House note

Building your first pen: move-in day, minus the dread

Flat-pack furniture has trained everyone to expect an afternoon of grief, so here is the honest schedule for a panel pen: ten minutes, no tools, one person, and the hardest step is deciding the shape.

Start on the floor, not in the box. Lay the panels flat in the footprint you intend — a long rectangle beats a clever maze, because guinea pigs and rabbits spend their happiness in straightaways, not corners. Walk around it once; if you can't reach every point of the interior comfortably, neither will your cleaning arm on a Tuesday.

Walls go up by hand: each panel seats into its connector with a push until it clicks, and the frame gets rigid once the corners close. If a joint fights you, it is misaligned, not defective — back it out and re-seat it square.

The liner hangs last, on its hooks, outside the finished frame. Outside is the entire trick: the tenant's teeth meet wire everywhere, fabric nowhere, and the door cutout lines up with the gate panel so the entrance works immediately.

Then bedding, hay, water, and the ceremonial release. Expect ten minutes of suspicious wall-sniffing followed by the first lap — the popcorning usually starts before you've flattened the box.