Bird Box Projects for Dummy Woodworkers

Roosting box

Our in-house DIYers tell us that it's ridiculously  easy to spot carpentry instructions written by people who've never actually performed the projects they are pretending to describe. One key to spotting them is a lack of familiarity with the nominal sizes of wood; a second is some rather goofy ideas of how to get pieces of wood to stick together. That's certainly the case of eHowian Zach Lazzari, whose post "DIY Bird Roosting Box"¹ was apparently part of a batch of "animals" content that the folks at Leaf Group pawned off on Mom.Me...

Lazzari went straight to Google and found himself a set of plans for a roosting box, which he then proceeded to crib madly. The original plans, which (unlike Zach's cribbed version) are pretty good, don't include instructions – just a drawing. That left Zach to come up with his own instructions, and let us tell you, they're doozies! Just the opening paragraph ought to tell you something about Zach's failure to understand the project:

"Cut three 12-by-24-inch pieces of pine board with a jigsaw. The three pieces with compose the floor, back wall and roof of the house."

Besides the fractured English (WTF does "with compose" mean?), Lazzari fails to explain the intended shape of the box. FWIW, the plans he cribbed show a box 24" long, but don't mention the width. It's right here that Zach started spinning out of control...

After nailing the floor to the back of the box, Zach explains how to cut the sides:

"Cut two 12-by-8-inch pieces of pine board. Make a mark 6 inches high along one side to measure the angled roof cut. Saw diagonally between the 8-inch-high top and the 6-inch mark to create the roof pitch on each board. These are the side walls. Align each side wall with the floor edge and back wall. Use finish nails spaced at 2 inches to connect the walls. The 6-inch side is the front of each side wall."

"[M]easure the angled roof cut"? WTF does that mean, anyway? OK, so now we have a box-like thing with a 12" x 24" floor, an 11¾" x 24" back, and sides that are 12" wide and angled between 7¼" on one end and 5¼" on the other. Apparently, Zach doesn't know that pine lumber is ¾" thick...
Then Zach wants us to,

"Cut a 24-by-6-inch piece of pine for the front wall... Align the front wall with the floor and the side walls, [and] Hammer finish nails with 2-inch spacing to secure the wall."

To recap, then, we have a 12" x 24" back wall, a 12" x 24" bottom, a 24" x 6" front wall, and sides with an angled top edge 6" to 8" long and 12" wide. Clearly, Lazzari has no idea that 1) there's no lumber commonly available that is 12" wide and 2) at least some of the dimensions have to be adjusted to allow for the thickness of the lumber. Zach's crowning glory, however, is this final step:

"Place the roof board that you cut earlier on top of the box. Align the board with the front, back and side walls..."

Sorry, oh Dumbass of the Day: that ain't gonna work. It won't work 1) because you didn't bevel the top edges of the front and back, and 2) because you failed to allow for the overhang clearly shown in the original plans. Mostly, though, it won't work because some moron said in step 1 that the back is 12" x 24"; this while the sides are no more than 8" high. In other words, there's a four-inch gap underneath the roof even though the plans clearly say the box "should be a [sic] airtight as possible"! Idiot!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   animals.mom.me/diy-bird-roosting-box-9647.html --- Weird: it's back now...

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