How to Build a Memorial Day Bird Feeder Gazebo

Mother's Day

Hey, that's what my redhead calls it. "It looks like a gazebo, it's got the bird feeder in it, and you finished the project on Memorial Day. It's a Memorial Day bird feeder gazebo."

Cool, honey. Cool.

However, the inspiration for this MDBFG (Memorial Day Bird Feeder Gazebo) did not hit on Memorial Day but on Mother's Day. Pam's son and his wife dropped in, carrying a fully loaded bird feeder for Mom.

"Happy Mother's Day, Mom!"

Pam immediately responded with a question directed to me. "Did you tell them?"

"Not a word. They read your mind!"

=====================================================

My wife gets bored easily and a lot. Boredom can lead to depression, even suicidal thoughts, especially when you're in heavy pain 24/7, neither your body nor your mind will do that for which it was once justly renowned, and nobody calls to lighten your day. The woman can't even run around and raise Hell any more.

Life's a bi*ch.

For that reason, i.e. the battle with boredom, the bird feeder takes on an aura of importance beyond that of the average Mother's Day present.

Not that any Mother's Day present is "average" in the eyes of the mother receiving it, but if I didn't do something special for this particular bird feeder, the consequences were going to be a real mother!

The first image that came to mind wasn't much, just two posts planted in the ground with a beam across the top (connecting the two). Throw an eye hook in the center of the beam, hang up the feeder, and...done.

But no.

"It'd be nice to have a little building for it," Pam mused, and I knew I'd been had. Her thought wish is my command. Even her son says, "Mom, you're really spoiled."

Well, okay. I'd build the thing. Rotten timing in one sense. I'd just started building our new (and only) front porch, seven feet wide by eight long, a place to hang wraps and shield the existing front door from monsoon rain assaults. Having to work on the bird feeder thingie at the same time meant multitasking, at which I truly, truly suck.

Before long, though, the image of the new bird feeder gazebo took root in my feeble mind, and a project was born. All I had to do now was figure out how to get from here to there.

If I can build a structure based on posts planted firmly in the ground, that's what I do. In this case, four treated four-by-fours set in a four foot square...whoa. That's a lot of fours.

For location, the most logical spot appeared to be just to one side of the new porch. The gazebo would sit on an angle to the residence, kinda sorta tucked into the open corner formed by the Border Fort's front east wall and the north wall of the soon-to-be porch. The specific angle was chosen by ye olde tried and true eyeball method.

Yeah, this feels about right. Let's do it.

The angle was picked primarily to allow a viewer (i.e. Pam, me, and/or one of of the cats) to peer out of the kitchen window, watching the birdies do their thing. No squirrel problem, either, since the only squirrels we have around here are ground squirrels.

Before doing anything else, it seemed like a really good idea to drop in at Southwest Truss. The company had given us a great deal on trusses for the Border Fort's roof back in 2010. Maybe they could do as well with five little seven foot trusses for the porch and three truly miniature four foot trusses for the gazebo.

Not that old school rafters wouldn't work, but if we could minimize the effort involved and match the 2-in-12 low pitch design already in place on the house....

It turned out to be a great call. Jim at Southwest Truss did all eight trusses for a total of $135 and had them ready in 48 hours.

Wow.

Naturally, the multitasking jinx nailed me right off. Going back and forth between digging post holes for the gazebo and working on the porch posts and concrete pad, I managed to "misplace" two of the four holes. That is, once posts were being planted and "true square" could be accurately checked, the truth hit me in the face: I'm an idiot.

Those two holes had to be "readjusted" to the northeast by a good eight inches each.

At least my excuses were in order. Gotta have those. And as such things happen sooner or later, the day came (despite my piddling around on the project) that all four posts were in and squarely placed.

Or...placed squarely enough for government work, anyway.

Time to move on to Part Two. This is the easiest, most pleasurable part of the job: Naling a "perimeter box" of 2" x 4" lumber around the tops of the posts and installing the premade trusses. All three trusses are attached using hanger ties. The two end trusses are also nailed directly to the corner posts.

It made sense to paint the posts and trusses before adding the roof boards. If you've ever tried to paint rafters and roof from the inside, down low and looking up at the paint splattering all over your eyeballs, you know what I mean.

For the same reason, the bottom sides and edges of the roof boards were also painted prior to installation.

On a structure this small, only one board is required for each side of the roof. A five dollar hammer, some 8d nails, and a view of the Chiricahua Mountains to the east.

This is living.

Memorial Day had arrived. I was up early because, quite frankly, I hadn't gone to bed in the first place. After writing all night, I'm usually ready to rack out just before the sun comes up...but not this time.

This time, it seemed possible--just possible, mind you--that my energy my hold out long enough to get quite a bit done on the bird feeding bagezo...uh, gazebo.

Heck, neither spelling looks like a real word.

The first hour of daylight was spent on "Pam chores", doing this and that to help her get her day started. Most of the time, I'm sound asleep when she gets up. It takes a while for her body and her mind to pull things together, get her pills down, enjoy her first cup of coffee, feed the cats, all without falling or just giving up and going back to bed.

It's good that she's still able to struggle through that routine--most mornings, anyway--but when I do happen to be available, she gets a welcome break.

Even so, I was out and working on the gazebo roof by 7:00 a.m. or thereabouts.

We have enough roofing felt left over from building the Border Fort to take care of both the gazebo and the porch. Curly stuff from the inner half of a roll, but perfectly useable.

On a full sized roof, you haul the roll up top, roll it out the length of the roof, and go from there. Not so on a mini-monster four foot roof. Instead, five foot pieces were cut from the roll and tossed up top.

Better a bit of overage, at least in this case, than fighting it or coming up short.

The excess is trimmed back after the felt is stapled down, of course.

The steel roofing panels were special ordered from Home Depot, an exact match to the panels already covering the Border Fort.

These were cut to size with a "poor man's metal saw", using a trick I'd not known until my stepson told me about it in early 2010. You just take your basic circular saw blade, turn it around so it's running backward, and you've got yourself a steel cutter.

Pam is not used to the sound of carbide tipped blades grinding through steel. She was sitting in the Subaru, just watching, when the saw started slinging sparks and making that distinctive sound.

Within seconds, she'd bolted for the house.

I grew up grinding steel. It was hard not to laugh.

It was also hard to remember to take photographs of the process, so I didn't. All we have are shots of the finished roof which do at least show the following:

1. Plenty of rubber-collared roofing screws are applied.

2. There's a ridge cap, and you may notice the cap seems to be a couple of screws short. That's because it is a couple of screws short.

Ran out of the longer roofing screws needed for ridge cap installation. One trip to town coming up, both for screws and for carrots. Our desert cottontail rabbits will be deeply disappointed this evening if there are no carrots.

A concrete pad for the gazebo was not part of the original concept. Over time, however, several things came together on that front:

1. Pam wanted a concrete pad. The idea of being able to hose off bird droppings instead of wading around in them held great attraction for her.

2. She mentioned it many, many times. What my redhead wants, she often gets by pecking away at me. I think, perhaps, she's part redheaded woodpecker.

3. Miraculously, just enough concrete was left over from pouring the porch pad and the front step to take care of this job.

Can't argue with that. The area between the gazebo corner posts was leveled out a bit and 2" x 6" concrete forms (boards) were nailed to the posts. Change into filthy concrete pouring clothes, top off generator's fuel tank, fire it up, get mixer going, and a couple of hours later, the bazego...gabezo had a pad.

Oh, heck no. We couldn't wait days and days and days for the concrete to cure. Instead, an eyebolt immediately screwed into the underside of the center truss and the bird feeder hung to swing in the wind.

The finches have found the bird feeder. They're coming regularly to eat now...and deciding we big, scary humans might not be so bad after all. One resident house finch pair has always hung around, but at a distance. No two-leggeds allowed closer than, say, 30 yards away or so. Photographs have required major zoom lens magnification.

Now they're getting closer. Even when I'm outside, they'll fly in to perch--not at the feeder yet, not quite that close, but on the nearest mesquite tree. Which is only 20 feet away.

Cool.