Hmm, perhaps the light interior stain might be a good idea. The exterior is going to be birch plywood, and with the design I'm going with, the front is all framed, I think we're going to use oak or something. A really good woodworker is helping me out, so he just has a lot of raw pieces of wood that are 1" thick, and he has a planer, so we're going to turn those into a bunch of 1x2's for the framing. Do you think if I put a med/dark stain on the exterior it will be very obvious that I used different woods for the sides than the front? Will it not really matter?



My original plan for the cage liners was to just make removable ones out of non-adhesive rubber shelf liner, but now I think I may do adhesive shelfliner on the bottom of the cage....or maybe lenolium if I have the extra money. For my uromastyx I will have to still make a cage liner out of rubber shelf liner though, because I plan on having a thin layer of dirt for her (because I like the naturalness of it, and she doesn't eat substrate...unlike my bearded dragon.....she'll also have a nest box with tons of soil to dig in because they're burrowers by nature). When you put dirt in a cage you have to keep water in it so it doesn't turn into dust, and I know water is bad for wood cages, So I want to make a waterproof liner for it to go in...something I can replace when I replace the dirt (once or twice a year). So basically I just stain the interior of the cage and put the clear coat on and everything, and then a polyurethane based sealant around the bottom edges? Or vice versa? Then lastly put in the adhesive shelf liner or lenolium?



Thanks for the help. Are there certain stains I should use? I also have an idea for sort of a customizable basking platform/retes stack that I want to try out...if I use those in the cage setup would it be a good idea to stain them or something? Keep in mind that in the uromastyx enclosure the shelf will be subjected to around 135 degrees of heat every day.

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