The Vicksburg Queen

When I was a child, I remember my Mom taking me down to the Vicksburg water front to see the Mississippi Queen that was docked there. I love water and I love boats, but that huge paddle wheel boat was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
A group I'm a part of is having a contest. The theme is bird houses. I hate building bird houses. Right after seeing the theme for the contest though, I seen a birdhouse with a boat theme, had this idea, and decided to build it.

I spent many hours on this project, but it is not just for show. It is a fully functioning bird house, that is not mounted on a post in my front yard.

It wound up being fifty four inches long, twelve inches wide, and fourteen inches tall, not counting the smoke stacks. It has sixteen individual compartments with eight entry holes on each side for the feathered friends to access them.

I made sure the paddle wheel could be moved by hand because I figured everyone who got near it would try to do so. I was right. Every single person who has been in my shop since I started construction has immediately reached for the paddle wheel to turn it.

It has spiral staircases off the front main deck.

The little handrails that go around all five deck turned into a project all in itself. By the time I got through with them, it wound up consisting of one hundred and seventy little tiny posts that had a total of sixty feet of metal wire running through it all.

As my regular readers know, I always reveal where to get plans for anything I build. That is going to be hard to do on this project. Somehow, I just had an inspiration to build it. There are no plans. I made it up as I went along. I didn't write anything down or make any drawings. So I guess this bird house is just going to have to be and original. I think in the future I may have to find inspiration to try more projects like this. I enjoyed just building it as I went and not being tied to any kind of plans.