A few months back I began looking into what it would take in order to build Maya a new home. At the time nothing was wrong with her current house, I was really just trying to prepare us for what would be needed in the future as she's still growing and would eventually outgrow her current accommodations. Megan and her Father built her current house using Plexiglas which is absolutely perfect, really the only problems are a result from moving it from the apartment to the house and are very simple fixes. Because her current house worked so well, I wanted to follow the same direction that Megan and her Father took a few years back. Now mind you, I keep trying to tell Maya that every homeowner needs to make these renovations themselves, but she just stares at me and nips at my nose.

How it Started

At this point I had no plan or blueprint, I just knew that her future home should be made from Plexiglas (or Lexan but I'm going to refer to it as Plexiglas throughout) like the original and that it would need to be bigger – much bigger in fact. See Maya is going to grow and keep growing until she's about the size of a small boulder, so she needs lots of room to exercise and roam around. One night after Megan fell asleep, I spent hours researching my new future project. Everything from trying to find a local, inexpensive place to purchase Plexiglas to how to properly drill through Plexiglas without causing it to crack. I found glues and unique bonding agents to bond pieces together and special drill bits that wouldn't crack the Plexiglas. Regardless, that night when I finally got to bed I really didn't feel like I had any more of a plan then before. It was now sleepy time…

[You might be wondering where this is going, just hold your horses it's going to get better. Hopefully. Plus, if you had a horse to hold do you really think you could hold it? And, if you could, for how long. An adult horse can weigh up to 800 pounds and that's heavy! But I guess you don't necessarily need to be holding the horse off the ground, maybe just holding it like a hug. Okay, so just hug your horses, it's going to get better. OMG – how can you hug all of your horses at once? Shouldn't it be "hug your horse"? I need to stop.]

So the very next day at work I needed to visit a client in Radnor to discuss a few future projects. While sitting in his office, I happen to look down and see three or four pieces of one inch thick Plexiglas with various cuts and openings. After our initial discussion was over, I decided to ask him where he got the Plexiglas thinking maybe I could find a good resource for when I needed to make the purchase. He responds by telling me that the Plexiglas pieces are display samples that his company was making for a client and then asks me for more information. After about a good ten minute conversation – me explaining my ideas for Maya's future home and him telling me how he has a laser milling machine for cutting the Plexiglas – he asked me if I could send him the design and that he would look into building it for Maya! And to make great news even better, he was only going to charge for the labor involved which would save us close to $500 in Plexiglas alone! On my way back to King of Prussia I called Megan and told her the good news – she seemed to be even more excited then me – this was such great news!

We decided that when we got home from work we'd eat dinner real quick and go upstairs and being designing Maya's future home. We couldn't wait to get started!

Next: The Design