Building Bird Boxes from recycled wood.
Art-wise, I like to have a few personal projects ticking over in the background, as well all the commercial stuff. With the constant pressure of the deadline removed, it gives you that little bit of freedom to experiment and just see where things go. There’s never enough time of course, with work, home and dad duties, but that won’t stop me trying.
In ’22 and ’23 I started building bird boxes from the little bits of offcut wood I either found or had left-over from the refurb of my then home. I’ve always loved wood and would love to work more with this material. I had amassed a fair bit of salvaged timbre over the years and it always amazes me how much wood ends up on a skip, especially with the cost of building materials rocketing.
The boxes didn’t have to be perfect, but functional, rustic and able to with-stand the elements for a few years or as stand-alone decorative pieces. I could experiment with joinery, angles and shapes. All those left over half full cans of varnish and paint could be pressed into use! The only caveat I gave myself was that all the wood had to be salvaged.
I started with the more traditional shapes to get rocking, but then started to experiment a little…
My favourite so far is this A-line example that was made from a pieces of a dumped chest of drawers. The metal roof protector was a piece of filing cabinet which was a good excuse to use the angle grinder…