What I've Been Up To: Woodworking (Part I - Birdhouses!)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been spending most of my free time out in the garage working on a variety of woodworking projects.  Although my Nachos Grande blog is primarily baseball (and baseball card) related, I thought it'd be fun to share some of my recent projects here with all of you.

In total, I've completed three different projects within the last two weeks - two of the projects were quite quick while the third I actually began over a month ago but only recently put the finishing touches on!  For today's post, I'll highlight the two quicker projects - with the post for the project that I teased here coming in the near future!

About two weeks ago, my wife said to me "I'm bored - build me a birdhouse so that I have something to paint!"  Not being one to want to disappoint my lovely bride, I did exactly that - and then she painted it so that we ended up with the final product:

Amazingly (to me at least), there is already a bird's nest in the birdhouse - and it's only been hanging in the tree for about a week.

After the success of the first birdhouse, my second project ended up being a second birdhouse - this one was destined for my grandmother though as a gift.  Given how happy I was with the first birdhouse, I ended up taking a few "during" shots in the process of building my second home for the birds!

 For the second birdhouse, I wanted to try a different type of build so I went with a porch (and as you can see, I found some old shingles and cut them up for the roof covering).  You can't see it in this photo, but the back of the birdhouse can be opened up for easy cleaning which is nice.

 On the other side of the house I build a large chimney and attached it - a look that I ended up being really pleased with.  The front door has some wood edging meant to look like a screen door!

 I also hand built this little Adirondack chair out of some small wood pieces so that I could attach it to the front porch.

The finished birdhouse (prior to my wife painting it)!  The painted version makes it look so much better...

I've been getting more and more into woodworking and so building the two birdhouses was a lot of fun.  I even briefly contemplated building more and trying to sell them - perhaps I will do that someday.  For now though, I'll enjoy the one birdhouse that we have hanging up and continue to keep my eyes peeled for future design ideas!