A New Home For Riley Jenkins!

My sweet little Riley Jenkins has been living in a bird cage for the past five months or so. The cage seemed plenty big enough for just Riley Jenkins every since her sister died and especially since she was so tiny. And, I don't know how it happened, but it seems like Riley Jenkins went through a huge growth spurt in the last week. Now, she can stand up and grab the top of the cage; you can just tell that the bird cage is WAY to small because she looks like a giant in it. So after looking through the garage and in the house we decided to convert this old dresser into a new home for her.

This is what we have completed so far: we took out all of the drawers and three of the slider bars. After that, we sanded it all down and painted it a lovely shade of yellow (my favorite color). We then let it air dry outside for a day. The next day we cut a board down to size and screwed it to the back and on to one of the slider bars. Then we had to block the bottom holes from her escaping, so we used some leftover laminate flooring that we still had after redoing our kitchen floor and screwed them to the base and the back of the dresser. We then added in some tree branches to get to the second floor and the third floor. To make the third floor we attached a hemp netting by (we bought this in the reptile section of Pet Smart) using U nails. We also hung the netting down to the second level for another way to go up and down. And, last but not least, we hung chicken wire on the outside with U nails and hung the door.

Riley Jenkins checking out her new home for the very first time

We still have a lot of work to do on this, but Riley Jenkins can live in it until we are ready to finish it. We want to finish painting the door and the chicken wire. I think we should also hang trim around the chicken wire to hide all of the U nails and to give it a cleaner look. I also want to paint some other things on it to give it a bohemian kind of look. 

So far Riley Jenkins seems to love it! She is absolutely hilarious when she hangs upside from the branches up towards the second floor to eat out of her dish on the bottom floor.

On most days though you will find her lounging around in her hemp hammock up on the third deck or all snuggled up with her blanket and pillow on the second floor.

When we get this all the way to my liking, I will take better pictures and post 'em so that you can get a better view of it :)