Rescue Rebuild DIY Projects | Building Cat Bridges

hey this is Zach from RESCUE rebuild and today we're going to be tackling one of our more advanced projects this is going to be a cat bridge by the time we're done with it to start we're gonna be using a 2 by 10 for our shelf then we're also going to be using a 1 by 2 1 by 2 is what we cut up for the actual rope bridge bottom and then finally we have a dowel that we're gonna use for the railings for the bridge at each end this is an inch and a quarter dowel in addition to that we're gonna need some shelf brackets these are just nice simple shelf brackets that we get to hang those in the wall we use something called a strap toggle in addition to that we're gonna get some inch and a quarter screws these are just small general carpentry screws these are going to be used to attach ourself brackets to the bottom of our 2 by 10 we're gonna have an inch and a quarter drill bit this is a special type of drill bit called a Forstner drill bit we're also gonna need two smaller drill bits a 3/16 and a quarter inch drill bit then we also need 2 inch screws these just happen to be deck screws really any screw will work fine here these are also to attach our dowel to our shelves and to make that connection even a little stronger I would recommend using a little bit of wood glue we're gonna have an impact driver and a drill if you don't have an impact driver that's ok you can use a drill for all of this I'm also going to be using a router and the standard these two are both optional but they can make the project look a little more professional and speed things up a little bit and then finally we're going to be using a latex primer really any type of primer is fine any type of primer designed for wood got some some good paint to go on top and then finally some water-based polyurethane to give a nice cleanable coating to our paint in addition to all these we're gonna need a saw for cutting the wood to length and then we're also going to use a table saw to shrink our 2 by tens down a little bit and give them a nice crisp factory edge the first step in this process is going to be the start cutting our one by tens to length for this particular one we've decided to go for a 12 inch length on this board so the first thing I'm going to do is just cut a nice fresh end on it and then I'm going to measure 12 inches I'll cut that and then I'll do that one more time now that we have our shelves cut the next step while we're at the saw is going to be to take our 1 by 2 and to start cutting this down so typically for this we're gonna cut this a little bit shorter than the depth of our shelf and so since we are going to cut ourselves to 9 inches deep we're gonna cut this to about 8 and 3/4 the reason we do that is so that when we make this flush with the front of the shelf it's not rubbing on the wall so we're gonna do the same thing on this we're going to cut a nice clean end on one end and then we're gonna measure our 8 and 3/4 and just cut a bunch of these and one tip is once you measure out 8 and 3/4 something you can actually do is take an extra piece of scrap wood and clamp it to your saw right at that 8 and 3/4 mark and then you can really quickly cut these without having to measure each one so we're gonna move on to our table saw now but this step is an optional step in this process we like to do it because it just makes the board's a little bit cleaner looking what we're gonna do is we're going to use our table saw to cut a very small sliver off of each end of these we're gonna make our first cut at 9 and 1/8 inches and we're gonna cut one side off of each of these and then we're going to lower that to 9 inches and then flip them and cut the other side all right so now you can see after we've run it through the saw that we've got some nice smooth edges here the next step is going to be to give this a good sanding and so we're going to focus on the faces first we're gonna get all these nice and smooth and then we're going to come back and take some of these sharp edges and clean them up a bit we can use some sandpaper on the block we can use an electric orbital sander or the best way to do it is actually to use a router to put a nice bevel or around on the edge to give this a really clean professional look now one thing I would mention is that when we do put an edge on this the edge that goes against the wall we're not going to use a bevel or a round over on that edge because it just creates a place that can collect dirt and dust so we're gonna pick one long side as the side that goes against the wall and we're just going to keep that totally flat on all the edges all right now that we've got our shelves cleaned up a little bit they're sanded the edges are nice and smooth and we've routed the edges are sanded either way works we're gonna set these aside for a little bit and we're gonna focus on our bridge pieces next step on these is going to be to drill our holes to actually make this a bridge and we're going to go ahead and start marking these out now what I recommend doing is coming in 3/4 of an inch to an inch from the end I'm going to do 3/4 on this particular one and I'm going to measure 3/4 on both ends and and then we also want to measure half the thickness of this 1 by 2 so this is a 3/4 inch thick board and so half of that is three-eighths of an inch so I'm gonna do a little mark here so we've got 2 marks for where we're gonna drill our holes here but what we're gonna do before we actually go ahead and drill these is to actually use this as a template to mark all of our other ones and we're gonna use a speed square to line these up I've got rogue here she's inspecting my work to make sure that I'm doing it right how do you think rogue I've gone through and marked all of our bridge pieces we've got a hole on each end so now what we're gonna do is drill two holes one on each of our marks in each of these pieces now we have our holes drilled the final step for these pieces is to give them a nice sanding so the big focus here is just making sure that there are no sharp edges on any sides and then usually the end grain is a little rough so we want to give that a little extra attention to make that smooth for painting I'm not gonna spend too much time on these so I've got some 120 grit on the sander and I'm just gonna go through and clean these up and get them ready for paint all right we're done with our sanding so all these blocks are nice and smooth all of our holes are drilled and smooth so the next step in this process is to prime so we're going to prime all of these I'm going to use a latex primer on the doesn't have to be latex you can use an oil-based primer as well when you're priming you don't need to focus on getting a solid coat of white the purpose of the primer is really to keep the paint from soaking into the wood unevenly and so all we're looking for is that all the wood is covered as we do this though we do want to be careful that we're not getting drips anywhere we're gonna want to leave one side undone so we can leave it down on the wood and it won't stick to our table before we prime our shelves we need to do one more thing to these we need to install some dowels on here and what this is going to do is create an end for our railing for our bridges and so there's two things we have to do to make this happen we have to drill a small hole 3/4 of an inch in from the end and that will be where the bottom of our bridge ties in and sew the paracord that we're going to use to string the bridge we'll go through that and then we're going to come back and drill another larger hole that this will come down into so there's a couple things we need to do to lay this out we need to pick which one is going to be our left and which one is going to be our right so that we put them on the right side now both of these we left a side that was intended to be the back so I'm going to make sure that both are facing the same way and then we're going to go ahead and lay this out first thing we're going to do is we're going to take one of our bridge pieces and we're going to line it up with the front side of the shelf we're just going to use this as a template to mark where our holes are so I'm just going to draw a small mark right in the center of our two holes now what we're going to do at each of those is measure down 3/4 of an inch so I'm just going to draw on X so what we're going to do is we're going to come down another 3/4 just to make this first hole look even and then we're going to add to that half the width of the dowel so 5/8 so we're going to come down 3/4 plus 5/8 we can use our speed square to come down from that line that we drew and so we know that's going to be the center of these holes so to drill this correctly we have to use three different size drill bits we're going to start with a quarter inch drill bit this is the same size we used for our bridge pieces this is the correct size for the paracord just so these top two holes that we drilled are gonna get a quarter inch now we're going to switch to the other two that we did and we're going to start with our Forstner bit and again the reason we use this over another type of bit for example like a spade bit is that this leaves a very clean edge it gives it a much tighter connection so I'm gonna go ahead and Center this on our mark okay so now we have a place for our dowel to go one final step we're gonna drill a pilot hole so that we can attach a screw from the bottom of these and what that gives us is a way to screw our dowel on to this shelf so when this is done it should look like this we've got two large holes with a 3/16 pilot in the middle and then we've got two quarter inch holes just on top of them so you can see you get a nice tight fit on there and so what we're going to do before we actually install those is use a little bit of wood glue to really secure them there will be a screw there as well but by just putting a little bit of wood glue in the bottom of that hole we're able to really insure that that's going to be a nice tight connection for many years to come the goal here is just to get your screw head just below flush so it's not noticeable of course you have the option to come and fill this hole in as well the last thing I do is check just to make sure this looks straight up and down this one looks great and so we're going to go ahead and repeat this on the other shelf and get this other one in on this shelf and then we are ready for paint so once these are primed we're going to want to wait until they dry and then we want to take some time to go along and just sand all of these smooth I've got some 220 grit sandpaper and we're just gonna really lightly sand these you'll feel a big difference before and after this is very important because it kind of sets the tone for how smooth the paint job is so if you don't take the time to do this you're gonna have a very rough paint job once all of our pieces are painted is to cover them in a water-based polyurethane we recommend Minwax polycrylic and either satin or a semi-gloss finish today I'm using the spray version we typically use a brush on version this is a little bit faster but it is more expensive you just have to make sure that you get a nice solid coat all of the different sides and we're gonna want to do two coats on every side so I like to set up these like this I'll spray one side let them dry spray it again let it dry and then flip everything over and spray that last side one more time what we're gonna do is test to make sure that our paracord that we're using fits in this hole after my test I found at a 7/32 drill bit it is the best size for this paracord and finally what we're going to do is we're going to take our beads we're going to string our beads onto a piece of paracord and we're actually going to spray them as well to protect them the beads go in between each of these pieces to give them some spacing we're at the shell turn out with our painted and polyurethane boards the next step is going to be to attach these shells to the wall before we can hang our bridge so we're gonna find the backside of each shelf that we made and we're going to measure in two inches on each one and we're gonna attach our shelf brackets using inch and 1/4 screws on these brackets installed on our shelves we're ready to start mounting this bridge the first step here is going to be to actually attach the shelves to the wall and then from there we'll work on stringing our bridge pieces in between that so you want to make sure when you find a place for this bridge the cats have an easy way to get up-and-down from each side you also want to make sure that you plan enough space in between for the amount of wood that you have and the amount of paracord that you have I'm gonna go ahead and mount these to the wall and I'm gonna do that by holding them up putting a level on the back and then I'm gonna mark all of our holes here with our shelf position marked on the wall we're gonna go ahead and get this drilled and install our strap toggles to mount this shelf so we need a 1/2 inch drill bit which I've got set up on our cordless drill here and then we're going to insert the strap toggle in through that hole ok now that we've installed our shaft toggles we're gonna go ahead and mount our shelf when you're installing these you want to be very gentle running the screws in because it's very easy to break off these strap toggles in the wall our shelves are mounted and now we're going to and assemble the bridge so we've taken a piece of paracord for each side we measured between our two shells and I added about 18 inches to two feet of extra just so we don't run out so what we're going to do is tie a knot at one end of each of these ropes and I've left about eight or ten inches after that knot and I made a quick release knot so that it's very easy to undo this this is just temporary while we string this and then one by one we're just going to work our way down the bridge and we're going to install two beads and then we're going to install a plank when you cut your paracord what you're going to want to do is use a lighter to singe the end of it and that will keep it from coming apart and that'll just make it a little easier to put this together so we're just going to keep working our way down through this bridge until we have whatever our length is that we measured in between the two shelves so what we've done here is we have tied one end of our back half of this bridge up to the shelves and all I did was I ran that string up and over into the hole that we drilled when we built these shelves out through the bottom and then I tied a really good knot double knot on each of these eventually we're going to come back and trim these but until we get it up and adjusted I would leave a little extra on there and you're also going to want to try to get this so the bridge is somewhat centered in the middle you really just have to get this up and see how it fits you also want to make sure that this is pretty tight you don't want this to be sagging too much otherwise it can it can move around a little too much and the cats can have a hard time walking on it so once we get the back on we're going to do the same with the front I'm gonna lift this up and tie a knot on here so I'm gonna undo the quick release knot that I had made and go ahead and push this through top of myself and once we get one side in it can be a little tricky because we need to make sure that the front and back are even with each other so as you can see I've got angel here helping me yeah she's very excited about this new cat bridge so we're just going to be very careful to try to keep our tension the same this is another situation we're having another set of hands can be very helpful so we're going to go over here and do the same thing on this side angels gonna help me pull this through aren't you it looks good to me okay so our bridge is set that's the hard part so now we're just going to go back and really tighten up these knots make sure they're never gonna fail and now we can go and we can cut our excess off and we want to be cutting this pretty close to the knot and it's why you want to be sure you get this right before you do it because you won't be able to tie this again once that's done we're going to take our lighter and we're just going to singe the ends of those so our bridge is in place as you can see on this bridge I opted to have one shelf a little lower than the other that's just a visual thing you can have them at the same same height as well I thought that would look neat here so that's what I did so our final step is going to be the string our railings and so we're going to need to drill some holes in each of our four posts and then we'll be able to make some railings out of paracord got our holes drilled angels already testing out the bridge here and the next step here and the final step is to install our railing what you're going to do is you're going to basically measure by holding up here how long this piece needs to be and again we're gonna leave probably about a foot extra here and I am actually going to make two of those for each side now I've made this hole a little bit bigger than the the other one so this is about a quarter inch hole and the reason for that is just to make this easier to get two pieces of paracord through rather than just the wand and so you're going to have to work a little bit to get them both in there the first one will be easy the second one you're probably going to have a bit of a fight with but if you start it and then pull the first one through with it you'll see it actually pulled the second one through and then you can go ahead and grab these two ends and what we're going to do now is thread it through the other side and we're going to twist this whole railing to give us a little bit more structure and then we're going to come back and we're going to zigzag a piece to create the side of our railing now what's gonna happen when you start twisting is it's going to want to try to spin out so we can only twist so much before it won't let us twist anymore but we just want to make sure that we get the twist this even this and then what we're gonna do is find the right length that allows us to mirror the shape of the bridge so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna let some slack out until this is basically running parallel to our bridge I would recommend leaving a little bit more slack than you think as we start to run our side piece you'll see this tighten up a little bit the last step is to install the side of the bridge so what we're going to do here is we're going to measure a piece that is about three times as long as the bridge it's just to be totally safe and now what we're gonna do is we're gonna tie this to our end bottom of the bridge right onto the same spot that we tied the bridge to the shelf we're going to start a zigzag pattern going up and down into the bridge we do that as we wrap around a bead on the bottom and then we go through our crisscross pattern on the top and so we're just going to zigzag this all the way down and as we do this we need to check our tension and make sure that our bridge is holding its shape while still keeping a tight enough side and so finally we're gonna take our end and tie it off down here just like we did on the first side before we tie this knot we really want to make sure one more time everything's looking good and then we'll go ahead and tie our knot we're all done so we've got this whole side done we're gonna go ahead and repeat the same exact thing on the back side and then our bridge will be done now that we have both sides strung we are done with our bridge except for just going back and cutting all of our excess pieces off this version of the bridge is just a very simple one it's very short has short shelves it's all one color you can really get wild with these you can do two or three different colors and your bridge pieces you can paint your beads if you want you can make longer shelves you can have two on the same shelf and really just have fun with this so we just wanted to show you guys the process so that you can customize this to fit your cat room at your shelter if you have any questions feel free to comment below I know there's a lot of steps to this process and so give it a shot see how it goes and send us your pictures and videos and we'd love to see how you are helping your local shelters with projects like this one don't forget to subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications so you can keep up to date with all of our awesome rescue rebuild videos

Channel: Greater Good Charities

Views: 66,977

Keywords: greatergood.org, ggo, rescue rebuild, pet rescue, pet shelter, dog, shelter dog, cat, shelter cat, construction, renovation, animal rescue, dog rescue, cat rescue, adopt don’t shop, greater good, give where it matters, gifts that give more, charity, nonprofit, diy, do it yourself, how to, how to video, diy video, shelter construction, installation, instructional video, cat bridges, feline foster, cat room, cat climber, wobble bridge

Id: bOwa77mv6EE

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020