covering the floors with sheets of zinc will promote cleanliness. In the smaller cages removable pans or trays can often be used (Fig. 190). Houses and cages with wooden floors should always be raised from the ground on posts, blocks, or stones, to avoid dampness. Clean sand scattered over the floor and frequently renewed will contribute much to the cleanliness of the cages. The bedding should also be changed frequently.

      In the case of those animals which use their teeth for gnawing, the corners and angles can be protected by tacking on strips of wire cloth, tin, or zinc, but there is no need to do this over the flat surfaces. In the case of cages or houses (and the runways) which have the ground for the floor and are to be inhabited by animals that will burrow or dig their way out, the wire netting should be continued underground to a considerable depth, or it can be carried down a little way and then bent to lie horizontally, forming a sort of wire floor, over which the dirt can be replaced, and the animals will be unable to tunnel their way out; but in all such cases care must be taken to proportion the mesh of the netting and the size of the wire to the strength and escaping powers of the animals.

      Houses for animals often look pretty when made in imitation of real houses, but when you do this choose simple types of good proportions, and do not try to copy all the little details of the large houses. Avoid "gingerbread" work, and do not cover your houses with meaningless jig-sawed scroll work and rows of towers and pinnacles, and do not use all the colours of the rainbow in painting them.

      For houses, hutches, boxes, cages, etc., which are to be kept out of doors or in some outbuilding, ordinary machine-planed stock of fair quality is sufficiently good, and planing and smoothing by hand is usually a waste of labour; but if you wish to make a small cage or box to be kept in the house, and to be nicely finished or painted, good clear stock should be used, and the final smoothing done by hand.

      In case you wish to make several cages or boxes of the same pattern, as, for example, like Fig. 178, it is much less work to go through the process with two or more at a time than to make each separately.

      A house for pets should not be built, as is sometimes done, on a platform or base projecting beyond the base of the house, as this tends to collect and retain moisture and dampness, but should be clear of any platform, like an ordinary dwelling-house, so that the rain will be shed directly upon the ground.

      When two or more boards are required for each side of the roof it is usually better to lay them up and down, as in Fig. 187, rather than horizontally or lengthways, because a roof laid in this way is better about shedding the water, which tends to collect in the cracks if the boards are laid horizontally. For the rougher structures the hinges can be screwed flat upon the outside (as shown in Fig. 179), but for nice work they should be fitted in the usual way. (See Hinges.)

      Before beginning work upon these cages and houses, read carefully Marking, Rule, Square, Saw, Plane, Nailing, and look up any other references.