writ­ten 6/8/26; updat­ed 6/15/26

---

---

Overview

---

Supplies, Equipment, and Cost

---

Owned Sup­plies

Option­al: Spring Loaded Cen­ter Punch, Rub­ber Shims

---

Schematics, Measurements, Wood Needed

These are the mea­sure­ments I end­ed up with. Feel free to make it to any desired dimen­sions for your space

Sor­ry, I’m ter­ri­ble at draw­ing per­spec­tive

Wood Used

Sum­ma­ry

*NOTE: So, could buy more or use just a lit­tle less in the the under­body and any place nobody will notice

---

Process

Dis­claimer: I am NOT a pro­fes­sion­al, just an ama­teur DIY­er. This is chron­i­cling how I went about com­plet­ing this dreamed-up idea

Planning, Measuring, Gathering Materials

---

Dry Assemble

• Since it was going to sit out­side in the ele­ments, I want­ed to ele­vate it off the ground as well as pro­vide air­flow and drain­ing since it’s wood after all. For the spac­ers, I used some ran­dom pieces of dou­ble reflec­tive insu­la­tion that hap­pened to be the right size

• Test­ing out the sup­ports and try­ing to decide if I want­ed them on the ground of rest­ing on the bot­tom cross-pieces

---

Plywood Cutting

SAFETY FIRST! It is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed to use eye pro­tec­tion, gloves, shoes, and hear­ing pro­tec­tion when using pow­er tools. You can even wear an apron to pre­vent a mess on your clothes. Also, cut­ting wood makes a huge mess, so plan accord­ing­ly.

Roof Panels

• Ooo, this part made me real­ly ner­vous. The tricky part was try­ing to mea­sure how much is need­ed to have a straight mansard style roof (at least I think that’s what it’s called) that I was plan­ning for the project. After a lot of uncer­tain­ty, I just went for it.

• I decid­ed to cut the side pieces first before the main large mid­dle piece. You can see in the right­most image that I was try­ing to cal­cu­late how much I’d need for the mid­dle one.

This unfor­tu­nate Spot­ted Lantern­fly nymph was in the way of my cut mid­dle roof pan­el and got squished.

Miter (Angled) Cuts with a Circular Saw

• I don’t have a miter saw any­more. When I moved, I got rid of my nice com­pound miter saw thanks to lack of space and use. With no desire to buy a new one ($200–500!!), I found out that you can actu­al­ly use a cir­cu­lar saw to make angled cuts!!
• Just find the release, set the angle, and voila!

Check that angled cut!! This was 45 degrees

• With boost­ed con­fi­dence, I went ahead and made all the cuts that I had mea­sured out before, angled includ­ed, with the help of a speed square

• Mis­take #1: Spa­tial stuff is not my forte. As it turns out, two 45-degree sur­faces togeth­er make a square… Which is not what I was going for. What I want­ed was a 45-degree sur­face mat­ed with a 90-degree sur­face. Whoops.

This image shows how the side pan­els have 90-degree sides and the mid­dle pan­el has 45-degree cuts.

• Let’s set that aside for a lit­tle bit

---

Assembling the Base

• Lay out and ori­ent the base as planned, ensur­ing the spaces are cor­rect
• Flip it upside down, care­ful­ly, and fix the spac­ers again, mak­ing sure every­thing is ori­ent­ed cor­rect­ly (use a pen­cil to mark the wood)

• Dry-fit the rub­ber feet to desired ori­en­ta­tion. I chose the long way

Note: Giv­en the size of my struc­ture, if I were to do it again, I’d spring for anoth­er 2–4 rub­ber feet. As I only have 4, if you push back­wards on the struc­ture, it tilts until it hits wood instead of being as sta­ble as I’d like it to be

• Secure every­thing with clamps so they don’t move around
• Grab screws (I used #8 ‑1¼” wood screws for the wood which comes with a bit)
• Get the dri­ver with drill bit and impact dri­ver
• Mark holes, mak­ing sure to leave room for the rub­ber feet
• Secure the base togeth­er by first drilling pilot holes, then dri­ving in the screw

• Secure rub­ber feet using appro­pri­ate­ly sized screws (mine were #10, 1½” Truss head Wood Screws)

• Option­al­ly, use a spring-loaded cen­ter punch to help mark the holes

Secure Supports

Time to add the roof sup­ports. This not only holds the roof, but also adds sta­bil­i­ty to the base

• Clamp to work­space
• Decide where screws will go, and mark them
• Drill pilot holes, then dri­ve in the screws with the impact. Don’t sink them into the wood until every­thing is in place. Can’t stress the pilot hole enough here.

Note: you may need to get cre­ative with the clamp if you don’t have one long enough. I end­ed up drilling one hole, then insert­ing one screw to bet­ter hold the wood in place to dri­ve in anoth­er before doing the rest

---

Assembling the Roof

• Mis­take #2: Mis­cal­cu­la­tion of roof pan­el sizes

Yeeaaaaah… It’s too short (at this point, I’d already secured the pan­els togeth­er. I did­n’t write that out yet, because the sizes are wrong)

• Now that I’ve com­plet­ed the project, I can now tell you that for the 26⅜” span of the com­plet­ed roof, I need­ed 6″ side pan­els x2, and an 18⅜” pan­el for the mid­dle. That’s a total of 30⅜” length of ply­wood (so, 26⅜ : 30⅜ ratio, which is an increase of 4″ com­pared to the span)

My Fix

• Instead of hav­ing to cut a dif­fer­ent piece alto­geth­er, I decid­ed to do a bit of a Franken­stein job. The cos­met­ics would­n’t mat­ter for the roof, as I already planned to cov­er the entire thing with a rub­ber water­proof­ing
• So, I cut an addi­tion to the mid­dle roof­ing piece, angled to attach togeth­er into a flat plane

• After mulling over how to secure any of the roof to the struc­ture, I decid­ed to use a tech­nique that you nev­er see used in con­struc­tion of a roof for a good rea­son. Basi­cal­ly, I used pock­et holes to secure the miter-cut pan­els togeth­er and used wood glue to improve adhe­sion. With my lack of wood work­ing expe­ri­ence and skill, my attempt at this was pret­ty bad, but hey, it worked. See for your­self:

Assembling the Rest of the Roof

• After some dry-fit­ting, more cuts were made, uti­liz­ing scrap wood to help sta­bi­lize the clamped struc­ture for trim­ming

It looks sooo baaaad. And it was hard to line the holes up. Again, pilot holes are 100% a must!!

• After I real­ized that I’d made an error in the mea­sure­ments, I had to back out some of the screws, and then screwed in only 1 of the side roof sec­tions to the struc­ture to facil­i­tate the addi­tion of the rest of the roof and mea­sure­ments

• Some dry-fit­ting, more cuts, uti­lized scrap wood to help sta­bi­lize the clamped struc­ture for trim­ming

• To secure the big, heavy piece to the rest of the struc­ture, I need­ed to get cre­ative with how I’d sta­bi­lize it all to drill into the sup­ports

• I used the Glue-and-Screw method along with longer screws, know­ing full well that all the weight would be press­ing into these 4 sup­ports

Tip: I used a method where I would drill pilot holes, then dri­ve a screw part­ly in just so the tip sticks out, which can there­fore be “caught by” a pilot hole, then impact­ed in the rest of the way. This is help­ful if you have dif­fi­cul­ty see­ing how the holes line up togeth­er. You can see this in the mid­dle image above

• Roof com­plete! It ain’t pret­ty, but it works!

More Supports

To help fur­ther sta­bi­lize the struc­ture, I added side and roof sup­ports

Side Supports

• Total of 4, using 1″ x 2″ wood, but only 3 for now

Roof Support

• Dry fit, cut, glue, and screw (from bot­tom-up and top-down)

Camera Support

Camera Setup and Design

• For the cam­era, I chose a sta­t­ic, solar-pow­ered one for this. Look­ing back, I kind of wish I’d cho­sen one that could be rotat­ed remote­ly, but this was cheap­er.

• Find the mount­ing plate for the cam­era, and decide how it should be mount­ed on the struc­ture, tak­ing the cord attach­ment, length, and pow­er source into con­sid­er­a­tion
• Set up the cam­era first, charg­ing it, con­fig­ur­ing it, and iron out any stor­age stuff
• Dry fit every­thing, and deter­mine what is need­ed to secure it to the struc­ture
• At this point, I lugged the unit out­side to ful­ly test the cam­era place­ment and make the deter­mi­na­tion for fur­ther mod­i­fi­ca­tions

Assembling the Camera Supports

• Mis­take #3: Using small 2x4 blocks, and too large of screws
• I want­ed the cam­era to set a lit­tle fur­ther back in a small, cov­ered alcove, if you will, so the width of a 2x4 was per­fect
• Mea­sured, cut, drilled pilot holes, marked place­ment, then drove in screws…

• …Only to find that the wood screws I bought were too big, the 2x4 too small and frag­ile:

So much for that

• H’OKAY, THEN… just ply­wood it is
• Mea­sure, cut, drill, screw part­way, place, screw ful­ly

• Cut a tee­ny tiny bit of scrap to fill the lit­tle space between the roof and what juts out the back, then drill, and screw (glue, too, if desired)

Install Camera Mount

Note: In ret­ro­spect, I should have wait­ed until after the staining/sealing to do this because I end­ed up get­ting stain and seal­er all over the mount

• Using either any pro­vid­ed tem­plates, or just a pen­cil, mark the holes
• Choose appro­pri­ate screws and screw­driv­er
• Dou­ble-check pic­ture on cam­era and hand access
• Drill pilot holes, then screw in the mount

I men­tion “hand access” because you want to be able to remove, adjust, main­tain the cam­era, so if you can’t eas­i­ly loosen/tighten the mount attach­ment, then life just got more dif­fi­cult

Preliminary Clean-Up

• Good time to tidy up equip­ment, mate­ri­als, and mess
• Used the shop vac to clean off every­thing, includ­ing the unit
• From here on out the only equip­ment need­ed will be sand­ing mate­ri­als, wood filler, sealant, and paint/stain stuff

---

Wood Filler

• Using either a tack cloth or a damp tow­el, wipe any excess dust/wood par­ti­cles from the unit
• Using a mix­ture of your hand and a put­ty knife, fill in holes and gaps with the wood filler. I start­ed with the put­ty knife but just end­ed up using my fin­gers. Gloves could be help­ful

Note: Wood filler can come in dif­fer­ent col­ors. If you’re choos­ing to use just a clearcoat seal­er, take this into con­sid­er­a­tion

• Vac­u­um again. Wood filler is messier than I thought it would be

Sanding

My least favorite part of wood­work­ing

• Wait until the wood filler is dry (read the instruc­tions, usu­al­ly 2 hours)
• Sand the unit using a mix­ture of pow­ered ran­dom orbital sander and sand­pa­per for the hard­er to reach places
• This will not only sand the rough areas smooth, but it will remove any pen­cil marks

Safe­ty first! Use eye and res­pi­ra­to­ry pro­tec­tion

Stain/Paint and Sealers

Safe­ty!! Seal­ers and stain are inhala­tion and spon­ta­neous fire haz­ards. Wear appro­pri­ate pro­tec­tion (eye, skin, res­pi­ra­to­ry), work in well-ven­ti­lat­ed areas (e.g. out­side), and have good dis­pos­al set­up ready (I always have a tray of water to sub­merge any stain-soaked equip­ment in)

Roof — Waterproof Sealer

• I decid­ed to use Goril­la Brand Water­proof Patch + Seal because I’ve used it before on gal­va­nized met­al for an out­door dec­o­ra­tive item. It worked real­ly well and still with­stands sun and weath­er

Note: This prod­uct makes a mas­sive mess and smells ter­ri­ble. I rec­om­mend an apron, gloves, card­board bar­ri­ers, painter’s tape, pro­tec­tive work­space cov­er­ings, and work­ing out­side

• With every­thing cov­ered well, and using a piece of card­board, spray away!

Before and After:

• I used an entire can on the first round, so I had to buy anoth­er one for the sec­ond round the next day. That means that it was able to cure overnight.

---

Stain + Spar Urethane

• As the 2nd coat of roof seal­er was dry­ing, I decid­ed to just go ahead with the stain before the day heat­ed up (I was under­neath the deck, so there was shade)
• I had the water tray set up to put every­thing the stain touched to pre­vent any spon­ta­neous fires (YES, they can cause fires, espe­cial­ly if you ball them up!!)
• Gloves were real­ly nice not just for clean-up rea­sons, but to get stain where the paint­brush would­n’t reach well. You can also use a rag to apply the stain.
• I did 2 coats (2‑hour dry in between with light sand­ing), and made sure to get 1 coat on the bot­tom of the unit, too
• Remem­ber: Stain gets dark­er when ful­ly cured. I orig­i­nal­ly thought that the col­or was a bit light, then when I came to look the next day, it was as adver­tised on the can

---

Attach Camera

• All that’s left to do now it to install the cam­era!

ALL DONE!!!

Notes

• You can put flow­ers on top. This was my orig­i­nal plan, but I need­ed to find a shal­low bowl pot to look bet­ter on top. This has not been done yet because the one I found is over $20 and I already spent enough on this darn thing
• I used rub­ber shims to square up the feet
• So far deliv­ery peo­ple have used it maybe 20% of the time which I find obnox­ious. Like­ly, it’s because they’d rather chuck my stuff up the stairs than actu­al­ly go up. The first per­son to use it was FedEx who put my stuff on top. *sigh* I think I might need to put up a sign? Did­n’t want to make it look more tacky

1 week later — Cracking

• Went out and saw that after a week of super high heat and spon­ta­neous pow­er­ful storms, the roof seal­er was crack­ing and peel­ing!! It’s inter­est­ing to note that the shady side looks com­plete­ly fine, while the side that gets all the sun is crack­ing. Was it applied to heav­i­ly? Did it cure prop­er­ly? Def­i­nite­ly sun dam­age, though, because any video door­bell there will have its lens destroyed by sun with­in 1.5 years. I was super dis­ap­point­ed that it only made it 1 week.

• In response, I quick­ly bought anoth­er Water­proof Patch & Seal, except this time it was a tape. This is the stuff that’s sup­posed to work under­wa­ter to seal off a leak.

• Peel­ing off the pro­tec­tive plas­tic is a demon, but this will def­i­nite­ly not crack. I hope.

• It does look a lit­tle janky, but what­ev­er. If I cared enough, I’d get anoth­er rub­ber­ized seal­er and cov­er this with that. Per­haps I’d try the paint-on kind this time instead of the spray which is so messy and glob­by. Will update if I end up doing that. I’m going to see how well this prod­uct works, first.