It was May 4th 2011 when I picked up these two things at the thrift store. In my post I had written that maybe I’d put the doll house on the baluster but wasn’t sure it would work.

Yeah. I still haven’t opened the doll house box.

BUT I did come up with another idea for the baluster and the two others I picked up at Ellet Closeout and Fabric.

I had help with this project. My 22 year old Marine Reservist moved in with us for a couple of weeks before he heads overseas for a bit and I got him to help me with a few projects as well as LOTS of yard work. Whoohoo! 🙂

He added a 3″ x 7″ piece of pine to the tops of the balusters and secured it with wood screws in two places. Then he painted the balusters and the added wood with 2 coats of black satin rust-oleum paint.

Once dry, he used a drill to drill into the bottoms of the balusters and then inserted a piece of re-bar that is about 24 inches long.

The important thing for this step is to make sure you drill the hole as straight as humanly possible, otherwise your bird houses will be crooked or you could split the baluster.

Time to add the birdhouses. I found the one on the left at JoAnn Fabrics in Hudson, OH on DEEP discount last fall. It had been painted a dull barn red but I painted over it with a brighter Geranium Red, Patio Paint, from DecoArt.

The birdhouse on the right was leftover from a video shoot my husband had done quite a while ago and I painted it with Patio Paint from DecoArt as well.

We also used round wooden discs from Pat Catan’s that are painted black to cover the holes in the birdhouses. I really didn’t want a bird nesting in them as I intended to put them close to the front entry of our house (besides, the red one is really not bird friendly) and we also have a tendency to have yellow jackets make nests in inconvenient places so we plugged up all of the holes in the houses as best as we could.

Ta Da! Here they are in their new home.

The re-bar goes into the ground to hold the bird houses straight and it allows you to leave a 1-2 inch gap between the ground and the wood to slow down the rotting of the wood.

I have one more painted baluster ready to go as soon as I find another birdhouse I like.

So the BIG QUESTION is… once I find that third bird house what color should I paint it?