The Birdhouse My Grandson and I Ruined Twice

My grandson Theo asked if we could build a birdhouse together the summer he turned nine. He had seen one in a book at school, a simple wooden box with a peaked roof and a round hole cut into the front, and he decided he wanted to make one for the maple tree in our backyard. I said yes before I thought through what that actually meant, which is usually how these projects start with him.

The first attempt, and why it fell apart

I have a small workbench in the garage that belonged to Sal’s father, and a modest collection of tools that mostly get used for hanging pictures and fixing wobbly chairs. Woodworking beyond that was not something I had much experience with, but I had watched enough of it done to feel confident I could manage a simple box. We measured out five pieces of thin pine board from a scrap pile I had been saving, cut them with a handsaw, since I do not keep power saws in the house with a nine year old underfoot, and nailed them together on a Saturday afternoon.

It looked like a birdhouse for about a day. By Sunday morning the back panel had come loose, the nails pulling straight out of wood that was thinner than it should have been for nailing. Theo was more upset about this than I expected. He had painted a small sun on the roof the night before and was proud of it, and watching the whole structure sag sideways on the fence post felt, to him, like watching something break that had already become his.

What went wrong, plainly stated

The wood was too thin for nails to hold properly, especially with the weather changing the pine slightly as it dried and shrank. I also used nails that were too long for the boards, which split the wood in a few places without me noticing until it started coming apart. I want to be specific about this because I think a lot of failed projects get remembered as generally bad rather than examined for what actually went wrong, and the examining is where the useful part is.

The second attempt, and a different kind of failure

We tried again two weekends later, this time with slightly thicker boards and wood glue in addition to nails, which I assumed would solve the problem entirely. It held together better, structurally, but I made a different mistake. I cut the entrance hole too large, closer to two inches across instead of the inch and a quarter or so that keeps out larger birds who will bully out the smaller ones a house like this is meant for. We hung it up anyway, eager after the first failure to have something to show for the effort, and within two weeks a squirrel had claimed it, widening the hole further and stripping out the little wooden perch Theo had glued below it.

Theo took this one harder than the first collapse, oddly, maybe because it had lasted long enough for him to think of it as finished and successful before the squirrel got to it. I remember him standing at the back door looking out at it and asking why the squirrel got to keep it. I did not have a satisfying answer. Some questions from a nine year old do not have one.

Getting it right the third time

Before we tried a third time, I actually went to the hardware store and asked someone working there what we had been doing wrong, which I probably should have done before the first attempt rather than after two failures. He walked me through it patiently. Thicker wood, at least three quarters of an inch, cut with a saw that gives a straighter edge than my old handsaw was managing. Wood screws instead of nails, which hold better in wood that thin and do not split it the way nails can if you are not careful about placement. And a hole no larger than an inch and a quarter, drilled rather than sawed, for a cleaner edge that smaller birds can actually use.

• Cut five pieces from three quarter inch pine: a base, two side walls, a back, and a front panel.
• Drill the entrance hole in the front panel before assembly, using a hole saw bit sized to an inch and a quarter.
• Assemble the base and side walls first with wood screws, checking that corners are square before moving on.
• Attach the back panel, leaving one edge unscrewed or hinged so the house can be opened and cleaned out at the end of a season.
• Add the roof last, cut at a slight angle so rain runs off rather than pooling on top.

Theo drilled the hole himself, with me holding the drill steady and him controlling the trigger, which he took more seriously than almost anything else in the project. He wanted to do the screws too, and his hands were not quite strong enough to drive them all the way, so I finished each one after he got it started. That felt like a fair division of the work, honestly, and neither of us minded it.

He asked, halfway through the third attempt, if we were allowed to build something wrong twice before getting it right. I told him that was mostly how building things worked, in my limited experience of it.

Where it hangs now

The third birdhouse has been on the fence post for two years now. A pair of chickadees used it last spring, which Theo reported to me over the phone with more excitement than I think he has shown for most things, including his own birthday. The paint has faded some, the sun he drew on the roof of the first attempt long gone with that failed house, but he painted a new one on this version, slightly larger, slightly more confident in its lines than the first.

If you are building something like this with a child, I would say the two failures were not wasted time, even though it felt that way to both of us in the moment. Theo learned more from watching the back panel sag and the squirrel move in than he would have from a birdhouse that worked perfectly on the first try. He still tells people, when the subject comes up, that we ruined it twice before we got it right, and he says it like it is the best part of the story rather than something to skip past.