How To Turn A Single Piece Of Scrap Wood Into An Adorable Bird House

Attracting birds to your garden is good for you and good for them. You get their delightful plumage, cheerful song, and the benefit of them eating garden pests and weed seeds. They get somewhere to shelter in bad weather and protection from predators. Birdhouses don't need to be complicated, and indeed building one from a single piece of scrap wood is one of the simple woodworking projects even beginners can do.

You can put together something like this with odds and ends, but ideally, you'll have a 6-foot board, about 6 inches wide and a half-inch thick or thereabouts. A spare cedar fence picket is just about ideal, and if you don't have one, they should be under $4 at the hardware store. You'll need some wood screws, a spade drill bit about an inch in diameter, and a saw. Any saw will do, but a miter saw is a versatile choice (especially for cutting angles), and if you're thinking of undertaking a variety of projects, it's certainly one of the tools worth investing in to start woodworking at home.

One important note before you start — birds are quite sensitive to toxins, so you shouldn't use pressure-treated scrap wood or any that has been stained or painted. Plain cedar and redwood are best because of their durability; pine is also okay. Once the structure is finished, you can use non-toxic paint on the outside to decorate your birdhouse and make it look adorable.

At around 6 inches, the plank is already the right width, so you just need to cut pieces to length for the bottom, sides, front, back, and roof. YouTube demonstrates there are actually several cute styles of birdhouses that can be made from a single piece of wood. You can build it with the traditional peaked roof or a roof that slopes either sideways or from front to back at 45 degrees.

The finished birdhouse should be around 7 or 8 inches tall. Cut the front and back first, and then measure these to get the sizes you need for the other parts. If you have any difficulty working out dimensions, make a rough mock-up from card in just a few minutes. The front needs a hole drilled for access, but a perch isn't recommended. Small birds don't need it, but predators could use it as a resting place to attack them.

Use galvanized wood screws to assemble the birdhouse. They are resistant to rust and provide a stronger grip than nails. A couple through each piece is all that's needed to hold it together. You could also drill a few small holes in the bottom so rainwater doesn't collect inside. Then, all that's left to do is find the best place to hang your birdhouse and wait until your feathered friends move in.