MarkeTplace
COMPLIMENTARY EDITIONEDITION COMPLIMENTARY
SEPTEMBER 1, 2021
ESTABLISHED 2019
THE NEWNAN TIMES-HERALD | NTHMEDIA
Coweta man builds artistic birdhouses
A birdhouse made by Bruce Barnes to look like a Louisiana bayou bait shop.
PHOTO BY JEFFREY CULLEN-DEAN
jeffrey@newnan.com
C
oweta Resident Bruce Barnes began building birdhouses after he had a surplus of wood from constructing a shed himself. He took after his father, he said, who had a versatile skill set from masonry to electrical work to plumbing. Barnes picked up those same skills growing up. He'll often take on projects, such as replacing the tile in a friend's home, with limited experience.
"I just like to make stuff," he said. "I seem to be good at that. I did a retile for a friend. She said, 'Can you do that?' I said sure. I'd never done it, but I was sure I could do it. I borrowed a wet saw, got the materials and put it down." The friend was impressed with the work, Barnes said. "She said, 'How many of these have you done?' and I said, 'Can I count this one?'" Barnes said. The birdhouses started as a simple project, Barnes said. He used six pieces of wood — four for the sides and two for the top and bottom. He said he liked the shape, but
POSTAL CUSTOMER
EAT, SHOP, SAVE.
Bruce Barnes makes adjustments to a bayou bait shop inspired birdhouse.
BY JEFFREY CULLEN-DEAN
PRESORTED STANDARD ECRWSS U.S. POSTAGE PAID NEWNAN, GA PERMIT # 1
felt the process was too easy, and the finished results were "plain" and "boring." "So I started making them differently," he said. Barnes started dressing up his birdhouses. One birdhouse was built to look like a Louisiana bayou bait shop. Another resembles a Hobbit hole from The Lord of the Rings. The decorations for the bayou birdhouse were fashioned out of small items, he said. A mentos can became a refrigerator, wires functioned as hoses and a small piece of aluminum was cut to be a gas nozzle.
"I didn't know what it was going to look like completely, but I decided it was going to be a wren house — a smaller hole — and then I decided to put the dock on," he said. Barnes said he starts one of his birdhouses with an idea — like a bayou bait shop — but doesn't plan ahead beyond that. Because Barnes has many pieces of stained glass in his shed, some of Barnes' birdhouses were outfitted with stained glass windows. Prior to retiring, Barnes said he made stained glass windows for a living. One birdhouse, a gift to a neigh-
bor, featured a shamrock cut into the house that was filled with green stained glass. The neighbor collected shamrocks, Barnes said, so he added the extra decoration for her. "It's fun, but I don't want to turn it into a business because then I would have to make them," he said. Barnes said he worked with stained glass for 25 years in Florida. He picked it up when his brother made a stained glass piece, and he thought he'd make
BIRDHOUSES • 3