So after living in Maryland for 38 years I’m moving to Indiana. We find a nice house that fulfilled both my needs and my wife’s needs so we bought it. Now we now have two houses. The one in Maryland I’m doing a little work on it before putting it up on the market. Among other things I need to convert my mews (15 feet by 24 feet) into something a buyer would see useful. That’s unless there are any falconers that are looking for a house northwest of Baltimore, Maryland. I’m not sure if I will make a large shed/workshop or a detached one car garage out of it yet. The problem with doing either of these things was I had birds living in it and they would not have done well with me doing all the work around them. So what I did is took a week off from work and went out to Indiana and built some temporary facilities for my birds. Since I think we will be there for a long time and I knew that I would not have time to build my ultimate hawk house I decided to build something that would safely house the bird and can be converted to a lean-to for our horses later.
So here is a break down of the days of work. I order a batch of wood and had it delivered so I could start work when I got there. I arrived on Saturday afternoon. The first thing I did was run down to the retail store and rented a post-hole digger. Then I did the lay-out for the posts
Sunday was spent digging the post holes and nailing together the back wall.
Tuesday was busy even though there wasn’t much to show for it. The front and sides were leveled. The front posts were put in place, the headers and caps were put on, some of the siding was put on, the roof was started and the post holes were filled with concrete.
“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.”
Saturday I had to drive back home. I was hoping to have the doors and perches done but that didn’t happen.
A week later (Labor Day weekend) we loaded up a big U-Haul with most of our stuff and all of our animals and hauled it out to Indiana. We got there late Friday night and I was scheduled to fly back to Maryland on Monday. Most of Saturday was spent unloading the truck. By late afternoon that was done and the truck was returned.
I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening working on doors. I completed one side that night and with headlights shining in placed a perch in the cell. The Red-tail got to spend the night out in his new digs. Sunday I finished up the other side and moved the Harris hawk in. Then me and my brother in-law climbed on the roof and got the shingling done.
My flight was scheduled for 2 o’clock on Monday. That meant I had to be on my way to the airport by noon. Monday morning I put some trim on and then sprayed 2 coats of primer on it. All and all I’m pleased with what I got accomplished in a short period of time.
The way things look before I left.
The red-tail settling in
And the harris hawk
The harris hawks cell with the 2 different perches. I’m going to add a third.
There is still stuff to be done but that will do until I can get back.
Now I’m back in Maryland and my wife is out there taking care of things. I’m currently getting ready to demo the mew here to convert it to something useful. I will have a little more that 100 pieces of 5 foot long emt (electrical conduit) that I will be getting rid of. If anyone is close by and would like some, let me know when you would like to come get some.
"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." -Thomas Paine
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? -Marianne Williamson
That is freaking sweet! I can't believe how short a time it was to build such nice facilities. If those are the temporary mews then what are your plans for the perminant ones?
Here is the color scheme that my wife came up with. I’m still debating if I want to paint the bars. I think it would look better but it would be a major pain in the @ss.
killjoy said:
DOES THE DOOR COUNT AS THE WINDOW ALSO? i THOUGHT THAT IT WAS REQUIRED TO HAVE ROUND
I have never heard the round bar thing. But then again it has been over 15 years since I have had to build a new hawk house. I have seen a number of people that have used 2x2’s for bars. That was what I was going to do until I spotted the 1x2’s in the lumber yard. Being thinner they will allow more light in when the sun is hitting the front at an angle and they actually have a pretty good radius on the edges. All in all it was a pretty good and cheap way to go.