Eh, I don't know on this one. My dad uses Gorilla Glue to the point where the birds can't reach it, but it's on playgyms and such things. I don't think that would work wood to cement. I'm not sure. Is it possible you can drill through concrete?

It does sound like your grandfather isn't in good shape to do a project like this in the summertime. You could ask for his advice during the planning stage though. It's too big of a job for you to do without previous experience, so it's good if your mom wants to hire a professional to do it.

A wooden frame around the concrete could work if it's securely fastened to the concrete with bolts or something. You don't want any gaps between the slab and the wood/wire at the bottom that a bird could fall into. The professional who does the job might know the best way to attach the structure to the slab.

What kind of wood are you planning to use? A lot of aviaries want to minimize the wood and maximize the screened area, so they go for narrow "furring strips". Those are pretty cheap (2 inch by 2 inch by 8 feet is $1.99 at Home Depot http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-2- ... /202518911 ) and you'd be better off to just get new ones if that's what you're using. If you're going for wider planks the price gets higher so you'd need to take a look to see how much cost you're talking about.

I mostly used the 2"x2" furring strips for my aviary and it's pretty solid. I've got pictures at http://home.comcast.net/~ch_zonie/craft ... tml#aviary if you want to take a look at the construction.

Thank you SOO much! I will defines switch to the thin ones that didn't have any experience with molds. I will look into the bolts. I don't really understand how to install them into hard concrete. I never knew wood was so cheap. My mom wanted to reuse the wood we have now but I would rather get new, thinner ones.

Some kinds of lumber are expensive but furring strips are cheap, and the 2x2's are nice for an aviary.

There are different ways to put bolts in concrete. One way is to put the bolt in while the concrete is still wet. For hard concrete it's common to drill a hole in the concrete with a masonry bit. Then an "anchor" (sort of a metal sleeve) is put in the hole and the screw goes into the anchor. It's designed so that it all locks in place somehow, and I'm not sure whether it's always possible to take it out again later. There are also concrete screws that don't use any kind of sleeve or anchor. You drill a hole that's the right size then put the screw directly into the hole, the same way you do with wood.

The first few paragraphs of this link are informative: http://www.confast.com/articles/how-con ... -work.aspx Then they go into the technical details of all the different types of anchors, which probably isn't necessary to read. But there's a part in the middle about concrete screws which is more useful.

One thing that worries me about bolting the frame to the outside edge of the concrete slab is that this will create a thin vertical crevice between the wood and the concrete. Moisture will get into this crevice when it rains, and I don't know whether this will create a nice habitat for mold and fungus, and whether it's a problem or not if it does. People who are familiar with building stuff in Florida could give you the answer. You could try asking someone at Home Depot, a lot of their employees are knowledgeable.

I thought of something else about the frame/slab connection. With concrete slabs, most of it is below the ground surface and just the top part sticks out above ground. If you attach the frame to the outside of the slab you'll have some wood framing buried underground. Even with waterproofing I'm not sure how advisable that is in a wet place like Florida.

You might be better off attaching the frame to the top of the slab, similar to what I did with my aviary. I have a wooden floor not concrete but it would be the same principle. It's basically the same as your idea too, just moved to the top edge of the slab instead of the outside edge. In the picture below, look at the point where the wall meets the floor. There's a strip of wood running horizontally across the top of the floor and the rest of the wall is attached to this strip. You could run the bolts directly through the wood into the floor, or you could attach some kind of metal bracket or flange to the wood and run the bolts through that, either on the top of the slab or on the outer side. I've never worked with concrete so I don't know how practical it is to drill holes this close to the edge. With metal brackets the hole would be further from the edge which is good - less risk of crumbling and cracking problems. In my aviary, the wall is attached to the floor with metal brackets on the outside.

I added a couple of new pictures to my aviary page to help clarify the bracket information.

The exterior walls are attached to the floor with straight metal brackets on the outside of the aviary. The top half of the bracket is screwed into the bottom of the wall and the bottom half of the bracket is screwed into the side of the floor frame. The brackets are spaced two to three feet apart - it doesn't take a lot to make a nice stable structure that doesn't have big gaps between the wall frame and the floor.



For the inner wall that's part of the safety corridor, I attached the bottom of the wall to the floor with L-shaped brackets. The top of this wall is attached to the ceiling with similar brackets. There are several different types of brackets available, but as far as I know they pretty much boil down to straight brackets and L shapes.

Wonderful idea.

My mom said yesterday that I should make a list if everything I am going to need. How do I find out everything I need? How to you make a gamble roof with wood? I will measure the dimensions of the aviary.

You make a wooden frame and attach the roof planks to it. This website has easy to read instructions: http://shedbuilder.info/How-To-Build-A-Shed-Roof.html

It's best to use wood for the roof frame because it's easy to work with, and you could make it out of furring strips instead of wider planks. For the roof itself it might be more practical to use plastic or metal roof panels instead of wood. I don't know how they compare costwise, but the metal panels at this link are fairly cheap. http://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Mat ... 5yc1vZaq4r If you go with wood you'd want wider planks not furring strips. The more pieces you have, the more spaces between pieces there will be to let rainwater drip through.

To make the list of supplies, first you finalize every detail of your plan and draw a picture of it with the dimensions written in to help visualize it. Then you count up everything you need. For example "I need 10 pieces of 2"x2" furring strip that are six feet long and 6 pieces that are four feet long. I need 4 pieces of hardware cloth that are four feet wide and six feet high and two pieces that are three feet wide and six feet high. I need enough concrete to make a slab that's 4 feet wide and six feet long and eight inches deep. I need about 500 screws that are three inches long and 100 that are an inch and a half long, 3 hinges for the door, 8 straight brackets that are four inches high and 6 L-shaped brackets that are two inches long on each side of the L. I need a wire brush to clean the hardware cloth. " I made up all those numbers so they don't necessarily add up to anything that makes sense. In particular I don't know how thick the concrete slab should be.

You have to look at the available materials too. For example hardware cloth rolls are four feet wide at the most - if you want a wall that's six feet wide you'll need to do it in two panels with a strip of wood in the middle. You'll need to figure out how you're going to attach the wire to the wood. I used heavy-duty staples but there are other ways to get the job done.

For example you can find long narrow metal strips at Home Depot - I'm not sure what they're called but if you walk through the store you'll find them eventually. You could drill holes in these strips, sandwich the end of the wire between the metal strip and the wood frame, and screw the strip to the frame. Or you could do something in between - use metal strips at the corners and at intervals on long pieces for extra strength and staples for the rest. You wouldn't need special strips, the brackets that I used on the walls and floor would do fine. I just thought of this idea but I like it, and I'm going to do it with my aviary. With staples, if you push hard enough on the screen in the right direction the staples can be pulled loose, and I'm worried about what could happen if I fell against the screen while I was in the aviary. If it's screwed down in places it'll be more secure.

For the wood pieces, you need to keep the store-bought length of the piece in mind. If you need 4 pieces that are 6 feet long, it won't work to buy 3 pieces that are 8 feet long. It's 24 feet of wood either way, but what you'll get out of it are three 6-foot pieces and three 2-foot pieces. It's not good to join a bunch of little pieces together to get one long piece, it won't be as strong as one long piece. It's useful to get a little more wood than you think you'll need anyway - I always end up needing more than I thought I did. If you don't need it all you can return the excess to the store, and too much is better than too little.