Hooray! Puppy pens, CHECK! I decided I was going to have to do puppy pens on a budget, but I also needed fold-down-ability. During one of our recent trips to Lowes, The Hawklet and I discovered something called "tileboard." I'm sure all these things are familiar to most people, but I had never had a reason to notice it before. Hmmm, I thought it just might fit the bill. The nice people at Lowes will cut at no charge, so I had them cut the 4 x 8 sheet into strips. I bought some trim that's an "L" shape, and headed home.Tonight, I imposed upon friends who already do SO much for me and my dogs. I loaded all the pieces and parts in the van and motored over to visit Don and Jacque. Don did all the fine-tuning on cutting the pieces to fit exactly in the xpen and attaching the "L" trim to the two side pieces. Jacque and I, uh, "supervised" the operation. I think Don invited us more than once that we could go back in the house, he'd manage without us. :-P
Now, it'll take a bit more paint and cleaning up, and I have another piece of tileboard to attach to the swinging door to make the wall appear solid where the cut-out is (when the door is closed), but voila, puppy pen for under $25, it fits perfectly inside the small white pen, and it is completely flat for storage. whew! Oh, and with one 4 x 8 sheet of tileboard for each box, I got the 4 sides, plus half of the sheet to put under the entire thing. Shiny white and completely washable.
Some pix of the puppy pen. As Garrett would say, you should be able to click and "biggify" the photos.
5 comments:
Wow what section did you find that stuff in? I love your pen!
LOVE it!! You need to take orders and make more!!
Jeri, the tileboard is laying flat at Lowes. It's in the aisle where you buy all the "fancy trim" some is already painted white/stained/ etc. They have a little plastic placard in front of each slot of the trim that shows what shape the trim is. So the trim stands up on end, each in a little slot starting about shoulder high. Then on flat shelves under the trim, you can buy panels of tileboard, wainscoating(sp?) etc in a finished panel. I almost didn't see the tileboard, but the light caught the shiny surface and I went over to check it out. I was looking for something shiny that could be easily cleaned and was a bright, clean color.
the L-shaped trim is in the trim section, I got 1inch x 1 inch.
We (WE meaining DON! ha), attached the L trim to both ends of only 2 sides. Those fit in the side pieces, then the front and back pieces slide into place, and are held in place by head of the screws protruding out. Don was going to be fancy and put another piece of edging to create a better "slot" for the front/back piece to fit into, but I thought this was OK for my purposes. If I left it free-standing without an xpen around it, I might do that for added stability.
I figure I will also drill a hole in the top of each section in the middle, and zip-tie to the xpen just to keep everything in place if it gets knocked around for any reason.
I was pretty pleased that I came up with the tileboard vision, and even more pleased that Don had all the fancy "toys" in terms of every saw known to man to help whip through the cutting process.
If you know exactly how long you want every piece of the tileboard and trim, Lowes will cut it all up for you. I ran out of trim, so tonight I'll go have them cut it and I'm taking one panel with me so they can cut it to match.
Now to paint the second set, and touch up paint the first.
Sherilyn, this is so easy to make (even if Don was not available, if Lowes cuts the correct lengths, all you'd need is a screwdriver!),
and I'm really excited about the flat storage. I have no place to store a big box of any sort, so this should work out well for us. I guess we'll know for sure in a matter of weeks!
Also, I should have cleaned the panels up before taking photos. The brown smudges are just the dust from the brown backing on the tileboard from cutting it. :-)
And, my original thought was that I was going to drill holes and use carriage bolts to attach all four panels to the L shaped trim, then it all comes apart. Last night, just by happenstance we landed on the thought of two pieces permanently attached to the trim, and the other two pieces sliding down in the groove.
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