Put Plastic Edging Around The New Holes

(Method B)
Once you've cut your middle door, you can put on the black plastic edging from Skip Martin to cover the cut edges. Oh! And re-hinge the top front panel into place now! :) If you cut the wires flush I think the edging will snap into place and stay. If you had less phenomenal tools and left little nubby edges (like I did) you can put the plastic edging on and wrap it tightly into place with black electrical tape or cloth/duct tape. (My ferrets never chewed on the tape, but if yours do, try putting some bitter apple spray on it.) I didn't put the plastic edging on the sides of the opening for the middle floor door but you may. I wanted to keep the option of collapsing the cage in the future. If the edging snaps into place without needing the tape then it would of course be easier to put on and take off (for the purposes of collapsing the cage), -and would probably look nicer too!

Swap The Lower Door To The Middle And Attach The New Door To The Bottom

(Method B)

Unless you've covered your lower door with carpeting or something, I think it makes a crappy ramp for getting in and out of the cage! The rungs are too wide. So....

Remove the lower front door, and the wire that slides over it to close it, and use them for the new middle door you just cut above it. Re-attach them the same way they were below so the door opens out and down. The black edging on the bottom of that door hole will be in the way so mark where the door hinge/hooks go and remove 2 small sections of plastic there to make room for the hinge wire to clear. This door will be used for your access only. The ferrets will never have to walk on it again. :o)

Now fasten the new door with the 1/2" black mesh down below. Hinge it across the bottom with c-rings. There's a little groove in the c-ring tool that the c-ring fits into. Place a ring in that groove and squeeze the handles to close the ring as you would with a pair of pliers. Skip sells two kinds of cage door latches. The one that has a spring with a hook attached to it worked better for me, but you may have a different preference. I found that it took 3 to close the bottom door best since the door is so wide.
The hooks have a small circle at one end which should be attached to the cage one rung above where the door reaches. Then there's a length of spring and a wire with a finger loop and a hook at the end. That's the side that will hook and unhook to the top of the door to keep it closed. For lack of a better place to hook it, I attached the base of the middle hook to the bottom rung of the door above, but that turned out to be ok.

Ok. Now that you have doors for your bottom and middle levels, we're going to make your cage top opening.

*By the way... from here on in, the instructions are the same as doing it "the other way."

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