One of the recurring issues we’ve experienced has nothing to do with the ineptitude of the previous owners, but the destructive desire of the boys, Tenar and Thlayli. When first moving in, we purchased a section of vinyl flooring from Home Despot. This was put down under their cages, but because the edges were exposed it posed a temptation to their beaks. They would climb down from their cages occasionally and shred the vinyl.
By the time I painted their space in early 2017, it was a given we were going to have to address those issues, so prior to painting, I pulled up all the old vinyl and after I was done with the walls, we got creative with the flooring. A new piece of vinyl was put down with some added some aluminum flashing along the sides.
The new setup worked pretty well, but the front edge of the vinyl was still exposed; soon enough, it was looking pretty ragged thanks to the destructive chewing power of bird beaks. Plus the flashing was a bit too tall, and random crumbs would get wedged between it and the molding. Thus, when it came time to refinish the teak flooring, we decided to implement yet another improvement.
This time, in addition to a felt underlay to prevent the vinyl from inadvertently sticking to the teak, we added a carpet strip along the front edge. We replaced the flashing along the sides as well–only this time the height is just right and stray crumbs no longer fall between the flashing and molding.
It’s now almost three years later and things are holding up very well. The only issue is that some crumbs sometimes get between the flashing and the vinyl, so when I do a big clean I end up using a putty knife to free most of the crumbs.