Bookmark Birdhouse

So to start off my crafting saga I found this cute birdhouse on from Curbly on Pinterest (where you can find all sorts of awesome projects) and thought Josh and I can so do this.



Of course, being me I didn't exactly read the instructions for this project because how hard could building a birdhouse really be right?  So off to the hardware store we go to pick up a piece of wood to build it.  Ours was 7 1/2" wide and 5' long.

Problem 1: Josh doesn't have any books at his house so we had to guess on the size.  So I guessed 11" should be just fine with a center support.

Problem 2: We had trouble making our peaks the same size/angle.  Personally I'm blaming the saw blade and the combination square (the triangle tool with a double edge on a strait edge used for marking right or 45 degree angles) for being a little off.  So to fix this we just traced the first one we made onto the leftover wood so that they matched up.

So after we got all of our pieces cut
 3 peaks that ended up being 7 1/2" wide and about 11" tall
 2 sides that were 11" wide and 7 1/2" tall

Time to Assemble
We (I should say Josh) nailed two of the peaks to each side (so that the sides were between each peak) to make a normal bird house.

Then we slid the third peak into the middle (we had to shim in some spots to make it tight... I'm still not sure how that happened but that's how woodworking goes).  When it was in place we nailed in from the side of the birdhouse.

After we had it all together Josh drilled a large and small hole into the front peak to make it look like a regular birdhouse.  We put a bolt in the smaller hole after I painted it to make the a place for the "bird" to sit. 

To paint it I decided to use up some of the leftover paint I have laying around my house and put purple and yellow stripes on it.

Here's our finished project (without the roof/book)

 

 



 

P.S. I went back later to actually read the directions from Curbly and he used a lot of fancy tools to make his that we just wouldn't have had access to so in the end I love my oversized bookmark birdhouse.