I used an acrlyic based polyurethane (I wanted a clear coat) in my bearded dragon cage. He did scratch up the floor a bit so I went back and covered it with a piece of vinyl flooring which has worked great. The rest of the cage has held up well except for the lower front lip of the cage. He runs back and forth along there when he wants to get out and scratches it up. At least that part of the cage is out of sight, all the visible portions look great.



Oh yeah, I did attach my light fixtures directly to the stained/sealed wood. Or I should say the electrical boxes were attached directly. The fixtures attach to those.



An acrylic latex paint would be much more durable than the poly I used.



The bondo is only for making all of the interior edges radiused, it is not for sealing the cage. I would not use it in conjunction with any sort of shelf liner, vinyl flooring, or other laminates. Only if you're using a colored paint.



Why do you want to paint the cage if you'll be using the shelf liner?



And why non-adhesive?



BTW, a frequent poster on this forum used adhesive backed contact paper for a bearded cage and he says it's held up well for over a year now.



But back to paint, neither Bearded Dragons nor the Mali Uromastysx will be that desctructive, at least not compared to a monitor. You probably could apply an oil-based product and basically never have to worry about it again. The floor probably would be better off with a plastic laminate such as vinyl flooring.



Lastly, I have to at least offer the suggestion that you stain the interior in a lighter color and apply a semi-gloss clear coat. The cage interior would be much brighter than you anticipate and the natural look would go really well with your desert animals.



Here is a cage I built from oak-laminated plywood. Interior and exterior were stained with a somewhat light brown stain. Then several coats of water based polyurethane were applied. The interior had a thick coat of clear epoxy poured on. The same stuff used on bar tops.



The epoxy is overkill for your application, I think an even lighter stain with a clear coat would look great in a well decorated desert cage. I think even this one is pretty bright, and it has nowwhere near the light intensity that you'll use.

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