Ben’s Blog

Holly and I spent the weekend in Tawas - we left a little later than expected on Friday and took our time getting there so we didn’t pull in until close to 9pm. This was really our first trip up this season so Holly immediately began cleaning and I started preparing the garage plumbing and fixing the boat motor before turning in for bed.

We had great weather on Saturday so I woke up early, waited for the hardware store to open and then headed to town to pick up supplies for the weekend’s project: bird houses. First I went to Ace Harware in Tawas thinking they would have 1″x6″x8′ pine because they recently bought out schaff lumber…wrong, they only carry general 2″ thick lumber. So, it was 20 miles the other direction to Hale.

Many hours later I had these nifty bird houses to show:

Holly painted the left one, the right one is made from cedar and has a back porch with hinged/latched doors. That one was a mother’s day gift and pretty sweet.

This one was made from a 12″ wide board that was left after tearing down the outhouse. It took a lot of time to pull all the nails and many many passes on the table saw to salvage pieces solid enough to nail togethor. The outhouse lives on!

So to recap, if you have 6 hours, a table saw, compound miter saw, drill with hole saw, brad nailer, finishing nailer, air compressor, and perhaps outhouse remnants you to can build a bird house.