1/4: Started with the typical 12”x12”x18” off the shelf terrarium. After purchasing a crested gecko with my lady at the time and her kids that wanted it. Unfortunately she went back to be around the x, and were the kids were enrolled. Left most of her stuff including the cat and lizard.
Being that I found myself once again single just when things were looking up. I decided to pour the desire for a place of my own to do with as I pleased. Into Shithead’s ( a la Steve Martin the Jerk) enclosure. He also goes by Navin.
I’m a carpenter so I can afford to live on my own in an expensive city, but owning a place has always been just out of reach as I have always struggled to find decent pay in a Right to Work for Less state.
Yet I have made a Dias for the state capital, restored theaters with just a helper.. countless cabinets and doors have been made and installed across this metro area by me, not to mention the one off creations, trains... with a constant: ‘hey, we can’t really pay you THAT much.’ ‘We’re having payroll problems as is.’(aka our ceo/owner gets it all buddy)
One of the owners of a company I worked for owns a substantial portion (all?)of St. Kits, the island… I can barely afford to take my vehicles in for repair and do a lot of that stuff on my weekends.
I’m getting on, and I’m better suited to teaching and preparing for retirement than building my own home. But I’ve always wanted to. I always wanted a sweet lil spot I could park a trailer on and build my lil dream.
Alternately, fixing and flipping or being a cool landlord with a couple/3 places was my retirement.
But no, I live in a country in the bag for corporations. They own it all now, they’ll let us know if stock becomes available.
So I gave my boy Navin a palatial estate, instead, and when my kitty’s were around they had it good too.. for an apartment.
2/4 I popped the top on that little cage and I made a cabinet of Baltic birch ply and reused Ipe wood. From a project it was going to the trash on. That would hold both the original tank he grew up in and a new hand made portion made from glass, that was twice as wide and just as tall and deep as the Original Gecko Tank/OGT. And removing the top screen on that old tank he now had 3 times the space. As well as a cabinet this all sat on. The doors cut with an interesting pattern on their shared reveal.
I originally wanted to quadruple his enclosure but I have a money; no time/time; no money kinda life. Like a lot of fellow Americans, and I include my Central and S. American brothers and sisters when I say American.
If I want to refer to the depraved culture ruining everything in the world I’ll call it magat or similar. I don’t understand why people are so blinded by what they watch. But I don’t believe fox is anything but propaganda serving oligarchs. And they feed on people’s fear. They corrupt and
Entrap anyone and everyone they can.
Both parents are lost to it, or at least don’t see the big deal and think I’m a disappointment. That I’m not working hard enough, any time I try to let off steam it’s; ‘well, maybe you should try harder’.
Makes me want to scream! But I just shut myself away and build stuff, date occasionally but not really. Work a lot. And I have milled on the idea of how to make a second basement in his enclosure for years. He’s 13 and The first renovation was around 2017ish.
It’d be cool to have a waterfall and a pool on the other side. The top section is accessible after removing a snug screened lid. And the OGT is were I put his food dish and drop off crickets, to mostly die peacefully in a somewhat natural place. ;) he might get a few. But the rocks give them shelter if they make it.
3/4: I also designed the cabinet so the OGT could house him by itself for vet trips or deep cleaning. Like the final push to finish his estate.
So I popped the bottom on the top section accessing the 12”x12”x18” space on the lower left hand portion of Navin’s new pool room. With a mostly plastic designed case sporting a glass door. The original glass bottom of the upper section removed and replaced with a custom piece allowing a cave like area with an hole to below under a plateau. Which I routed a shallow pool into with a small water ‘spring’ fed from a pump in new box. That drains back into the space below. Making a multi tiered area I topped with silk and plastic plants and a neat walking stick I found on a camping trip once.. chopped up as a branch highway connecting all the different sections.
All of the materials in my builds are usually scraps from projects, would be trash. Some shake their head as they see me saving something from the landfill. Quietly laugh at me, tell me I’ll toss that in a few months..
Sometimes, sure, I can think of a million things to do with the things I have. But I only have so much time after the 50 hour work week, including commute. OT at current place is rare, but it’s steady. Pays less but it’s kinda nice to not be laid off every year when it slows down..
Mostly because construction be like that at times, new year, new budget, please hold. As the local biz owner is a trump supporter aka bad at business, needs you job uncertain so you work for less.
and they’re the worst to work around. Entitled like none other, usually standing around talking about it. While people work all around them. They might help for a little bit but I meet very few worth a full day of work ever in my near 30 years in carpentry of some kind.
This enclosure is one of many self made pieces of furniture in my house. Some I’ve tossed because love seats don’t have 110 degree backs… Others need the final touches for this reason or that.
4/4: So this is 90% complete to me. The doors need a finish. The pump needs to be reworked and hooked up to an Arduino that controls the whole show in this corner. And I might glue the rocks to the sides of the new portion and rework it a bit more to play with the waterfall. And have live plants that work with him in the space. Unfortunately Shithead is aggressive and I can’t have a community tank, he even ate my string of turtles plant I tried to get going seen in lower right side. Perhaps in the future.
So 90% is complete. But I could always make a rainy day out of it. Teach myself coding for all that in the process.
I wish I could do this for a living, would be fun to make stuff like this for people. But I kinda need a house with a garage. Billionaires and millionaires snatching up all the homes as investments or airbnb’s is killing my dream.
I’d gladly offer this as a service to you all as conditions improve? Help me, help you, reject oligarch’s and kleptocrat’s. The world is a poorer and less beautiful place until we do.
None of them know what to do with all that ‘wealth’ any ways, never have and never will do anything like Keynesian economics brings.
So, I made a thing, notes in the pics. Some would probably charge rent for such accommodation! But I did it b/c I love aminals! Sure I feel bad the world is increasingly encroaching on wild habitat and eradicating species, not doing to good with ourselves even.
#conservation #diy #zoo’s #reused