Modern Birdhouse

In this project a Birdhouse is made!

Not just a normal one, but a modern one. The concept behind this was, everybody could think of a stadard house shape birdhouse and for that reason I challenged myself to be making a very different shape. One other thing determined the front of the little structure is the type of bird. A few times I have seen a Red Robin bird flying through my garden so I though that's a nice little bird to make Birdhouse for. These birds like the half open front.

Plans and schematisc for this build are available from my website.

www.seamm.nl

Enjoy!

Before building this project, I spent some time sketching front views of the birdhouse and looked at ancient Asian temples and modern and 'Monolith' architecture images.

This is a simple and straightforward step to come up with the designs.

The materials I used were:

1 to 1.2 m (3 to 4') Douglas fir boards

300 by 400 mm (1 by 1' and 4'') corrugated galvanised steel

100 by 300 mm ( 4" by 1') copper sheet

These materials gave a warm and still edgy feel to the mini structure.

So the first real building step was; cutting the wood to length and the correct angle.

The 90 degrees straigth cuts were not difficult. I needed to really concentrate when I was making the 60 degrees bevels to the board to accomodate the angle of the design.

I made a little chamfer to the wood edges to make it slightly friendlier to the touch.

So after the wood was to it's size. The parts can be put together. The four walls and bottom are primarily held together with glue. For easy of assembly I used a brad nailer to hold the glue joints in position before adding the screws. The pin nailer is not a must but it makes it easier. For every side one or two screws are used. I did predrill this because the screws are close to the side and the boards are not that thick.

For the little steel roof, ordinary corrugated steel was used. I used an angle grider to cut through it and before it got assembled the holes for screws were predrilled.

Ordinary screws don't really 'start' in steel sheets even when it is this thin.

On top of the steel roof, a ridge of thin copper was placed.

This copper was cut out, placed between the workbench and wood board and folded over by hand. The radius happening in the copper was not really tight but it had a more friendly look to it.

So I used one screw to hang in to a pole in the garden. The pole was about 5' high or 1.6m. And it is facing southwards. This should be inviting for the litlle Red Robins according to the internet.

This was the build for the Birdhouse. I hope this is useful to you and a bit inspiring!