What do you think of when you think of retirement?  Relaxing?  Golf?  Travel?   Not having to work!

For me, it is doing exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it.  Not having to report to someone else or appease another for the sake of work.  These days I surround myself with people I want to be around and do the projects, travel, and hobbies that we enjoy doing.

Since retirement, we have worked harder than we did at work… and not pushing paper or on the phone at a desk job.  We have built our home, and large projects which require jack hammers, cement mixers, shovels, picks, and tractors.  The back breaking type of work that yields noticeable large results… but keeps you sore and often hurt.

I have hoped for a day that we can do just this kind of project in retirement… birdhouses!  Simple, small, fun and fulfilling.

We opted to make 3 different size bird houses for a ‘bird house condo’.  We’d make them out of metal… cut them with the plasma cutter and weld them together, then paint them fun colors.  Colorful fun!

We started with cardboard templates and marked them onto our sheet metal.

Then we cut them out with the plasma cutter, along with the accouterments (flowers and hearts).

Then we set them up..   .

… and welded them together

We hammered out roofs….

Then painted them.  We dug a hole, poured 3 bags of cement and installed a post.

We built a ‘receiver’ and mounted the bird houses on the receiver and installed them in place.  For good measure we put a snow gage below them so we could measure the snow in the winter.

I think they came out pretty good…. we enjoyed designing and building them… and they are fun to look at it.  You know… I think we are finally starting to retire.