Decorative Birdhouse Ideas: Tiled Roof

If you enjoy painting bird houses, tiling the roof can be a fun and interesting way to spice up the project, while also helping make each house unique. You will need a birdhouse, paint and brushes, glue and several dozen tiles. These can be actual ceramic or stone tiles, flat glass marbles in one or multiple colors, sea shells, straw or bits of bark. Whatever you are using, the tiles should be relatively uniform in size.

Paint the entire birdhouse as you like, including the roof, and allow the paint to dry completely. If possible, prop the house on its side, so that one side of the roof becomes a level surface, rather than slanting downward. This will make it much easier to glue tiles in place, especially if the tiles are at all heavy.

In order to create the best looking final product, you should plan the placement of the tiles before you start gluing them down. You may do this by measuring the length and width of the roof and the length and width of the tiles and determining the spacing with mathematical calculations. Or you can just wait until the paint dries and lay the tiles out on the roof until you find an arrangement you like and glue them down.

For all tiles except straw or bark, you should now glue each tile in place, beginning with each corner and working your way toward the middle in each direction. In other words, you would glue the first and last tiles in each row and column, then glue down the second and next to last tile, et cetera. Allow that side to dry completely, then turn the house over and repeat for the other side of the roof.

Straw should be cut to uniform lengths. Bark should be trimmed so the side edges are relatively straight. Then straw or bark pieces should be glued side by side with no spaces, in over-lapping layers, starting with a slightly overhanging layer at the bottom of each side of the roof and continuing upward until the roof is totally "thatched".