Local man makes custom creations
When David Guttirez and his family moved from a Fifth Street
home in Hollister to Fourth Street, there was one key
consideration
– he needed a tool room to work on the custom birdhouses he
creates.
The tool room is part storage shed, part workshop. He has a
metal toolbox where he keeps his supplies, and a shelf set aside
for his grandson’s tools, too. There are old drawers on the floor,
full of items Guttirez refers to as jou-jous, and a box full of
leather pieces from old horse equipment.
”
My shop is a mess, but I like it that way,
”
he said.
The tool room is his place to go when he wants some time
alone.
Local man makes custom creations
When David Guttirez and his family moved from a Fifth Street home in Hollister to Fourth Street, there was one key consideration – he needed a tool room to work on the custom birdhouses he creates.
The tool room is part storage shed, part workshop. He has a metal toolbox where he keeps his supplies, and a shelf set aside for his grandson’s tools, too. There are old drawers on the floor, full of items Guttirez refers to as jou-jous, and a box full of leather pieces from old horse equipment.
“My shop is a mess, but I like it that way,” he said.
The tool room is his place to go when he wants some time alone.
Time to relax
“It’s fun,” he said. “I really enjoy it. It’s my David time – my David time to relax.”
Guttirez has a display of about a dozen birdhouses up at the San Benito County Free Library. The pieces include a few that are for sale, and others that belong to friends who loaned them back to him for the show.
He has been making birdhouses since the mid-1990s, and he still describes it as a hobby. He made the first birdhouse when his wife at the time said she wanted one.
When he completed the birdhouse, his wife gave it to her sister, so he started on a new one. Then his wife gave it to a friend.
“I make custom ones that are one of a kind,” he said. “I never make the same thing.”
He lifted up one of his earlier pieces and showed where he wrote his name on the bottom of the birdhouse, with a number to mark it. The birdhouse is No. 41. Guttirez, who said he makes about five to seven birdhouses a year, is working on No. 85 now.
He said he didn’t number the first 30 or 40 birdhouses he built. In fact, he started numbering them after a friend suggested he enter the pieces into a contest and when he offered one for an auction fundraiser by the San Francisco Arts Commission.
“It got to the point where people wanted to buy them,” he said. “I thought that was crazy.”
One thing that makes Guttirez’ birdhouses unique is the materials he uses to make them. There are rusted pieces of wire, buckles and old, square nails. He has pieces he pulled off of an old typewriter and he has a Singer sewing machine he will be tearing up for parts soon.
“It’s really weird,” he said. “I don’t know what I am making. Sometimes I come in here and I can’t do a darn thing.”
Then he might take a break, come back to it a few hours later, and it all falls into place.
Recycled materials
On a recent afternoon, he had the start of his latest project laid out. He had a piece of wood painted with a light green wash. On it, he had cut-out letters to form the words “meat market.” Though he was still playing around with the design, he had some twisted wire placed on it where the hole for the birds will go, and a small, metal bull shape. The metal bull had come off an old zodiac sun he found. He showed the other pieces, including a crab and a lion.
He gathers items from garage sales, alleyways and sometimes has friends offer wood or other items.
“I sneak it back so she doesn’t know I’m getting it,” he said of not showing his wife all his finds. Guttirez remarried a few years ago.
He even occasionally asks friends if he can have random items he sees in their backyards, to the embarrassment of his wife.
When he worked in construction, he would salvage items from the jobs that could be used in his project.
Guttirez was in an industrial accident four years ago, so now he splits his time between volunteering at the American Red Cross and his projects. He limits his time on the birdhouses because his injury has left him unable to lift his arm over his head. He has to stand to work on his projects.
“This is just my fun little hobby,” he said.
His inspirations often come from buildings he sees when he visits his son in San Francisco or when he travels around San Benito County. Many of his pieces have a Western theme, and each piece has a horseshoe somewhere on it.
After a mention in a local newspaper led to a feature story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Guttirez was surprised at the response.
Distant fans
“People started calling from New York, New Jersey, Hawaii,” he said. “People started coming out of the woodworks.”
At first, he didn’t believe that people from so far away were calling to order his birdhouses, but the caller ID confirmed it.
A woman from Los Angeles called him and said she was driving up to see his birdhouses. Guttirez said the woman showed up that afternoon and bought all six of the birdhouses he had in his house.
He said he is surprised at how many people find him, since he does not have a website and doesn’t sell his pieces on the Internet. He mentioned four women from New Jersey who called him up to commission birdhouses. They planned a trip to Monterey, where their husbands played golf while they drove to San Benito to pick up their birdhouses.
“They called and then came in three months,” he said. “I had seven birdhouses. They were like chickens fighting for them. I said, ‘You don’t even know what they cost.’ They said they didn’t care.”
Another time, a man in a 40-foot truck-trailer showed up in front of his house. The long-haul driver had heard about Guttirez and wanted a birdhouse that would fit on his mantel. He wanted to be able to slide photos into it. Guttirez couldn’t remember exactly where the man was from, somewhere in Michigan or Wisconsin. The man came back three months later when he was driving through San Benito on his loop to pick up the birdhouse.
“I don’t make that many, but they are very personal,” he said, pointing out the zodiac pieces. “Where the hell would I find another one of these?”
He refers to a lot of his supplies as junk, but said his wife is trying to convert him to calling the items recycled materials.
“Once I do the face, I know what I am going to do,” he said. “I make the box last.
Though many of the pieces end up as indoor decorations, Guttirez said they are built so that birds can live in them.
“I have info that shows what size the hole should be and whether they should have a perch,” he said, flipping to a birdhouse dimension guide in a binder.
He said he has some customers who won’t put them outside.
“This one got used,” he said, pointing to an older birdhouse. “I pulled the nest out because it was an old one. You got to watch where you put them, though, because of predatory birds.”
He added that anyone who has one of his earlier birdhouses that might be in need of repairs can get in touch with him and he will fix it up again.
“Bring it back and I’ll fix it again,” he said.
