[Dino] continues his to satisfy his weekly hacking goal by building a cat door for his pets. He has a Habitat For Humanity resale store nearby that was doing a 50% off sale on doors. So he picked up a six-panel door and set to work.
The first step is drawing out the opening and cutting it with a jigsaw. Once he was done, there’s some reinforcement work to be done because this is a hollow-core door. Since he had already cut a bit of the bottom off of the door to fit his jamb opening, he had some wood stock that was already the right thickness. That bit was secured to the top and bottom of the opening with glue and some brads. The same was done on the sides with a different piece of scrap, then the door was hung in the opening to reach the point in the project seen above.
Here [Dino] prepares to add a flap to cover the opening. He used acrylic for the flap because it’s light-weight and clear. A piece of piano hinge makes it easy to swing in both directions. The final touch is a magnet which keeps the flap from swinging in the breeze using parts from a magnetic cabinet latch. No sooner does he have the flap in place than a brave kitty gives it a test run.
Hopefully he doesn’t have the kind of pests that caused other hackers to build facial recognition cat door locks.
