DIY: CRATE PET BED.

First of all, let me introduce you to yet another of the furry felines that reside in my home, this little beauty is called Daisy. There has already been a brief introduction to Poppy last year but besides that these little tykes rarely get a mention on the blog despite being a huge part of my day to day life. 

In all honesty I think that is down the to fact that everything in commercial pet stores is straight up ugly. Yep, I said it, near enough every pet bed, toy, scratching post I have ever come across in regular pet stores is either blue or pink for kittens (don't get me started on that) or leopard print. Even then if you do happen to stumble across the odd gem chances are you will get it home and your cat will ignore it in turn for your expensive sofa. 

I have previously brought cat beds in various shapes and sizes and neither cat used them and tended to end up tucked up in a storage box under my bed so with that in mind I wanted to find something that would suit my design needs and actually be functional if it is going to take up precious space in my living room. After an extensive search online the only thing that I found to be suitable where pet crate beds, but coming in at an average price of a whopping £40 I decided to take this mission into my own hands and create my own.

I picked up this crate from The Range which was a set of two costing £22 and just used the other to store my recycling. This crate being the larger of the two measuring 48cm wide, 15cm high and 25cm deep is ideal for the small/medium cats and so the vision began to come to life. I would suggest picking up a bigger crate if you have larger cat as this is to be somewhere they can take themselves off to and curl up comfortably for a cat nap. 

To convert this crate into a functional cat bed I drilled 6 holes into the bottom of the crate in each corner and in the middle to evenly distribute the weight. I then went on to attach some small wooden furniture handles to create feet. Once all of the feet are tightly screwed into place it is time to paint the them to match the distressed grey of the crate. To do this I used a combination of Rust-Oleum furniture paint, a lighter grey paint I had in my craft supplies and sandpaper just to take away that freshly painted look.  Lastly I folded up one of the cats favourite blankets to encourage them into it and to make it as comfortable as possible. 

All in all this DIY cost me less than £20 which is half the cost of a pre-made one and most importantly is something that both cats actually use, hurrah! I think any cat lover should try their hand at this one, I am sure you feline friend will thank you for it and I can guarantee this will look ten times better than some fluffy pet pillow.