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“I’m a dumpster diver,” says David Hartwig. The 69-year-old Hartwig makes garden birdhouses at his home workshop in south Gilroy. He’s what some might call an birdhouse enthusiast.
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Hartwig, a retired building materials salesman, has been creating birdhouses out of found or repurposed materials for the last 35 years. “I started out doing them for birthday presents and Christmas presents. You know, just for family and stuff. Then people started calling me, ‘hey, can you make one for my cousin’ and it snowballed. Then I got real serious about four years ago when I retired,” he says.
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His intricate little structures are made with recycled materials and scenery and parts he gets from hobby shops. Almost out of a fairy tale, each one tells a story.
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Hartwig is a longtime member of Bay Area Garden Railroad Society (BAGRS), a social club that promotes garden railroading. Founded in 1988, BAGRS is one of the oldest and largest garden railway clubs in the nation.
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“I used to enter in all kinds of competitions and model-building contests, 40-something years ago,” Hartwig says. “The railroad guys laugh, saying, ‘I see it spilled over into your birdhouses.’”
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With his expertise in creating small scenes and garden railroad towns, Hartwig’s birdhouses are often themed. Like the one from Alaska, where he collected a license plate while on a trip to Juneau that he used in the birdhouse design. Another birdhouse in Hartwig’s collection depicts an auto repair shop, complete with a spark plug repurposed as a perch.
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When he decided to get more serious about his hobby and began selling his handmade collectibles at art and wine festivals and home shows, Hartwig was impressed by how many people flocked to buy a birdhouse. “I do the spring show and the Christmas show for the Morgan Hill Historical Society and I do GALs [Gilroy Assistance League] and other little things here and there. I’ve done farmers markets and two times now I’ve done the Wine Stroll downtown,” he says.
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His wife Peggy says the money from building birdhouses paid for their Alaskan cruise. Even as a hobbyist, his sales have helped them to have more fun with their grandkids and help pay for a vacation they took to France. Hartwig built a Paris-themed birdhouse after that trip. “All these wine corks are from the wine bottles we broke into when we were drinking wine everywhere we’d go,” he says.
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In addition to birdhouse building, Hartwig is a hobbyist “digger,” or metal detector fanatic. He enjoys finding lost treasures and says he finds a lot of stuff that can be used in his designs. He also frequents garage sales for old chairs, repurposing pieces of metal he’s found.
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Asked if he’s a birder, Hartwig says no, he’s not particularly interested in birds. He says that he just enjoys building birdhouses and he’s always liked them. “He’s always been a builder,” says Peggy Hartwig.
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The birdhouses have a warm, weathered look that makes them blend into any environment. Hartwig says he gets all his recycled wood locally. “I use no new wood. Farmers give it to me. Contractors give me wood. I really like them [to be] rustic. Right away you have something that looks like an heirloom,” he says.
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Hartwig keeps a book of design ideas, pieces he’s already built and ones he plans to create. “It’s an interesting hobby. You know, you get into this and your realize, man there’s like millions of birdhouses you can build.”
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I used to enter in all kinds of competitions and model-building contests, 40-something years ago. The railroad guys laugh, saying, ‘I see it spilled over into your birdhouses.’
