Making a Hanging Decorative Cage in 42 Hard Steps

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Do not attempt this if you are Bi-Polar, suffer from ADHD, AADD, have quit smoking or drinking recently or are contemplating a divorce.

Tools:

Tape measure
Marking pen
Jig Saw
Extension cord
Drill
Small nails
Hammer
22 small sticks
Patience.

1. Go to the woods and find eight small sticks as straight and equal in 2" circumference as you can.
2 Get a marking pen
3. Get a jig saw.
4. Get a tape measure.
5. Measure the sticks 6" long each
6. Cut them.
7. Go back to the woods to get more sticks because you didn’t put them in a vice while cutting them but simply held them in your left hand off the end of the front porch steps which made them very wobbly and uneven.
8. Cut them again.
9. Starting at one end of the sticks, with the marking pen mark four equidistant points along the length of one side. Don’t put the mark too close to the end or you will split the wood when putting in the nails.
10. Get the hammer
11. Attempt to start a small nail through each mark. When that doesn’t work...
12. Get the extension cord and the electric drill.
13. Remove the bent nails from the pieces of wood
14. Drill small holes through each mark
15. Hammer the nails through so that just a little bit of their tips are showing.
16. Go back to the woods and get 12 longer sticks (same 2" circumference)
17. Cut these to a 12" length
18. Mark the center point of each end
19. With the smaller stick as a base, held so that the nail points are facing up, hammer one long stick at a time onto each nail point. When the longer sticks fall off...
20. Go back and hammer the nails further through the base unit
21. Now try again to hammer the long sticks onto each nail point. Once accomplished,
you should have 4 short pieces with 12 long pieces sticking straight up from them
22. Because you forgot to drill a hole in the center of each end of the smaller sticks, do so now. When the longer sticks fall off,
23. Pound the longer sticks back onto their nail posts
24. Because you forgot to drill a hole through the sides of four of the smaller sticks perpendicular to the hole that holds the longer stick, but rather drilled into the end of all of them, go back to the woods and get four new pieces.
25. Follow steps 2-7
26. Follow Steps 10 & 15
27. Drill a hole perpendicular to the ones at the ends of four of the smaller sticks. Make sure they won’t interfere with a nail going through the other hole.
28. Follow Step 16
29. Follow Step 20
30. Now you are going to make two squares with the eight small pieces, hammering nails through the perpendicular holes.
31. Place the top square onto the vertical bars of the base unit and hammer the nails through the pre-made holes. When it won’t lie flush..
32. Go back to the woods and get another piece of wood to replace the one that is slightly warped.
33. Follow steps 2-7.
34. Follow steps 10, 15 &
35. Go to the medicine chest and gets some drugs to calm yourself down

Later:

You’ve finally completed the bottom part of the cage. Now it’s time to work on the top.

36. Get a pruner
37. Go to the woods and find some vines - watching out for the poison ivy and snakes. Bring back a healthy handful. (You’ve learned by now that you can never have too much of what you need from the woods.)
38. Cut two vines to about an 11" length
39. Wrap one vine around one corner of the top then draw it across the diagonal to the other corner and tie it allowing a good deal of slack. Do the same with the other vine.
40. Go back to the woods and cut another vine because you still didn’t have enough.
41. Make a small 2" loop around the top of the criss-crossed four corner vines.
42. As an added artistic touch, trail some of the left over vine around the cage

Voila!

And because you’re not too stupid - get a thin piece of green wire and wrap it around the vines. Because if the vines holding the cage should break, the 5,000 man hours you’ve spent trying to create the damn thing would all be for nought and then you’d have to hang yourself with the vines.

You might wonder why I took it upon myself to attempt such a task. Well because I had a decorative cage for years that I’d found at a tag sale or thrift shop (don’t remember which). But it eventually rotted and I thought, “Well, I can make one of those! Looks real easy! Just a bunch of sticks from the woods.” HA!

Live and learn I say.