Caravan Bird House

My wife wanted a nice bird house, so I decided to create one for her. I know, that you can buy such items, but where is the fun then?

Hope you enjoy my instructables.

First, the idea had been drawn in Sketchup8 and then all the parts were drawn in Qcad and imported into Inkscape to make the svg file. This step is needed to make it work with my laser cutter.

The green lines need to be lasered with little laser power, as they are just help lines to glue the accessories in place.

The main parts are made out of 4 mm plywood and the frames and smaller parts are made out of 1.5 mm birch wood.

Everything was laser cut, but it can also be done with a fretsaw or a Scroll saw.

For trailer frame, first the cross reinforcement is glued in place. The wheel attachment and the lever are then glued in place.

Let it dry.

With the help of a toothpick, glue the tire to the wheel attachment.

Glue the inside frames with the slots to the main caravan parts.
The little inside frame part needs to be glued inside and will work to keep the cleaning flap in place.

(In the new plans, this step can be ignored, because, this part is now integrated in the slot frame.)

Now you can start gluing the top, the bottom, the left and right parts to the slots. Be sure, that the window drawings are on the outside. It's a little bit tricky to insert all the slots in the same time, but it works.

The spare tire is made out of 4 parts. First glue the two wooden circles together, and then the circle with the hole. Do not glue the small wooden circle with the engraving on it, in place for now!

The main wheels are just half wheels. On the half wooden part glue a half circle on each side. As before, do not glue the small wooden circles with the engraving on it, in place for now!

On the backside, of the small part, with the lines on it, glue the small rectangle, as shown on the picture. It shouldn't protrude more than 2-3 mm

First I sanded the edges of the parts so that the color holds better on them. After this, all the parts were painted with a primer, and sanded. On the inside of the bird house, I did not apply any primer, neither any color. Untreated wood is better for the little birds.

Before you continue, glue the stepping board and the fenders with epoxy glue in place

For painting,I used acrylic colors. The tires are painted black, and the rim in metallic silver. The trailer frame and the windows are painted in a light gray. The main body is painted white and then half blue, or what ever you prefer. For the window, the ventilation grille and door frames metallic silver was used. The license plate in yellow and the back lights in red.

Now that everything is painted, we can start gluing the wheels, the reserve tire, the trailer frame and the 1.5 mm parts, like the frames and the licence plate. To make the wood, weatherproof, a layer of epoxy resin is painted over the caravan. Memo to myself, use a roller to apply the resin, not a brush.

If you don't have resin by your hand, you can also use 2-3 layer of clear varnish. This will also seal the wood. My first bird house survived like this his second year.

The last thing to do, is to install the cleaning flap and the latch with a 3 mm screw.

You can hang it in a tree, fix it on a pole, attach it against a wall, or place it somewhere.

It really turns out great. I'm not a paint artist, so the windows are just gray, but I'm sure with painted curtains and flowers, it would look much better.

On the pictures you see a light blue version from the last year and a dark blue version from this year.

Hopefully you enjoyed this guide.