Have a stuffed animal population problem in your house? Make this adorable Stuffed Animal Corner Cage to make storage fun and easy!
You don’t need to be a skilled carpenter to make this either! Stuffed animals can easily be played with in this storage solution as well, which makes justifying keeping all of them much easier!
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Stuffed Animal Corner Cage
If you have kids, there’s a 99% chance you have an overpopulated group of stuffed animals in your house. Each year they just multiply and multiply. Inevitably, there are special gifts from grandparents, or from momentous occassions that I cannot get rid of, so we’re just overrun. I hate the idea of the stuffed animal nets, and the stuffed animal “zoos” I’ve seen on Pinterest just seem to take up so much room in an already crowded bedroom. So we came up with the idea of the Stuffed Animal Corner Cage.
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The stuffed animal corner cage is super easy to make, and holds a LOT of stuffed animals! The “bars” on the cage are actually made up of a thick, stretchy cord, so putting animals away, or getting them out is easy, no matter where they’re at in the corner cage. We left you a link so you can buy it for yourself if you want, it’s pretty inexpensive and comes in several colors too.
You will need:
(1) 2x2x6 Pine Wood
(2) 1x3x6 Pine Wood
(1) 1x4x12 Pine Wood
(3) 2x4x6 Pine Wood
(1) roll of 1/4” Elastic Cord Stretch String
2” Wood Screws
Drill
3/16″ Drill Bit
3/8″ Drill Bit
Electric Sander
80 Grit Sandpaper
1000 Grit Sandpaper
The following items are optional, depending on if you choose to stain your corner cage or not:
Wood Conditioner
Paint Brush
Walnut Stain
Shop Towels
To begin your stuffed animal corner cage, start by cutting your boards as follows:
Cut your 1x4x12 into (3) 42 ½-inch pieces. Cut your 2x4x6s into (6) 30-inch pieces with 45 degree angles on both ends of each piece of wood. Now go through and sand down each piece of wood until it’s as smooth as possible using your electric sander and 80 grit sandpaper.
Take two of your 2×4 pieces and place them together at one end, angle against angle. Put two screws in one side at the tip (see photo) so that your two pieces make a triangle without a bottom. Do this two more times using the rest of the 2x4s. Place one set of the 2x4s flat on the ground and put your 2×2 right into the corner so it sits like a puzzle piece. Using two more screws, screw through the other side of the corner of the 2×4 straight into the 2×2. Take another set of 2x4s and do the same exact thing to the other end of the 2×2. Exactly in the middle of the 2×2, attach the last set of 2x4s. Now, lay the contraption on its side so that one side of the 2×4 is more up in the air and the other is flat on the ground.
Sandwich your 1×3 against the tip of the 2×4 on the ground with the end of one of the 1×4 pieces. Going through the 1×4, screw in two screws. Do this two more times with each of the 2x4s resting on the ground. Flip the contraption and repeat on the other side.
Stand the stuffed animal corner cage upright. On each one of the 1x4s, start at the edge and measure over 6 inches, five separate times, and mark it. These will be the holes for the elastic cord to run from the top of the stuffed animal corner cage to the bottom of it. Using your drill and the 3/8″ bit, start with the top board on the inside and drill from the bottom up but only drill halfway through the board. Right where you drilled that hole, drill another one straight forward so they collide with each other. Do this in each spot you marked down that top 1×4. The middle 1×4 you will drill all the way through from top to bottom at each spot you measured. The bottom 1×4 will be the same as the top only opposite so drill from top to bottom halfway through and then drill through the board from the inside, until the two holes meet. If you do not plan to stain or paint, skip the next section.
Staining/Painting
Use a rag or a brush and dust your entire contraption down. Using your brush, cover every inch of wood in wood conditioner (pre-stain). A little goes a long way so keep that in mind. It doesn’t take much. Leave the pre-stain to dry for about 20-30 minutes or up to 2 hours if you have the time. Once dry, wipe down with a shop towel to remove an excess. Fold up a shop towel so many times that it turns into about a 2″x4″ rectangle. Using gloves ifpreferred, dip the tip of the folded shop towel into the stain and rub it back and forth over every inch of wood, following the grain. This will help you save stain and not waste it as well as allow it to dry quicker and more evenly. Once you’ve stained the entire contraption, leave it to sit overnight. Once dry, wipe down the entire thing with a shop towel and sand it down by hand with 1000 grit sandpaper. Dust it off again.
Elastic
Measure your elastic (we just eyed it and didn’t really measure) and cut 5 pieces. Put the end through the top hole first and knot it. Slip the other end of the elastic through the middle board and then through the bottom board and knot it again. You will need to pull these super tight before you knot it. If you have a lot of excess, don’t worry, you can either cut it off or the stuffed animals will cover it.
Once you’re finished, you can place it in the corner of the room you want it to go in, and fill it with stuffed animals! We screwed the base of ours to the wall, just to keep it from from becoming too heavy and tipping, but for a long while it wasn’t screwed in, and never even so much as wobbled, so you don’t have to screw it in, but we did anyway.
If you don’t want yours as tall or as wide, you can always adjust the measurements to fit your need, but the basic design will stay the same! If you know someone with a lot of stuffed animals, share this with them! It looks awesome in a room, and is super easy to make! If you make this stuffed animal corner cage, we’d love to see your pictures! Email completed projects or recipes to downredbuddrive@gmail.com, and you may be featured on our social media!
