Explorer Extension

Here's one of my two storey Liberta Explorer cages. I've bought another one in the hope of converting two of my two storeys into three storeys.

The first job is to unpack the larger of the two boxes, which has the parts for the lower storey. I need the front and the back sections from here. The box looks as if everything should slide out of the top, but it doesn't want to come.

Next, give up on the neat unpacking and take the scissors to the box!

Whichever way up you unpack it, one of the panels you need will be on the bottom.

Good, here's the door panel.

Now, because the cage I'm converting is inhabited, I lured the rats down into the lower half with some yummy food, and blocked off the access to the top.

I lifted the doors off their hinges to make my job easier, and unscrewed the top front panel of the cage.

The panel needs to come forwards to release the roof panel, and upwards to pull the lugs out of the lower corners.

Now if I'd planned this better, my other half could have machined me some fixings to go in the holes, but as he's not here I stuck some dowel in the holes.

If you want the cage to be one enormous cage, you would have to swap the current roof for one with an access hole. I'm adding the extra level as a separate cage, so I left mine as it is.

I replaced the door panel with the lower door panel from the new cage, sliding it onto the dowel and making sure the roof panel was keyed into the holes at the top. I intended to lift the doors off the hinges to make it easier to lift, but they've changed the hinge design and the doors are now held in with a circlip on the hinge. OH says we could take the clip off.

Added a couple of cable ties just to make sure it couldn't slip.

I unpacked the smaller box with the top section of the new cage.

Realised that the bolts were in the other box with the lower section. Doh!

Unlock the wheels. It makes it so much easier to move the cage out.

Here goes the skyscraper! The front door panel slots into the top of the lower one. If you're lucky.

Now add the sides and bolt them onto the front panel. Finger tighten the bolts, because it all needs to be a little flexible at this stage.

The level is only keyed in at the front, so I added some cable ties for paranoia's sake.

The top slides in from the back and keys into the holes in the front panel. You need to be over 5 feet 8 inches tall to do this, because I couldn't quite reach without standing on a chair.

Rescue the packing that's disappearing into the bottom of the cage.

Add more paranoid cable ties.

Go round and tighten up the bolts. (You'll probably need a spanner on the nut, but I couldn't hold the camera and the spanner.)

Hang the doors on, put the tray in and it's finished!

Take the block off the hole between the bottom levels, and find that all off the occupants are fast asleep in a hammock down below.

Realise you've completely barricaded yourself into the room.

Fight your way out and have a cuppa.

At this point I realised that it wasn't going to be as easy to extend the second cage. The problem is that the two front panels left have lugs at the bottom, so they need to go onto a level with holes at the corner for the lugs to fit into.

One solution would be to take the whole cage apart and rebuild it with the lugged panels at the bottom, so that the lugs sit on the stand rather than the whole bottom edge of the panel.

The solution I though of was to fit the rear panel upside down so the lugs stick up in the air, and ask OH to machine off the front ones as the door panel won't work the wrong way up.

The solution that OH suggested as a better idea, is to drill square holes (?? - or maybe drill round holes and file the corners if you don't have a square-hole drill) in the top of the new panels and then swap them for the old top panels. This seems like a fantastic idea, but I'm still waiting for him to do it for me.

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