this old birdhouse

Naughty Pine...

2012-01-21T11:38:00.002-05:00

Ok so the next thing up was the floors in the main part of the house... It kind of happened in stages, yet now looking back it felt like it all happened at the same time.

This is what the dining room, living room, and hallway looked like prior to fixing 'em up:

Josh went to the local salvage shop, ReNew, and looked around for some re-claimed flooring. He found some beautiful knotty pine, and enough to do all three parts of the house so that it would seem seamless.

We started with the dining room and Josh opened up the doorway from the kitchen more which made the house seem so much bigger. Of course, because of the paneling in the dining room, we had to put in new drywall in most of the room. We got the floors in up to the living room first and then dry-walled and trimmed and painted. Ha ha, the paint was atrocious at first, an "institution" green. Made us feel like we were in prison, so we repainted with a greyer version of the green which was so much better.

Next we moved on to the living room and hallway. First we scraped and scraped and scraped wall paper. That sucked soooo bad. Really, the problem here was that the walls are not dry wall. They are something that the house inspector had referred to as "beaver board," it looks like a really cheap version of homasote. Half the time when peeling the paper off, it would rip off layers of this material with it. So, we resolved to skim coat the walls with plaster prior to painting. That seemed to work ok, although it was a very long and tedious process, and let's face it, neither Josh nor I are known for our patience. Eventually, though, it was finished.

After that we took a very long break.

Garage to Barn

2011-12-17T17:30:00.000-05:00

Josh and I have always wanted to own a barn. So we decided to make our garage look like one....

This is what it looked like when we bought the house...

Josh and I started to scrape it... but it defeated us. We brought in the big guns. That's right our friend Chris John to the rescue. He was so great, he scraped, painted and trimmed the whole garage. It looks so great now! And the inside has morphed as well into Vintage Steele motorcycle shop.

This was done the end of last summer (2010). Some of the photos represent a number of different stages of the barn-garage.

The Addition

2011-12-17T15:56:00.001-05:00

The first room we tackled in the house was a small room off the side of the kitchen that had been added at a later date to the house. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the process, but I do have befores and afters.

Yes, that's fake wood paneling, and yes, someone did a two-tone yellow sponging effect over it... also the fake brick vinyl flooring. Nice, huh?

In the above image, you can see the opening over the sink and the doorway into the addition room.

So, we started by tearing everything out of it, the granny rails, the paneling, we took out the small pantry, checked that the brace between the door to the kitchen and the opening over the sink wasn't load-bearing with our friend Saturn, removed the brace, tore out the floors and discovered we had carpenter ants destroying the flooring, and lastly tore out the ceiling and discovered chipmunk nests (pee, poop and all).

This is what it looks like now. With help from Saturn in pulling down the beam, Sarah's brother, Tim, helped finish the tiling when it became clear that Josh and Sarah work well together, just not side-by-side, the room was finished. Most everything came from ReNew (our local building salvage store). The tiles, the bamboo, even the grout. Although some things you just have to get new, such as drywall (walls and ceiling) and presure-treated plywood (to replace the sub-flooring). You can see the back part of the kitchen sink in currently open. Once we get to the kitchen, this will all change.

The light and shelf above the white trashcan were additions this fall (2011).

**NOTE: As I write these catch-up posts, I'm realizing that these are not really in chronological order. Stormy wasn't around when we were eating chickens or fixing lots of the house. This post about our addition room, represents mid-summer 2010.

Just What Happened to June?

2011-12-17T13:45:00.000-05:00

Be warned, if you have a soft stomach or prefer not to know where your food comes from, maybe don't participate in this post....

As some of you may know, June was one of our first 13 chickens and one of two Australorps. June, much to my denial, surely turned out to be a rooster. We did as we had before with first Spencer and then Johnny and asked our friend if she had room on her farm for yet another rooster. Sadly, this time she denied us. I can't blame her really, she had her own roosters before we added our own to her troupe. I supposed this meant it was up to us to figure out an alternative route of dealing with unwanted roosters.

Luckily for our friend Chris, we knew just what to do.

I started by doing a bit of internet searching for a do-it-yourself solution. I found this wonderful blog about a family that has done it themselves with detailed instructions. How-to-Butcher-Chicken-Easy-Way helped me figure this all out. Now Josh and I made our own changes to the processes with Chris's help.

There are no pictures of either the butchering or the recipe, we simply forgot to take any... and our hands were full.... and sorry, I can't really remember what I did for the recipe, so I can't share it...

Last Summer and Fall (2010)

2011-12-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

First we felt the need to add some chickens to our coop....

We started with 5 pullets we got from a guy in CT at a farm called Horsefeathers. Two were Black Australorps, two Black Langshan and one Light Brahma. And we found 8 on Craigslist in northern VT that needed a new home. Two were Buff Orpingtons, two Easter-Eggers (probably Ameraucanas), two Plymouth Rocks and two White Laced Wyandottes. All of them are considered "Standard" breeds which simply means they are full sized as opposed to the smaller bantam sizes. 13 was one over our permited limit. Quickly it became apparent that Spencer (the black and white "easter-egger" on the very top left) was not a hen and we had to find him a new home. Soon after, Johnny (one of the black australorps) also got named rooster and found the same home. The other australorp, June, later revealed herself as a him and I'll brief you in a later post of what transpired with June.

One of the reasons we had decided to buy a house was because we always wanted a dog. It's hard to get permission from landlords to have dogs. So after a couple of visits to the local Humane Society we met our guy.

Here's Stormy as a new addition to the family.... such a cutie. Stormy's guessed birthdate is April 7 2006. He is a Basset Hound Mix, we're guessing Coonhound may have had a part in his making.

Chicken Coop

2011-11-30T07:38:00.001-05:00

I've always wanted chickens. So the first thing Josh did for me when we got into our new house was to build me a coop. Here are the pix:

This is the part of the backyard we decided to use for the coop and the run.

Here's Josh working hard on building the coop. Just about everything we used to build this hen house was purchased at our local re-use store, ReNew. The only exception is the plywood.

Here it is finished with the pullets we filled it with!

Photo Montage

2011-11-21T19:25:00.001-05:00

Here's a photo montage of what we saw right before we bought our house in June 2010...

Oh My God

2011-11-20T19:25:00.001-05:00

It has been just over 2 years since we've updated this blog. We are happy to inform you that we still exist.

Just over a year ago now, we bought a house of our own. Our own little bird house to nest in. We've been working hard over the last year to remodel with primarily re-used materials. We are hoping to keep using this blog to keep track of all the things we do on the house as well as the rest of the up-cycling we try to do.

Josh and Sarah.

Couple more for the list...

2009-09-08T21:44:00.000-04:00

Another gameboard,

a wine box,

this was some kind of building-block board game for kids,

a backgammon gameboard

and and ammunition box.

Finishing touches...

2009-09-08T21:40:00.001-04:00

Here's Sarah at our "Art Table" putting a coat of polyurethane on the houses so they are weather proof.

Sarah hardly working...

2009-09-08T07:49:00.000-04:00

Josh isn't the only one that busts these little houses out....

Here's Sarah measuring out a new house.

And here she is cutting the same one out.

Josh hard at work...

2009-09-07T10:29:00.000-04:00

Here are a few pix of Josh in the shop...

This is our dindgy little shop...

Josh has a place for everything in here...

Josh cutting and assembling....

Here's one still in pieces...

and this one is almost finished.

birds need houses too!

2009-09-04T00:20:00.000-04:00

Most of this group of houses can be found at Backyard Birds in Northampton MA on Strong Ave.

I'm not all that sure what kind of box this one is made from

this house is one of my favorite so far, the continued consistency of the color red throughout along with the alternating roof slats really makes this one a pleasure to look upon

this one is very sweet with it's light lettering and blue roofing.

  

with these we were attempting to remake some like we had done before - I have to say I like the originals better, but these ones are still a really neat shape.

unfortunately this photograph is terrible of this little house, it happens to be my favorite thus far, this game board was inlaid with stained woods to make the patterns, really quite lovely

working with old clocks is something we're going to try to do again the outcome is really fun

another game board house

and a champagne box

first run

2009-09-03T22:59:00.000-04:00

Here are some of the first birdhouses we made, most of these are available at Blue Moose on High Street in Brattleboro, although some of them may have sold already.

"#3" and "#4" were the first ones we made

"game pack" was made of several different game boards, we even used a "man" as the perch

this one was made of an old cantaloupe box

this one was made from an old Shure-Shot box and we even used a shell as the perch

this one from an old pear box

another from several gameboards

and this from a grape box.

made in VT

2009-09-03T22:22:00.000-04:00

Hey, we're Josh and Sarah and we make birdhouses out of old stuff. We live in Brattleboro Vermont and enjoy art, music, and making things. This blog is to keep an ongoing log of the birdhouses we've made. We decided that it might be nice to have somewhere online to send people so they could see what we're doing. Currently we have our houses available for sale in town at the Blue Moose Café and Shop on High Street and in Northampton, Mass at Backyard Birds on Strong Ave.