Bird House Project

 Last fall I started building a bird house with some scrap wood that I had laying around. After I decided on the dimensions, I decided to build two of them. The interior is 5-1/2" x 7" and the ends are 7" high cut at a 45-degree angle. I thought that it would be too heavy if I made all of the pieces from 3/4" thick wood, so I bought a small piece of 1/2" plywood for the sides and roof. I made the roof so that it can be removed for cleaning. All of the angle cuts were done on a Black+Decker table saw. The perch is a piece of 3/8" dia. oak dowel.

After the main parts were assembled, I couldn't decide how to finish the roof, so I let the two unfinished bird houses sit in the garage all winter. Once spring arrived, I started thinking about what I was going to use for roofing. I thought about using some old roofing from my house, but that was too thick and hard to cut. They make roofing for doll houses, but I didn't think any of those options would last very long outside. I finally settled on sandpaper. I happened to have some unused 3"x 21" sanding belts that I bought on Amazon back in 2022. The 80 grit was about right, and the color looked good too. 

I didn't plan it this way, but the belts are 21" and the roof was 10-1/2" long. I needed to cut up 2 belts for each roof. I also needed to find a piece of molding for the roof cap. I selected a .875-in x 8.0-ft white hardwood molding with a leaf pattern from Lowes. Since the molding was 8 feet long, I decided to trim out the front of each house and paint the vines green. This helped hide the roof line gap and two screws along the bottom edge. I then applied Minwax Puritan Pine stain and a coat of Rust-oleum Ultra-Cover Clear that I had left over from a previous project.

The entrance hole is 1-1/2" diameter, about the size for a wren, finch, or a swallow. I plan on mounting these guys to 4x4 posts in the shade near the garden. Although, they almost look too good to leave outside. Next time I would use a hand miter saw. I spent a lot of time sanding the ends of the trim pieces, so they fit together nicely. I would also make the whole thing out of 1/2" plywood. With the 3/4" thick boards, each house weighs 3 Lbs. - 2 Oz. It took a long time to build because I didn't like any of the designs for the ones I found on the Internet. I had to think about the size of each piece and then cut double the amount so that I could build two. Hopefully birds will appreciate the effort, and the new houses will draw more of them to the back yard.