Building Birdhouses

After 4 moves in our lifetime I have 20 license plates from 3 different states. I thought I would use them to make license plate birdhouses.

In this series of photos ML's sister Beth is learning how to make one.

First is to cut the lumber. 


After the pieces were cut and drilled came the assembly. In this pic there are two drills. The cordless is for driving the screws while the corded one was for drilling the entrance plus all the pilot holes.


Lastly the license plate was bent in a vice and mounted.


Finished product sporting a NH expired license plate.


Beth was all smiles and enjoyed the chance to be outside and to do some woodworking.


I made some more birdhouses. This is the favorite so far. It is a log cabin. A little more challenging. I had to rip the lumber to create the individual 'logs'.
But it turned out nice.



After 2 coats of marine varnish I mounted 3 houses to U-fence posts. We have bluebirds so we hope to attract them next spring and the birdhouses were placed with that in mine.

This is a Maryland plate house.



A traditional bluebird house design.



The finished cabin.



All of them have pivoting sides to open for cleaning. The cabin has a hinged bottom floor. The nail in the center of the front bottom log holds the floor in place while the hinges are on the back bottom log.

I will build a few more so we have a bluebird 'trail' of houses. ML would be tickled if we had nesting bluebirds.

Very nice.

Nice work, Phil.

Nice work ! I have a few License plates but use them differently

Dave,
WOW!! Looking good. Where in the world  did you get all of those?
I thought my measly 20 was a lot.

Two boats. One to fish? One for waterfowl?

Dave,
WOW!! Looking good. Where in the world  did you get all of those?
I thought my measly 20 was a lot.

Two boats. One to fish? One for waterfowl?

There was a auction place here locally for a while that I would get a bunch from occasionally in large lots that would go for auction. Unfortunately that's gone now and I had been collecting enough to do another wall on that shed on the opposing side. I have a file drawer full and maybe enough to do it but probably not quite so still hunting at flea markets and such if they aren't over priced.

I picked up the boat to go with my Yamaha motor and the other was for sale and has been gone for some time. Unfortunately again the boat in the picture is sold as well and I am left with nothing more than a kayak at the moment.