Everything but the Kitchen Sink Coop

This is our finished coop. It was a kitchen sink cabinet. We searched and looked at many designs. In the end my husband Chad came up with this idea. I am very happy with the coop he built. It took about 3 days from construction to paint.

We recently did some work on our house so we had lots of scrap wood, a 3 drawer kitchen sink cabinet. screws, paint. We did not have to buy anything except for the 10x10 dog kennel we found on sale. 

My husband took the doors of the front of the cabinet. He used a sheet of plywood for the roof, and added legs to keep the cabinet off the ground.

He cut out the sides of the cabinet.

Reattached the doors to both sides.

He built and attached nest boxes where the original doors were. The roof for the nest boxes is hinged.

My mother had extra linoleum that we laid down inside the coop.

We attached a nest bar inside

The roof is hinged so we can prop it open to vent the coop.

The feeder hangs on a J hook from the roof.

We added a lock to both coop doors.

We enclosed the coop in a 10x10 dog kennel. The ladder the chickens use to walk into the coop is from my children's old bunk bed set. For now we have a tarp for the roof. We plan to build a more permanent roof. We are going to finish laying sand down over the grass. We added some nest bars in the front corners of the chain link fence. The chickens also free range in our enclosed yard.

We live in WV, so this winter we may have to hang a heat lamp in the coop.

As of now there is nothing we would change or add. We will have to see how this winter goes and update if there are any changes needed.

***EDITED Nov 1, 2012

Over the summer we replaced the tarp roof with a very nice patio canopy. We were able to fit it down inside the dog kennel walls. We used shower curtain hooks to hold tarps to the kennel wals. We can roll up the tarps if its warm or roll them down when its cold and windy. The canopy survived some wind storms and we were very happy with it. It looked liked the one below.

Thanks to Hurricane Sandy we had a coop disaster. The morning of Oct. 30th we woke to find the canopy collapsed with snow and rain. We could not even stand inside the kennel.

My Husband went out and bought 11 Treated Lumber 2x4x12 (cost was $4.97 for each) and 5 Sheathing Panels 32x4x8 (cost was $16.47 for each). He nailed it together to create a roof. We still need to add support poles so that the kennel is not supporting all of the weight. We are sad the canopy didn't last, but very happy this happened now instead of in the middle of winter.

Here is a picture of the roof inside the coop.