Build A Bird Room


		Work has now started on the new bird room, we were going to build the room 24 foot by 11 foot but have now scaled it down to 15 foot 6 inches by 10 foot 6 inches the reason why is mainly because of the wood sizes on offer at the builders yards our new size room means there is very little wastage on materials, the whole construction will be built using pressure treated wood. Over the year you can follow Tom and me building the room.
					The first stage of the build is the ground work this is the messy part of the job, this time we are building a one concrete block high wall skirt around the base of the shed to rest the under bearers on, the gap from the concrete block and the shed floor will be wired off to prevent any wild life getting under the shed, this gap must be left open to enable free air movement under the shed to prevent any damp and rotting setting in.

Tip: As we have a south facing garden we get full sun all day long the shed has been positioned so all the windows will be on the north side of the shed this preventing the bird room from overheating.
				Start Date 22/02/2008 Here we both are hard at it digging, where I am standing there was a large mound of earth which has been there for well over two years, we had to move this first and level the ground, we made good uses of the earth by leveling some of the big dips on the garden, now Tom is bigger it’s great to have a helping hand plus Tom is enjoying it knowing it’s for him at the end of the day
Here is Tom taking a well earned break, he has spent an hour or so digging around an old tree stump. Now I have worked out the size of the shed we can now set out the footings to be dug out, the big problem I have got is an old tree we had cut down when we first moved here, the roots of this tree is in the way of one side of the footings, when we started to dig around the root system I realised this is no job for a hand saw, out came the 6 inch axe it was like hitting concrete with a rubber hammer I now need the help of a good friend. Have a look at the stump \| Click Here \|
23rd Feb.
			To enable us to keep track of what we are spending on this project I have put together a spread sheet which will do all the totaling up for us as we go along, this is a very useful sheet to have if you are doing any projects, you are welcome to download a free spread sheet to use on your own projects, you must have Excel on your computer to use it, I built it in Office 2007 but saved it as Office 97 - 2003 Format .... Enjoy! \| Download Here \|

24th Feb.
				At last the problem root has been removed, thanks to Lee one of my work mates who offered to come and cut the root for me with his chain saw, (any excuse to get his toy out) LOL without his help I don’t know what I would have done! Thanks’ Lee
Here is the brute cut and power washed off, I am now free to carry on with the footings in a day or two when the water and mud have dried up a bit, the corner of the brick work you can see is where I am building off.
				This photo is showing the ground where the new bird room will be going, I built a base for the green house we had there last year, the green house has been sold, I am using this base as part of the shed base it is 10 foot 6” wide the same as the bird room, I just need to extend the base by 8 foot to make it 15 foot 6” long this is why the tree stump was a problem I could not move the bird room away from it as I had half the base already there. Where you can see the plant pot on the ground this will be the front gable end of the shed with the entrance door, not shown on the photo is our existing bird room, the two bird room doors will be facing each other so we can pop in and out for water as the new shed will have a sink with running water, this is the one big thing I really miss in the bird room.

March 1st
				Here we are digging out the footings, as it was a dry day we made full use of the weather, before we could start digging we had to work out the width of the trench needed for our four inch concrete blocks to stand on, I have made the footings 12” wide this will give me 4” either side of the block, the biggest problem I had was to get the whole project square,
I knew how long and how wide the base is but to get it square I needed to know what the measurement is for the diagonal, as my maths is not so good I asked a friend to work this out for me, after finding out how she worked it out I set to with excel and made my own calculator, this calculator will help when I start making the roof trusses. Click here for a free calculator square route
March 3rd

	At last the footings are dug out, if you look on the first photo you will see I have knock in some small stakes in between the rocks these are the level markers for when I poor in the concrete. If the weather is good next weekend I hope to poor in the concrete.

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