First of all, I originally had two goals:
- Build a new birdhouse
- Use the leftover glue-laminated timber I had from a previous project
First of all, I didn't plan any further than this. I went to our garage to measure how long the pieces of wood were, so I could build up a perfectly sized birdhouse from the material I had. Why is the size important?
First of all, it's important for the bird and it's chicks to have enough space. Too little space and the chicks might get trampled to death. This is based on the bird size + amount of eggs it usually has.
Second point is that a too large birdhouse can cause issues especially for birds which carry their own nest building material to the birdhouse. A too large birdhouse can cause the bird to use too much time and energy for the nest building. Birds most usually avoid too small or too large birdhouses and seek for sizes suitable for them.
At least the smart ones do.
However, I didn't plan too well. This could be the title of the post too.
This was most of the pieces I had. I noticed that I could get this into a perfect birdhouse for a red-breasted merganser! The pieces would fit perfectly based on their length, as the birdhouse should go on the ground and be 30-40 cm wide.
Easy!
On of the timber pieces was 40 cm wide, so if I would cut it in half, I could get two 40 cm wide walls. Perfect! The other pieces were smaller, but they could fit into the allowed size of 30-40 cm.
I already measured how I should cut it in half, as straight as possible.
To save time, I used the same line to find the right spot for the next piece!
Easy and fast. This would be finished in no time at all.
...
...
...
But then I checked correctly the measurements required. The height should be 15-20 cm. The pieces were approx. 20-25 cm high so cutting them in half would give me 10 cm high birdhouse.
So I had to cancel the plan.
Instead of cutting this in half, I made a doorway. approx. 15x15cm hole close to one of the corners.
I found two almost correct sized pieces for end walls.
This was one of the few things I did right: it's easier to put things together if you can pre-screw something in correct position, but not all the way through.
However, the last back wall was to be built from two separate pieces. All the other pieces were too short and as you can see above, thetwo pieces combined were too long. Luckily, a saw could easily solve this problem.
One piece which had been cut off was used to attach the two pieces together and here it was.
The perfect match.
This was going to be really ugly, but what you can do when you're using leftover material.
Just the roof was missing, which was supposed to be made from 2 separate pieces too. Easy peasy.
The plan was good. Just add a narrow leftover piece to cover the small gap between the pieces of timber.
Fuck that.
Fuck that all.
See what's happening? See?
It's all breaking up. I didn't think of this.
It's all breaking to pieces.
I can't handle this anymore.
Fuck this all.
Take this you bastard
You got some massive wood slapped at your FACE
And just look at this. Size to be 30-40 cm. Maybe I should have thought of the ceiling size too.
I'm lucky it actually fit.
Just look at this.
It's not beautiful, but now it's done.
How it could have been planned out
If possible, make the roof of a water resistant material, so it will give the best possible cover for the birds + it will last longer.
It doesn't seem to be a relaxing project for you :) I can imagine that you were happy when it was finally done. Are you going to paint it too? I remember we had school projects to make birdhouses. It was not my favorite and my dad did almost the whole things. Or let's say that he did it all :)
Have a lovely weekend!
I have to admit, it wasn't relaxing at all. I had hoped it would bring peace to my mind, but it didn't really do that. I was happy when I was finished though :D
I'm not going to paint it, I see bird houses as something for the birds and the painting would make it only decoration for us people. Having it plain looking is how I prefer them anyways, as it suits the humbleness we all could find in ourselves.
Hopefully you're having more fun things to do now as an adult :D
Thanks, you too!
Hi apsu,
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Shouldn't drink and build birdhouses :P
Good work nonetheless
I should be drinking so I don't need to worry about the results.
I should be drinking so I could blame the poor results on the drink.
Now all the shame falls upon me and my family.
Only death can fix this.
ehy dear @apsu, too much enthusiasm in doing !! your post was a lot of fun! even if I never do things as complese as bird houses, I seem to see myself wanting to do everything right away and then I put some patches if the pieces are not long enough !! :-)) I have to say that I don't like to design, but sometimes it's really necessary !! but then do you paint them?
Very nice that in your cottage the birds have found a nice place to stay in your houses !! well done :-))
congratulation for your curie rating
Doing is the fun part. And thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the post. Something good became out of this.
I do share the pain you're going through. Something tends to always go wrong and sadly, too short parts are harder to fix than the too long ones. You can't saw away yourself any more wood :)
I'm not sure if I'm going to paint the birdhouse. I'm not sure which paint would be the safest option to make sure there are no possible health effects to the birds or the nature around it, but I do agree the design is not the best possible one. However, the merganser birdhouse is a special design, as it's supposed to be on the ground.
A large enough piece of plywood would have made it look better, but maybe next time - when I'm not using leftover materials.
And thanks :)
It was fun, and original. There have been many posts that never made it to Steemit because I was not happy with the results. I'll take this post as inspiration to just "fuck all that" and post the process anyway :)
Building stuff is good, therapeutic even, and birds will thank you for that lair. They may even decorate it on their own. Some birds are really good at picking up the damnedest things and use them as decorations in their nests.
People are taking Steem sometimes far too seriously, but I do understand that people want to do their best and bring top quality on the platform. However, sometimes it's better not to do that.
I've been doing a lot of photography posts and when I'm making those, I tend to choose the best shots I've got. But in the end, there are plenty of wonderful photographers around and you can't compete with quality. In addition to that, if everyone tries to do only the very best, someone always might feel they need to be perfect to be successful.
This birdhouse wasn't anything I hoped it to be, but in the end, it's still a successful one. The bird can live and have a family there, even though I might have imagined it to look a bit different.
Hopefully I'll be posting some birdhouse photos next year - maybe having the birdhouse beautifully decorated, as you said :)
Thanks for your comment!
Thank you for your reply and considerations. It makes sense, although I know some users who have taken laidbackness a bit too far when it comes to posting
First of all, I originally had two goals:
At first I read this as goats. I believe you should change this to read goats, and provide a photo to help assuage my goat fixation. also, it would add creativity. also, there are no birbs in this post. please provide a birb picture next to this house and ask the birb if they wish for the standard or deluxe birbhouse with imported grasses...
I would have been delighted to provide you plenty of photos, but no such animals, like birbs, were found in my gargage. I will try to fix this issue as soon as possible.
Best regards,
@apsu
Awesome. I should build some bird houses for all the birds we have in our yard.
I do recommend that!
Last year I built several birdhouses of different sizes and at least one of them had a bird family living in it. Some of them are in our summer cottage so I haven't been able to actively check if anyone was living there, but building birdhouses is something I truly recommend for anyone.
If you build it, they will come.
Impressive! Definitely it’s worth to plan before executing
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Thank you!
In the end, I was happy I managed to get something built instead of ending up with.. well, nothing.
Planning before executing is important. It saves time and yields better results, even though it can be seen as "the boring part". The true boring part is when you realize everything has gone wrong.
Luckily I'm not a nuclear engineer.
Hey!!... nice post. I can see that you have a very kind heart, not all people are worried about house birds. I know that they will give birth nice small babies to decorate nature. Big hugs :)
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