Hampton Villa- Autumn’s First Cardboard Castle

[Autumn's Dad]

Hi all, just thought you would like to see this as it might give you some ideas for constructing your own. First, I have to thank the good folk down at Hobbycraft (a shop here in the UK) for their time and generosity in giving me a number of sturdy double walled boxes for free. After folding them back up i cut the arches you see on the front and between the boxes on each floor, conjoining the two rooms and sellotaped them together (only the exterior so she wont chew the tape). After stacking the floors she went right in and immediately went into excitable puppy mode, dashing, binkying, chewing, and running rings around me (very rare for her to do)! I built it like this as i like the stepped roof which provides various levels to explore, to access the top floor she must accurately jump up and through the arch, the multiple odd shaped rooms make for an interesting house and the build is pretty sturdy and can almost take the weight of a grown man!

I filled the left bottom floor room with newspaper for a digging box and the left upper with a towel floor for resting with bare hallways to the right upper and lower. The beauty of it is you can replace boxes as they become old and haggard while keeping the original structure standing indefinitely. The name was my home, which was very old and once had a crumbling name plaque with ‘Hampton Villa’ chiselled into it. Now it’s up to her to do her renovations and construction work

A.D

[Vienna Blue in France]

I wonder if she’ll understand that it is a DIGGING box and not the new ‘restroom’…. ….

[LittlePuffyTail]

Cute! Autumn is very lucky to have such a thoughtful Daddy!

[Autumn's Dad]

Vienna- I hope so! 😮 or else I’m in trouble

LittlePuffyTail- thanks for the complement, I’m just trying to steer her away from boredom and give her something to do as you can see she is a little chunky. The vet confirmed she’s on the higher end of ideal weight now so trying to increase her activity while working on her diet (what that really means is resisting her begging gaze for more pellets!) haha

[LittlePuffyTail]

Yes, I know! It’s so hard to say no!

[Autumn's Dad]

LPT- Yep, got her on a new pellet now, I didn’t like the old ones as they were very dusty and often made her sneeze I’m trying Wagg- ‘Bunny Brunch’ now and will cut back to dawn and dusk feedings as I had gotten into the habit of feeding lunch as well.

[Bam]

That’s a lovely villa for a lady bunny! I have made sth similar (but less elegant) for my Yohio, and it was a success from the start. He has made arches himself, I only cut square door-holes

[Autumn's Dad]

Thanks, I am not around much unfortunately as I work, and soon be studying so I want to keep her entertained as much as I can. Although she spends 6-9 waking hours with me. Cool, it’s fascinating to see them at work modifying their home, Autumns favourite is to dash in and out, doing a 180 to turn back round and start over again

On a side note, she has stopped destroying my rug. sadly, I found out it was not just mindless digging/chewing but that she was being hurt by the rug without me knowing. She had serious weeping sore hocks on account of the coarse wool rug (as I now understand), but after I covered the original rug with a very soft fleece blanket she stopped digging and her sores are healing up and slowly being covered by fur.
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