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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

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How to Build a Simple Midcentury Birdhouse

June 24, 2011

Editor’s Update 6/2018, Still got it :)

Just dropping in to say that a birdhouse I built and blogged about in 2011 is still a fan fave. For both the birds and the birdwatchers. 🕊🧒🏼👋🏻 #linkinbio #throwback #birdhouse #diy #modernbirdhouse #merrypadathome #birdman

A post shared by Emily Fazio at Merrypad (@merrypad) on May 22, 2018 at 5:04pm PDT

Original post:

I tapped into the bird brain this week, as the little fellows who were born in a nest on my pergola took flight and started new lives of their own. Thank goodness; they were messy. Time to remove that nest before someone else moves in.

Sneaky little birds nest on my pergola. Grumble grumble grumble. Photo cred to @dadandblog.

We did have a good time watching mama and papa come with wormy dinner and leave with what several websites have confirmed to be bird poop in small sacks. Sorry to make it poop-related, but watching them was fascinating; who knew they were so hygienic. Cute too, with their little mouths held open and ready for din-din every night right around 6:30.

Sneaky little birds nest on my pergola. But they're so cute. Photo cred to @dadandblog.

Hoping to keep the birds in the area but not loitering over my entryway, I decided a formal birdhouse might be well-suited for the backyard. My parents had a slew of birdhouses (both DIY and fancy pants two-story aluminum structures with railings and condos and HOA dues) and I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to realize that I had never made or installed one myself.

Happy shout-out to Chris at Curbly for the inspiration behind creating this project. His mid-century modern birdhouse must easily be the hottest birdpad in town. Swanky. I started by using his as a visual reference, but applied some of my own creative liberties along the way based merely because I was limited on materials and didn’t want to drop some dough if I didn’t need to. (I didn’t; this was totally free-zilla.)

The wood I used was leftover premium pine from when I installed the open kitchen shelving.

The few materials available to make the birdhouse. Note: One entire 11x14 board went to the roof.

Starting with a few sketches, I decided that a square-ish structure with a slanted roof, like Chris’s was a fair starting point. Because I was optimistic about using the larger 11″ x 14″ boards for the roof and floor, I biscuit joined several strips of the narrower boards using a similar technique as when I’m building custom frames. There were biscuits installed each place there’s a piece of tape. This was about to become the front panel.

Laying out boards and measuring for even biscuit connections.

The boards were assembled carefully so as to align with one another. A quick photo of that for your enjoyment:

Joining the boards together.

Once together, they remained clamped overnight, and then sanded the following day for a smooth finish. After that point, I decided to make the bird door for the front panel; I used a simple 2″ hole saw bit on the cordless drill, and decided to position the door slightly off center for effect.

Flawlessly round bird entryway. I followed similar logic for the back panel of the house, and mitered the top of each board to a 15-degree angle to accept the angled roof that I envisioned. Thank you, handy bevel.

Of course, I’ll be totally honest and tell you that it took me at least 8 cuts to get the angles right, facing the right direction, matching each other, etc. I was kind of an angry-at-myself goon by the 8th time I messed up my cuts and added another biscuited board to the front of the house since I had eliminated any real chance of having a slanted roof having made an ungodly amount of inaccurate cuts. That’s the beauty of the biscuit; it’s a quick and simple way to marry two pieces of lumber in happy union.

Another reason I like the biscuited look is that the horizontal lines are subtly made visible by the inconsistent wood grain. Unless they’re royal mid-century birdlets, they probably won’t give a chirp, but I like it.

By this point, I had the front and back panels of the house. They measured 6″ x 8″ (front), and 3.5″ x 8″ (back). The symmetrical side panels, I had decided would also be 3.5″ by 8″, which means there’s going to be extra ventilation as the roof extends from the back to the front.

I biscuited these pieces together as well, although I did follow up with a nail gun in a few places for added security, since I was planning on using it all along for the base and roof assembly.

Birdhouse, front to back.

Because I had the main structure in place before building the floor, measuring and installing that floor was very easy; I simply measured the house, and slid in a piece of wood to serve as the base. It was right around this point that I realized I could arrange to have an easy access point, and removed the floor that was a perfect fit, cut it into two pieces (2/3 and 1/3). The larger flooring piece was affixed to the side walls via nail gun, and the smaller panel was attached using a single screw into the back of the house horizontally, so that to remove it and clean the birdhouse, all I had to do was remove that screw and drop the small panel out. I anticipate it being a piece of cake, and even pre-drilled a hole in case I wanted to twist a screw or hook into the bottom of the panel to help extract it.

A single screw holds a removable floorboard in place so that it can be dropped down for cleaning purposes.

As I said before, the nail gun was best suited for attaching the remainder of the base and the roof (which is 11″ x 14″ if you’re wondering) to the structure securely. We really love this pancake compressor, and use it and it’s accessories as often as we can.

The final step was to drill a small hole to make a bird perch using a leftover wooden dowel a.k.a. a fancy green pencil that I had in the house. The 9/32 bit is the perfect size to drill the size of a pencil, for the record. How’s that little spot of color for you? I positioned it slightly below the entryway, and forced it about 2″ inside the house as well so even from inside the birds could jump up to the door easily.

Pencil perch on the birdhouse.

The finished house received a final sanding to smooth out any rough edges, and is currently waiting install on the fence in my backyard, probably right in amongst all of those roses in the background once they’ve finished blossoming. My house is loaded with roses right now, by the way. It’s quite nice.

DIY mid-century modern birdhouse

 

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Backyard  / Decor  / DIY

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

5 Comments


Cait @ Hernando House
June 24, 2011 at 11:03 am
Reply

What an awesome birdhouse! Good job, Emily!



    Emily
    June 24, 2011 at 11:16 am

    Thanks Cait! I’m pretty happy the way it turned out. Hopefully it’ll be up and for rent by next week. P.S. Stair painting project is still in progress. It’s actually done, but I’m not happy with it yet so hopefully it’ll get fixed this weekend.

    Cait @ Hernando House
    June 24, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    Hehehe “for rent” :)

    Oh boy! Stairs! I can’t wait to see it!

Condo Blues
June 24, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Reply

Girl you did biscuit joinery on a birdhouse?! My inner woodworker loves you.



    Emily
    June 24, 2011 at 4:50 pm

    I have a little bit o’ biscuit joining tom foolery up my j.crew sleeves. Much cleaner than if I had used the nail gun (my second love) all up on it.

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