Replacing shelves?

[ReneeM]

My boys have had their Chinchilla Townhome since last August. Their shelves are beginning to look gross from use. I think urine has soaked into them, as nothing will wipe off anymore. I was going to order them new shelves from Quality Cages. I was just wondering how long shelves normally last?

 

[Shooper]

You can always sand off the dirty layer and continue to use them. As long as they havent chewed them up too much, I always reuse.

 

[ChinnyMom]

why not save some money and just make shelves yourself? you may be able to remove the hardware from your current shelves and re-use it for new ones. i buy my kd pine boards from home depot, in the moulding section. nice smooth boards in varying widths, and not too expensive. i think i made 4 or 5 shelves from one board that cost about 5 or 6 bucks.

when i first got Rhino almost a year ago, i revamped his cage with wood shelves, and those shelves are still in use today, although they are getting mighty close to needing replaced or getting a really good sanding. thinking i'll just replace, as that may make it easier to get both my boys living together (the old shelves probably reek of Rhino by now, lol!).

 

[tcraighenry]

We sand the shelves and house down too. Get those upper arms working

 

[greychins]

While we do make shelves, we don't replace our shelves very often. Probably the only time we make shelves for ourselves is when we are putting together a new cage.

We pretty much just powerwash, scrub (soap + water), hydrogen peroxide, re-scrub, and sand our shelves when they get dirty and keep using them. After all of that, they don't look quite as bad, and at least then they're pretty well sanitized.

 

[ReneeM]

I didn't even think about sanding them! Thank you for the idea! I'll do that

 

[Cuddlebug]

I scrub mine with peroxide. It cleans them really well and also removes the urine stains.