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DIY Custom Bird feeder Modeled After Our House

My husband and I absolutely love finding fun projects that we can do together, just the two of us. A few months ago we decided to cancel DirecTV which left us with an obsolete satellite dish mounted to a steel post in our front yard. We removed the dish from the post and then needed to decide what to do with the post itself.

We could:

  1. Dig around the base and saw off the post below ground, then cover it with dirt and never see it again.
  2. Leave it alone and have an ugly post to stare at.
  3. Mount a bird feeder on top of it.

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a DIY Custom Bird feeder Modeled After Our House mounted on a post
Custom Bird feeder Modeled After Our House

Number 3 it is! We start brain storming and I suggest the idea of making a custom feeder that looks just like our house. It is only a year and a half old and I still have the floor plans and elevation page. A picture of our real house can be seen if you scroll all the way to the bottom of this page.

original house floor plans and elevation pages

This isn’t technically a “How To” tutorial so I will just explain how we did it. Now, neither of is us a math wiz and we needed to figure out what measurements to build the bird feeder at. I’m still not completely sure how we managed to get it figured out, but we have a finished product so it worked out in the end. We made a couple of small changes just to make it easier to build. For instance, the back of the bird feeder is a straight wall with no windows and you can see from the floor plan picture that our real house is a little different from that.

floor plan drawn on plywood for diy bird feeder
a close up of the garage detail on the diy bird feeder
starting to assemble the raw wood on the diy bird feeder

We built it out of 3/8 inch plywood. We bought way more than we needed and ended up with more throw away pieces than usable ones because we aren’t professional woodworkers either. We cut pieces which didn’t always work and went back to the drawing board. But that’s what makes projects so fun, right?

painting the front of the diy bird feeder

We cut out the windows and used Plexiglas to see the seed through them. We cut out the doors and placed inset doors for dimensional detail. The garage door has slats cut into it for effect also. Inside the house, a wall divides the garage area from the house area. We have a slanted floor added to the house side so the seeds can slide down and out to the front yard.

diy bird feeder being painted with front yard and no roof

Then we painted, re-painted, and touched up the paint several times. We are also not artists. Remind me again why we chose this project? Ha!

roof added to diy bird feeder

Check out the stacked stone detail, all free-hand painted by me. I’m tickled with how it turned out!

a close up view of a diy bird feeder with seeds

We left an inch of space open underneath the front of the house for seed to come out of, excluding the front porch space and garage space. There is a tray under the house with a lip built all the way around to keep seed in. We also added a box underneath for mounting to the pole with a lag bolt drilled through to keep the whole thing from spinning on the pole.

a diy bird feeder mounted on a post in the front yard

I am happy to report that lots of birds are using it already!

DIY Bird feeder Modeled After Our House Floorplans - zonacooks.com
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Janice Potter

Sunday 16th of June 2019

Wow, this is so beautiful! One question though, what do you do when it rains? Wouldn‘t water collect in the birdseed dish?

Zona

Monday 17th of June 2019

Hi Janice, yes the seed can get wet if it rains and once or twice we actually had grass grow on the front lawn of the bird feeder, which was kind of funny to see. But, we did clean it out immediately and start with fresh seed when that happened. We definitely had to balance how much seed to add with how quickly the seed was being eaten to prevent that from happening. Placing this bird feeder under a covered porch would be the best option for keeping rain out. Thanks for your question :)

Lubka Henry

Thursday 13th of April 2017

This is an amazing project and I can't believe how beautiful the outcome is!

Zona

Thursday 13th of April 2017

Thank you Lubka!

Natasha Mairs

Wednesday 12th of April 2017

oh wow!! This is definitely the best bird feeder I have ever seen!!! I bet this get loads of comments on from your friends and neighbours.

Zona

Wednesday 12th of April 2017

Thanks Natasha! I am really enjoying all the birds visiting it, especially the cardinals :)

Gemma

Tuesday 11th of April 2017

wow, this is amazing! so much detail. Very creative. I certainly don't have the skills to do this myself.

Zona

Tuesday 11th of April 2017

Thank you very much Gemma :)

Tanya Brannan

Monday 10th of April 2017

This is just simply amazing! A great idea to make use of the pole, but an even better one to copy your own house. Absolutely inspired!

Zona

Monday 10th of April 2017

Thank you Tanya, I'm happy you feel inspired!