This Project is for the birds..#6

Hey everyone
Here is the next and what I thought would be final edition for this little project. I sealed the whole birdhouse with a cedar tinted Olympic ultimate waterproofing sealer. I love the way it came out, the toner gave the whole project a nice even cedar tone. I set a 6 X 6 post in the recipients garden and mounted the house. They have a large backyard with allot of feeders and bird baths, so allot of bird activity! Here are the pictures..

And here’s a shot with me in the frame to give you an idea of just how big this thing is, I’m 6’-2”...

OK, so you get that warm feeling when you finish a project and the people you made it for love it…well not so fast! I went there last weekend to take some better pictures with my camera… the recipients of the birdhouse wanted to send it in to a bird watching magazine that does a column on bird houses. Everything looked fine from their deck..I was surprised at how large it looked from far away. The more I looked at it the more I noticed some ripples in the shingles near the ridge board. I thought it might just be an optical illusion but I took a walk over to see. To my horror, the closer I got the more the destruction was evident. Apparently the front roof had leaked and the MDF that I used as a substrate had swelled to three times its normal size! I could reach up and pinch it with my fingers and water would come out like a sponge. All the edge trim had popped off the edges of the roof, and the rows of shingles were still glued together but had buckled and rippled under the soaked and swelling MDF. All the dormer roofs were exploded with rippled shingles and trim going in every direction. How depressing it was to see my HOURS of careful gluing and placement, a rippling horror show. The back roof (that has no penetrations) was totally intact and fine. Now before everyone calls me an idiot for using MDF, I felt if I sealed all my gaps at the intersections with silicone, and I slathered all the MDF that was exposed with waterproofing, it should have been OK. I guess I was wrong. I couldn’t use anything treated (bad for the birds), and anything but solid wood would have delaminated. In hindsight I should have taken John up on his offer to send me some barn steel. Or maybe I should have used a piece of plexi for a substrate. So needless to say I have been quite bummed out at the fate of all my hard work. I guess the moral to the story would be listen to that little voice in your head that says “MDF isn’t waterproof”.

I got a report yesterday that the ripples sort of disappeared when the sun dried things out but the trim is still all over the place and the dormer roofs are exploded. I am going to have to fix it. I guess I will have to try and round up some seamed metal roofing..I should be able to salvage the cedar dormers…SIGH!

-- David, South Windsor, CT "I love the smell of sawdust in the morning"