Home for rent

Here's my contribution to "green housing" with "re-purposed materials" - sheesh, my dad built with recycled materials all the time.... you'd think this was a new concept.

My approach emphasizes the "reuse before recycling" approach.....
This birdhouse is built out of wine corks (the real cork kind). I constructed the actual house while I was still working at the UofO and living in the RV. Hot glue and caulking hold the corks together - I hope they survive the Texas summer temperatures!  The moss and roost are from the oak trees in the RV park where I was staying. I moved the half-finished house here with no roof - thought about using my old Oregon license plates, but the size didn't work out quite right, so I hit upon a new and very historic solution. . . .  look close. . . .the roof is constructed from aluminum cans. (Click on the photo for a larger image.) The main areas are Pearl beer - oldest brewery in Texas, and the ridge cap is Dr. Pepper - invented in Waco, Texas. 'Seemed like a nice melding of materials - all beverage oriented  and both states represented, as most of the wine corks are Oregon wineries. The cork part of the construction was more time consuming than I anticipated, so I doubt I'll be doing another one, but it was an interesting challenge! There are a lot of other ideas here, and I'll be trying out some of them.