The cage bottom is affixed at the bottom back edge with a length of piano hinge. The front is lifted and held in the "closed" position with window sash locks. These latch very securely and pull the cage bottom tightly against the wire floor. When they are unlatched, the platform under the wire floor drops in the front to the "open" position.
The image at the upper right of this page shows how the bottom of the cage looks when dropped down for cleaning.
We place a layer of newspaper on top of the plastic platform, so that when the bottom is latched in place the newspaper makes a layer just under the wire bottom of the cage and just over the plastic part. This helps soak up and urine or water spills and keeps the plastic cleaner.
Lowering the bottom platform allows easy access to the newspapers. Every other day or so (depends on how messy Specky is) I just pull out the paper, sweep off the platform, and give it a wipe if necessary. Then, I spot clean the inside of the cage, add a new layer of newspaper, and close up the cage bottom again.
If you are interested in building your own cage like this it is pretty easy. We basically just decided on a size and worked out the measurements as we went along. Although I'm obviously not talented at drawing up plans, I made up some rudimentary diagrams showing how we assembled our cage. These could be adapted to any size cage you want to make (as an example, our cage width was determined by the width of the hardware cloth we had on hand).
