I was trying to come up with a Christmas craft that my daughter and I would both enjoy working on. There are only so many salt dough ornaments a mom can make before the eyes start to glaze over. So I thought it would be fun to make a DIY bird church that we could use as decor.

I’ve seen these in the store for $40-$60. I wanted mine to be closer to free, so I dug in my pile of scrap lumber and found some random lengths of 4×4’s, one piece of 2×4 for the buildings, and then some smaller scraps of 1×2 and 1×4 to make the roofs.

These are what I started with for the buildings:

I grabbed the 2×4 first. I measured to the center and marked where the peak of the roof should be. I turned the miter saw to cut at a 45-degree angle and trimmed both edges to meet in the middle, making the peak of the roof.

After that was done, I turned the scrap of 1×2 on it’s side and cut that at a 45-degree angle as well, making it match the peak of the 2×4.

I took that 1×4 roof piece and held it up to the 2×4 building to make sure it was going to fit, then marked with a pencil where I wanted the roof to end. I made a simple straight cut there to complete that side of the roof.

Next, I wanted to start working on the 4×4 buildings. I grabbed the tallest one I had and cut it in the same way I did the 2×4 to make a roof peak, first marking the center and then cutting two 45-degree angles in opposite directions to make a nice pointy top.

To make the roof sections for the 4×4, I used a 1×4 piece of scrap. I laid that on it’s side the same way I did the 1×2 and cut it at a 45-degree angle. After making sure it was going to fit, I made another piece to fit the opposite side.

For the next two 4×4’s, I just made a single 45-degree angled cut across the entire length. You can make the height of these “buildings” any size you want. To give you some perspective, the tallest of my buildings is about 24 inches high and the shortest one is about 11 inches. That height difference gave me a good amount of room to stagger them.

After I made all of my cuts, I brought in all of the lumber and put some cardboard underneath to start doing the really messy stuff. For this, I also needed some wood glue and a trim nail gun. My favorite is this battery operated Porter Cable. You can get the same one here.

The next thing you want to do is smother the top of your first piece with wood glue.

Grab your nail gun and secure the top pieces to the building. You should end up with something like this:

Continue doing this to all of your buildings until all of them have a roof.

You really don’t need to worry too much about how well these roofs fit together. I’m about to show you how to make them look cute with pinecones so most of it is going to be covered anyway. I mean, look at mine. I’m not super sure about how exactly that happened, but I was on a roll, my materials were already inside and it is winter in Michigan. A tiny crooked roof was not about to make me go back out to the garage.

So you’ve come this far and you might be thinking I was pulling your leg about this being a mother-daughter activity. Well, right here is when you can bring in the kiddos. I laid out a bunch of contractor paper to cover my floor and let her get crazy with some paint. She’s 5, so I was really wrestling with the balance of letting her have creative freedom while trying to be okay with everything that was happening to my bird church. It’s okay that the paint is dripping, there are lines and goop marks all over, and other parts of the wood don’t have a speck of paint. Just keep repeating that to yourself until it’s over.

Actually, she did really well. I am happy to share things like this with her. After half way through the second coat, she lost interest, but this is what we ended up with.

Next up is phase two of the DIY bird church. I’m not going to lie, this part gets pretty tedious. I should’ve named it the epic bird church. You’re going to need some dried pinecones. Luckily I have about 7 zillion laying around in the backyard. You will realistically need about 10. This is the type I used, I believe they are White Pine.

Next, you need to rip these guys apart. Some of them peal off nicely, but most of the time they leave a little burr on the end. Sometimes you can work with it, but after I ripped them all apart, I cut them with a pair of strong scissors to make them lay flat when I put them on the roof as shingles. You’re going to need a serious pile. This pile is about what you get from one pinecone.

Grab your hot glue and put a drop on the scraggly end of the pinecone and start attaching them to the tops of the roofs.

You will want to make sure you overlap them so it doesn’t look like they are all in a line. Go for a subway tile kind of pattern.

After a while, you will end up with something like this:

You could stop here, but I chose to add a few more details. I cut popsicle sticks to create windows and a door. I just hot glued those into place.

I used a permanent marker to color in the windows. You could probably spend a little more time and color in the windows with paint. I kind of liked the way it turned out with marker, so I decided to go with it.

Here it is, a DIY bird church! I decided to put these on the hearth of my fireplace. I think they would also look really pretty out on the front porch. What a great DIY addition to my Christmas decor!