I have some experience with professional CAD design software like AutoCAD, Ideas etc. and I've enjoyed using them, so I've thought that it would be cool to use similar programs to design my own projects. I don't have the money to buy a commercial design software, so I got FreeCAD which had got good ratings.

So I decided to practice with a birdhouse, which I would build with my son. As I have experience with the CAD software I skipped the tutorials and managed to make a nice looking birdhouse on the software.

However, I couldn't understand how the drawing creation works. Instead of having a nice looking manufacturing drawing of the birdhouse you got this.

Height of the back wall 350 mm, made from 150 mm wide 22 mm thick board, hole 46 mm and located 80 mm from the top of birdhouse. Floor and ceiling are made of an appropriate size.

The roof works better if it's not entirely straight but made with a slight angle, but this is not necessary. That just helps to keep the water off from the birdhouse.

So this is started by sawing the pieces for the birdhouse. My strong and capable assistant is my son who'se idea the birdhouse originally was.

It's important to keep your fingers safe.

As we can see, there are two lines. One is drawn by my son using a free hand and the second line is made using a square tool to ensure it's straight.

As the birdhouse walls are ready, you can measure and cut the correct size floor unless you're able to calculate the right size of floor piece.

It's helpful for the birds that the floor has some holes in it for the possible water to drop off. If the bottom is too tight, it might act like a cup and slowly fill with water in a case of "horizontal rain". So drilling 2-4 holes in the bottom will make sure that it won't be filled with water and birds will remain warm and dry.

Assemble the birdhouse walls and floor. You can use nails or screws, but using screws on the ceiling/floor will make sure it's easier to clean the old birdhouse.

More about cleaning the birdhouses in the end of the post!

I had promised to show my son how you can glue laminate timber, so we made the roof with help of some glue. We glued together 4 bars of timber and let it dry for a day. Then we screwed the ceiling to the birdhouse.

So the 7 year old who received a little bit of help was able to build this birdhouse. The drawings aren't intentional.. or well, my son did draw them on purpose, but they aren't mandatory and probably won't help the birds at all.

If my son can do this, I'm assuming you can make a birdhouse too!

Birdhouse cleaning?

I had mentioned that it's good to clean birdhouses when they've been in use. This is usually done in the winter in Finland so they don't have nests in them. It's important to clean the birdhouses to make sure that they're clean and safe, as bird parasites might be nesting in the abandoned birdhouses.

The longer the birdhouses have been in use, the bigger the risk of parasites will get. So I've opened and cleaned out the two birdhouses I have in the yard and let's see what we had inside:

Moss, feathers and some needles from the trees. Soft and cozy.

Approximately 5 cm in total.

Same here, more moss and needles. Not as many feathers in this one, probably had a stricter policy about cleaning.

Approximately 5 cm in total.

The birds had gathered a lot of soft material to the birdhouses. Some birds don't carry materials themselves but might require humans to add some soft materials in advance, as in the wild they're looking for naturally soft locations.

So if you're cleaning a birdhouse for a "lazy bird" who doesn't collect their own materials, remember to add new moss, peat or other similar materials to the birdhouse.