Before I really started working with wood, I built projects out of PVC pipe. It's light, easy, and has a look that I find kind of cool. You see all sorts of things made out of this stuff:

 I have an African Grey parrot, and there's a lot of stuff for birds made out of PVC, but expensive. So I decided to try my hand at it. The picture at the top of the page is my very first PVC creation. I went on to build other stuff as well, such as a sprinkler for my kids and a large (5 foot) tablet holder for my wife, the teacher.

The real attraction for me using PVC is the fact that the fittings will fit tight without gluing and can be taken apart. It makes things rather portable, although the movers ruined the above perch when we moved it to our first house (they lost a bunch of pieces on the truck somehow. Don't use Larry's Dirt Cheap Movers, and yes, that was the actually name!).  Building with PVC is also a lot like playing with Tinker Toys, except you have to cut your own pieces.  Also, because PVC is really for plumbing, not for building furniture, there are no "box corner" pieces.  This short-coming is easily overcome with a tiny bit of creativity, however.

The above perch took me a couple nights to build. I'm not much of a sleeper, or TV watcher, so I'm always looking for projects after my wife and kids go to bed. Back then a PVC perch with 400+ pieces was a big project for me, however now my projects are more like the swinging bookcase scale. I did that whole perch in my living room with a hacksaw (didn't know about PVC pipe cutters back then, nor would I have spent the money on one), then carefully vacuumed up the shavings the next morning. Ah...apartment living.

Our bird, Nicky, enjoyed it for many years before it was ruined. I've been thinking of building him another one. I still have one of the ladders as a souvenir.

Please don't ask me for plans, I have none! I do all my projects in my head. All request are redirected to /dev/null