Roofing Felt For Bird Houses – In this video I make a simple birdhouse box for my garden and later in the video you will see that the blue tit bird has already visited – hopefully they will be in the boxes soon!
In this video I make some birdhouses. I first designed what I wanted to do in SketchUp and if you want to make your own free plans for this build are available at the link in the description box below and free to everyone, not just my Patreon subscribers. And I designed the boxes based on the guidelines from the RSPB website, which has some useful information about the dimensions that should be used to attract certain birds to nest in the boxes. I will link to that page in the description box.
Roofing Felt For Bird Houses
If you want to see some of the birds in use, please wait until the end of the video!
Build A Bird Box
I have a piece of marine plywood left over from a recent docking station build, it is water resistant and works well for exterior use so it should hold up well.
It was really dirty and dusty so I went upstairs to clean the pieces.
I started by tearing the cross and bottom panels to 150mm wide. To get the shape I want for the birdhouse, I need to cut some corners on the miter, first I want a 35 degree angle where the side panels meet the roof.
I wanted to cut some 10 degree angles on the bottom panel where it meets the side panels. And if you’ve never done anything with corner cutting before, it’s a good project to think about how the different corners fit together.
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So now I have bottom panels that look like this on two opposite sides at 10 degree angles
For assembly I use some waterproof PVA wood glue, the material I use is Everbuild 502 and I have links to it in the description box I use in my accessories section. Here I can attach the two side panels to the bottom panel and hold them together with some brad nails until the glue dries.
Next, I could have done the roof panels and unfortunately I don’t have enough seabed for that, so I decided to use some pieces of chipud, which is obviously less resistant to water, but that’s ok because later. We make an edge and add a little roof to protect it.
I cut the pieces to 200mm wide and then cut them lengthwise on the counter and cut one panel longer than the other depending on the thickness of the material you are looking at, and I can fit them together. I added more glue to the overlap and glued them together to hold them in place for a while and drilled pilot holes and added some screws to re-enforce the joint.
Fly In Diner
Next I lay out the sides and bottom of the roof and make sure all my corners meet together and everything looks good.
I can place the other bits on the seabed to make the front and back panels and then draw a pencil line on the outside of the box and then the inside of the roof. And it gives the right shape to the front and back panels of the box.
Cutting the shape can easily be done with a plaster saw and I’m making sure the pencil is outside the line to check the shape, but I used a bandsaw because I had one.
Then I clean up those cuts with a block plane and some sanding, which is totally optional, not really necessary, but to create a cleaner look.
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Here I am marking the spot where I want access and you can change the size of the hole based on the birds you want to attract. In my case it’s mainly blue jays in my garden at the moment so I did my 25mm according to the RSPB guidelines. And I used a forstner bit on a pole drill to cut the hole, but it could easily be done with a combi drill.
Next, I started thinking about decorating the house and I thought it would be a good idea to add duct tape first, but as you can see it didn’t work out exactly as expected.
I’m painting a door here and can use a V groove bit on my router to carve the details into the wood. Instead of using a straight edge to guide the pieces, I did this freehand because I wanted the features to look cartoonish in style.
I was going to add some spray paint to this detail and the idea behind the screen was to prevent the paint from getting anywhere but the painted parts, and as you can see that didn’t quite work, it leaked down. Tape
Bird Nests And Roofs
So I didn’t bother using duct tape for the rest. Instead I marked what I wanted and here I am painting a simple window, then I did the rotation and after I added the paint and waited for it to dry, I sanded it using a 120 grit disc. Here I had to be a little careful not to sand the face of the pied cover. And they cleaned up well!
Next I cut some plywood to use as trim for the front edge of the roof. If I had used marine tile, I wouldn’t have had to do this, but I did to protect the chipboard from the rain and they would have been glued and nailed.
I thought I had some pieces of roofing left over from building my shed extension, and I put them aside because I knew I was going to make some bird boxes so that would be a good way to use them, and it caught on. Under the roof panels with some clod nails in place.
Finally I added some finishing to the bird boxes and here I am using a hard wax oil with UV protection that works especially for outdoor use, apply it as thinly as possible with a cloth and hopefully it hardens. The wood will stop fading quickly from sunlight.
Making A Bird House Box
I decided to fit the roof to the box and for that I decided to use some velcro strips which I only attached to the top of the box and the bottom of the roof to hold it in place and let me. . Clean bird boxes after each breeding season. It is very comfortable, it is really recommended, because it allows good ventilation in the box.
I drilled a keyhole in the back of the box so it could be screwed to my walls. These are really comfortable and they stay in place.
I made a few of these bird boxes because this build kills two birds, if you’ll excuse the pun, with one stone.
First, I made one for my mom because she asked me to make one for her a long time ago, and second, I’m looking at some blue tickets outside the french doors of our office where I sit every morning and edit videos. They would often find a place to nest around the wall. That wall faces north and according to the RSPB page they prefer to nest north or east for better weather conditions. So I thought they were looking for their nest and that’s why I put some bird boxes on my priority list because I want our garden to be welcoming to wild animals and it gives me some entertainment to see them come. And go through my window. And they didn’t disappoint, because a few days after I put them out there, I saw Bluetit checking not just one, but two boxes. I also put out some feeders before winter sets in.
Entire Dovetailed Birdhouse From One Board
To be honest I wasn’t impressed with how these turned out, I think they are ok, I like the shape of the boxes, but I had an idea in my head of how I wanted them to look. The cartoonish style windows and doors don’t look as good as I thought they would. But it doesn’t matter, as long as the birds like them and I think my mom does too, that’s it.
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