I was looking to buy one of those things that cats climb on and chill or play with. (AKA cat perch, cat condo, cat tree, cat furniture)
I had no idea how much they cost! Turns out you can pay up to 250€ depending on the model.
It’s crazy, considering it’s nothing more than wood and carpet. I decided to build my own.

I didn’t do any planning, just looked at some popular models, took some mental pictures, and went to a home depot store to buy all the needed materials.

The wooden panels and beams were offcuts and cheap as chips. I also bought a small sized carpet for 8 euros. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any carpet offcuts to reduce the cost even further. I chose black color to match my cat gata…

I placed the panels one by one on the carpet and dressed them. This gives gata some traction and makes it comfier.
I also bought 6 meters of sisal rope to cover the beams to aid the climbing and give her something to scratch.

I fixed the carpet on the planks with several wood screws. It’s not going anywhere.

Next came the rope. I screwed the beginning to secure it and then rolled it around as tight as I could.

Unfortunately, 6 meters weren’t even enough to cover one of the beams. I should have bought around 24 meters.

I then screwed the metal brackets, slit some slots on the carpet to slide them under, and screwed some more.

By this stage I was exhausted by all the screwing sounds fun). That cordless thingy didn’t had enough power to drive the nails through hard wood so I had to do most of the screwing by hand. No fun. My arm hurts.

I added another level, and a horizontal beam for cat-walking. I’ll add some hanging toys later-on.

It didn’t look very stable, and the initial testing (gata get up there!!) proved me right. It almost toppled and gave poor gata a scare.

I added another ground-floor level, and 2 beams beneath the structure for extra support and weight.

Here we can see the final product, next to the test subject. I’m trying to lure her into liking it by bribing her with food.

Total cost: 21€
Total work: around 4 hours.