A quick guide to making a elegant door to keep your pet in your room of choice. Complete with window, door knob and latch.

This is documented post-build, but the steps required to get to this stage should be simple enough, a few hours in the shed will probably suffice.

Our rabbit is a semi-tame wild rabbit that was rescued from a cat as a baby (is levret the correct term for a baby rabbit?) So it has access to a network of hutches tunnels and runs in the garden. As well as permenant access to the conservatory. This door is to allow it access to the rest of the house, when it's appropriate to have a mischivious rabbit nibbling our plants and peoples toes. She does have a name, but like Red Dwarf's Cat, she's just refered to as 'Rabbit.'

Most of the cutting was done with a jigsaw (for my door) and a bandsaw (for the rabbit's door). A drill, hammer and mesuring devices are also required.

Step 1: The Basic Rabbit Door

The basic door is 2 pieces of wood, the same shape, fastened together with a piece of transparent plastic squashed between them for a window. Later it became apparant that there was a significant draft around the edges of the rabbit door, so thin fabric was also sandwiched between the layers, then trimmed to fit.

My original intention was to paint the door a lovely forest green, like the hobbit's front door. But various family members were not keen on the idea, so it remains unpainted, and the line of nails remain looking out of place.

Step 2: Extra Bits

To make this into a proper door, it needs hinges, a door knob and a lock.

The hinge is a short section of piano lid hinge, and short brass screws. Predrill holes to stop the wood splitting.

The door knob is a brass draw handle from our old kitchen, I tried to reduce the size of this on the lathe, but found that they are actually hollow. So it's oversized in proportion to the rest of the door, but the rabbit won't mind.

The hook is cut out of a scrap of steel (from the casing of a broken cd drive). The rabbit isn't cunning enough to unlatch it, and even then it'd be unable to pull the door open.

Step 3: Fitting

All done, screw in the hinges to the big door, partially hammer in a thick staple for the latch to hook into.

Hopefully your rabbit will appriciate your hard work, and not lick, chew, nibble or abuse your handiwork.

This is an interior door, and hence the security risk is low, but if you plan to do something like this on an exterior house door please bear in mind that a swift kick will open up an arm sized hole in your door. A clever thief equipped with a length of wire, or a fishing rod would be quite pleased about that.