One of the recurring issues we’ve experienced–besides the ineptitude of the previous owners–is the destructive desire of the boys, Tenar and Thlayli. When moving in, we purchased a section of vinyl flooring from Home Despot and put it 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 got done with the walls, we got creative with the flooring. A new piece of vinyl was put down with some aluminum flashing along the sides.
The new setup worked pretty well, but the front edge of the vinyl was still exposed, and soon enough it was looking pretty ragged thanks to the destructive chewing power of bird beaks. The flashing was also a bit too tall and random crumbs would get wedged between it and the molding. So when it came time to refinish the teak flooring, we decided to implement yet another improvement. This time we added a felt underlay to prevent the vinyl from sticking to the teak and a carpet strip along the front edge. We also installed shorter flashing along the sides so stray crumbs no longer fall between the flashing and molding.
Almost three years later, 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.