For the Birds!

Well, I was hoping to have something creative to show you, but nothing I worked on today is finished. We did go to the DMV and then cut and notched a piece of carpeting to fit the back floor of the truck in order to protect the carpet if the dog's feet get dirty at the park. And although all of that took up a good chunk of the day, it certainly wasn't exciting enough to photograph.

So I searched around in my picture folders and came up with this project that I thought I'd share. It's a bird bath I made a while back from clay pots and saucers!

It was simple to make and is probably pretty self-explanatory. The bottom pot measures 14" in diameter across the opening. The next one up is 12" and the top one is 10". The saucer on the top is 16", I think, but you could use a 14" saucer. The 12" saucer was too small and looked kind of dinky. Yes, I was lifting them down off the shelf at the garden center and stacking them up. It was a little bit exhausting.

Once I lugged everything from the store to the truck and from the truck to the backyard, assembly was really easy. I dry-fitted the pots and made a pencil line on the bottom two so that I would know how much of those two I would need to paint. (You can paint the entire outside of those pots, but they're each going to be hidden by the pot above, so why bother?)

Then I took the pots back apart and painted everything including the saucer. Everything took a couple of coats to cover because I used I didn't use any primer, just regular yellow exterior enamel. To finish it off, I dotted on some red enamel with a pencil eraser and did that line of red around the edge of the saucer. That's it! When it was dry, I stacked the pots and then used epoxy to glue the saucer on top. The pots are not glued together and it's actually a good idea to take it apart and store it inside during the winter. I haven't done that, and our pots have cracked a little.

I did a some research before deciding on a location for the birdbath. It's important to place the birdbath where the birds have a little shelter, such as under a tree or near shrubbery. Otherwise, they won't use it because they will be too exposed while they are splashing around and will be easy pickings for bigger birds of prey!

So that's it, except I will leave you with a stock picture I found online to show you who else likes our birdbath. One night we turned on the back light to see this guy's relative

looking like he was trying to do a chin-up on the saucer as he struggled up to get a drink!