So, our Guinea Pig was in need of a new house, and I was in need of a new project. So I decided to try & make her a new house, inspired by the Feudal Japanese homes (or at least, those I saw when doing a Google Images search :P)
The project ended up using 5 sheets of draftboard, but could be reduced to around 3 if you don’t mind a smaller house. The house was made by gluing shogi paper onto the “inner” walls, then gluing the thinner pieces on top. These outer pieces were first colored with a brown colored pencil, and were oversized to hide the box joints from the first part.
The roof doubles as the hay feeder - I attached little bundles of hay using twine onto the roof, giving our Guinea some minor exercise as she eats her roof!
I’ve uploaded the Adobe Illustrator file, but the exported SVGs are over on my GitHub repository (GitHub - SethRowe/Glowforge-Designs) if those work better for you. A few quick notes - I use Red for my cuts, and Blue for the scores. The scores on the inner pieces are to help with placement of the later pieces. Also, I was in a hurry, and didn’t make the various pieces symmetrical, which will require some trial and error during the construction phase!
Wonderful! My science fair project was Guinea Pigs. Little did I know one was pregnant. Birth occurred during the fair much to the consternation of the Nuns! Too funny now
Many years ago in grade school used to have a Guinea Pig named Jezebel that I treated like a little person (probably too much so, in hindsight) but she never had such swanky digs. Just awesome! If that GP had opposable thumbs I’m sure they’d both be up.
Ohmygosh, this is adorable! Thanks for the file. I’ll bet it wouldn’t take a lot of work to turn it into an Irish thatched cottage if you were so inclined.
Actually, I kinda planned on it being a giant chew stick. I am really curious how long it will last before she’s “remodeled” it from a Japanese cottage to a pile of draftboard scrap!
