Instead of spending a ton of money buying a raised pet feeder, make your own pet food stand with a few pieces of scrap wood!
Most of the projects on this blog stem from a problem.
Most times the problem is that I’m too broke to purchase the items I want lol.
The problem I needed to solve for today’s post however, was small, grey, and a thank-goodness-she’s-cute-handful…
Miss Luna.
In particular, it’s Miss Luna’s proclivity to getting into Lacey’s water dish and splashing it around everywhere like a robin in a bird bath.
I know, she’s the weirdest cat ever playing in water, but she seems to love it. The problem is that poor Lacey is then left with wet and soggy dog food and when you have bought the most highly recommended dog food from www.puppywire.com, it’s annoying to have to waste dog food because of this freak of nature cat!
I decided it was time to make Lacey a pet food stand to keep her kibble dry. I believe a raised dog bowl is better for their digestion as well, but that is just an added bonus.
I built a single pet food stand because I only needed to get one bowl off of the ground, but you could easily make this to hold two bowls by doubling the lengths of the horizontal pieces.
I drew up the plans after I built my pet food stand, so my photos won’t quite match with the plans but trust me, the plans are better. ( I learned from my mistakes)
I traced Lacey’s food dish onto a piece of ¾” plywood. Lacey won’t eat from a deep dish – we use a glass pie plate for her food – so I have the added bonus of handles to hang my dish from. I got out my new (and super-awesome) WORX Axis jig-saw-and-reciprocating-saw-in-one and cut a circle just smaller than the dish, and leaving the handles out of the cut; they will rest on the surface.
The frame of my pet food stand is made from ¾” strips of wood. I believe some home improvement stores sell these as square dowels, but I ripped mine from scrap wood I had lying in the garage.
The dog bowl stand frame was stuck together with wood glue and then reinforced with 1 ¼” finishing nails.
Lacey’s pie plate dish took up most of the 12″ plywood, so you can see some of the dog bowl stand frame underneath. Not pretty, but the dish still fits perfectly, so I think Lacey will forgive me.
I primed the pet food station with Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3 and then gave it two coats of Rust-Oleum metallic in aged copper. (for no other reason than that I wanted to see how it would look)
If I were making this as a gift for a friend with pets, I probably would have added veneer banding around the edge of the plywood, stained the top and painted the bottom in a black to look like iron work.
Looks pretty good if you ask me? My cabinets really need a makeover, but for now the copper is subtle and blends in nicely under our kitchen island.
We leave a tea towel under the water dish to sop up some of the spray from Luna’s antics. Even while I was photographing, she couldn’t resist getting in there and making a mess.
Bugger!
At least now Lacey’s food will be safe from the sprinkler.
At 12″ x 12″ x 12″, it’s easy to tuck away and doesn’t take up much space – plus I made it entirely from scrap pieces of wood I had in the garage.
Lacey has eaten from it and it is the perfect height for our (small) Bernese Mountain Dog – who is roughly the size of an average golden retriever – and just taller than our 10 month old kitten.
Problem solved!
Have a great one!
