Below is a project by Lax Cat Creations, a wife and husband team of amazing talent creativity. They also love their cats!
So my wife has been wanting an indoor habitat for our two cats ever since we got Mr. Saki. Every time she would bring it up or show me the hideous carpet explosions online, I’d cringe. We put out heads together and thought, “what if the cat tree was made from a real…tree?”
And that was it. Every hike from there on out we were eyeing trees and debating on what would look the most artistic. Aspens were on the list, but they are hard to find in ample supply. Junipers, on the other hand, grow like weeds in the high desert.
This project took over a year to complete with large gaps in production. After all is said and done, the cats love it, and we love it.
Using a wire brush and chisel, we stripped the outer layer of flaking bark to expose a nice red layer of bark. on the more dead portions, there was build up of dead bark and dirt.
Working in custom home building affords one with beam cut-offs (or “drops”) of sizable proportions. One such drop was selected for the base of our tree. This was a 5-1/8″ x 18″ glulam beam that I cut into an 18″ x 18′ square.
After staining the base, I used a piece of steel plate (about 3/16″ thick) to run two 1/2″ x 8″ lag bolts and a long piece of all-thread through. To counter sink the plate and soon to be inserted lags, I made a number of cuts with a Skil Saw and then knocked and chiseled out the wood. A router would work good for something like this, but I’m a framer.
Arian found a number of stains at the local Re-Store and mixed up a color she liked for the dead sections of wood. Using a dark stain and multiple coats of polyurethane, the color of the bark really stood out against the dark stained grain. The three coats of polyurethane also served to protect the bark from further peeling and sap dripping on floors.
To be continued…
via Lax Cat Creations.