Originally we intended to get some bunnies. We even have a young woman from church in the process (but nothing confirmed) of potentially breeding some late fall bunnies from her collection of mama and papa rabbits.
But the piggies are very popular. In fact, they are so popular that I feel our grumpy hog and our miracle hamster do not get as much attention as they probably should (the fish could care less, though he continues to be jaunty with his regularly arriving food supply), and Chauncey wears a constant look of "you've got to be kidding me" every time he sees the pigs cradled in someone's arms. So . . . adding bunnies seems like a bad idea given the time commitment, chore commitment (right now there are four rotations for cleaning cages each week which works out perfectly!), and the never leave the house again commitment. Too many critters and the neighbors don't want to pitch in to cover an extended Crew vacation (I'm guessing :)
With that special gift card from Lowe's we were able to order a bunny hutch--which--hooray!--also works for guinea pigs! (Quick update: no further baby snakes were found inside said box, whew!) The only problem is . . . we planned to put the structure outside for the bunnies. Where on earth will it fit in our house?!Thanks to the help of the trusty measuring tape, we learned it wasn't quite so huge as I imagined. I offered several options to Buck, knowing he had JUST finished working on the garage organization--none of my plans really fit his vision. He was swamped at work. I knew it was a huge project after the huge project he'd already done . . . so I rallied the team!
It took us three hours, but we emptied the laundry room shelves, moved everything to the garage, measured and (the boys) sawed off the legs of the wooden laundry room shelf, detached Buck's new black shelf from the garage wall, moved it into the laundry room, reloaded it with laundry room stuff, returned to the garage, slid two fully loaded--yet narrow--tool chests to where the black shelf used to be, slid the other wooden shelf into their spot, put the newly shortened wooden shelf in the gap, then reloaded all of the tools onto and under the new shelving arrangement. Whew!Our next step was to build the bunny hutch! Build, I mean, the piggy hutch!! The kids each took a screwdriver, and I tried to keep up with instructions. We did have an issue with alignment and had to undo the back to square up the sides to get the roof to fit . . . but other than that slight delay, we finished up the tasks relatively quickly. The kids were all hands on deck and it made things go so smoothly!
Our next task was to figure out a base for the hutch, since it is intended to be an outdoor set-up, the downstairs floor would be grass. We tried several options and ended up using the lid to a storage tub. We should be able to slide the whole hutch away from the wall, lift it off the lid, clean the lid and reassemble. There are several neat features to the hutch that we were unaware of, so I'm glad we made the purchase (for free) that we did! The guinea pigs are still very afraid of the steep ramp to the second floor, but they're still babies--they'll figure it out eventually :)
I was going to have you play "I Spy What's Different" between this post and the man cave post, but I guess I already gave you the answer key :) Overall Buck was pleased with our rearrangements, and not upset by our little surprise. It doesn't happen often that I proceed without his stamp of approval, but I was in problem-solving mode and that problem needed solved!I'm just noticing in these pictures that the garage ceiling is finished, but the laundry room's is not . . . this strikes me as odd. Hmmm . . . ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment