Building indoor enclosure first time

[meganthepony]

Hi im wanting to build an indoor enclosure for my russian tortoise and i dont know where to start. I currently have an amazon one thats around 4' by 2' and he deserves better. Im not a handy person so i dont know where to start.

The area im looking to build would be around 7' by 4' and i want to make it waist height. Also, how is everyone lining the bottom, or should i just put the substrate on the wood.

 

[Tom]

Hi im wanting to build an indoor enclosure for my russian tortoise and i dont know where to start. I currently have an amazon one thats around 4' by 2' and he deserves better. Im not a handy person so i dont know where to start.

The area im looking to build would be around 7' by 4' and i want to make it waist height. Also, how is everyone lining the bottom, or should i just put the substrate on the wood.

If you don't know how to build something, this will be difficult. If you have some basic building skills, just make walls on a sheet of plywood, add legs to make it waist high, and make a horizontal board over the top of it to hang your lights from. If you want to get really fancy, you can add casters to the bottoms of the legs so you can easily move it all around.

If you don't have basic skills and some tools, hire someone to build it for you.

 

[Pák]

Its nothing hard, you just need to screw wood plates together. The only skill based part is when you cut the boards to the proper size.
You need to protect the bottom with some foil from water.

 

[SinLA]

some people have purchased old bookcases from charity shops and lay them on their back. You should put down a liner to help against moisture.

 

[meganthepony]

some people have purchased old bookcases from charity shops and lay them on their back. You should put down a liner to help against moisture.

Thats actually so smart, what kind of liner? Like weed liner?

 

[SinLA]

more a moisture barrier. If you put a LOT of substrate down, it perhaps can be thin, but the thicker the better in case they did down and trash it. Some people also paint the inside with polyeurothene.

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

Thats actually so smart, what kind of liner? Like weed liner?

Good quality thick shower curtain, for example.

 

[Renee_H]

A creative idea I saw that turned out beautiful was made from a up cycled dinning room table. I believe it was ikea. Then the person glued and use brackets to secure the frame of a large backless bookcase to it. Lined it with a liner stapled to the frame. It honestly looked so nice!

 

[SinLA]

A creative idea I saw that turned out beautiful was made from a up cycled dinning room table. I believe it was ikea. Then the person glued and use brackets to secure the frame of a large backless bookcase to it. Lined it with a liner stapled to the frame. It honestly looked so nice!

That's a great idea too