henhouserenovation

The Henhouse Renovation

When we moved into our farm in June 2008, we decided we definitely wanted some chickens. At the time we were so busy with moving in that no one could really see there being an advantage to building a coop from scratch. Instead we looked around the property for something to use as a hen house. At first we had our hearts set on using an old coop attached to the barn for our hen house but I was just not that into cleaning it out, and fixing any problems there might be with it [and trust me, there are lots wrong with it]. Rather than build something, or use the old chicken barn I suggested we use the old ice shed that was located about 50ft from the front of the house.

Before shot of the ice house

Then we stripped it of it's nasty siding

Here is dad using the truck as a ladder, what else would you use an F-150 for anyway? DRIVING?

Along the journey we were assailed by many different bugs in this darn building, including honey bees, bumblebees, ants, wasps...Just check out this paperwasp nest!

Then we had to fix the foundation, badly, but fix it anyway!

As you can see, it used to have power attached to the building but the old owners disconnected it much to my dismay, otherwise I would have working lights inside that coop rather than stumbling around in the dark and accidently stepping on chicken feet!

Next we replaced any wood that was rotted and insulated and sheathed the building (for some reason we didn't typar, not entirely sure why, but I'm planning on residing when the house gets resided so it looks like the house so I'll typar at that time)

We then started to side the coop using SmartSide, note to self, this stuff is VERY spendy and VERY heavy

The coop is now more or less done on the outside, it needs painting and I still have to install the rest of the cedarcast shingles on the front and replace the newer windows with real double paned windows, but what can ya do?

The inside of the coop after it was first finished

The inside now that the nest boxes and roost are installed

My run has yet to be finished, because we have so much rock here I can't dig to put in posts (and anyway our chickens are super excavators, seriously they should start their own excavating business).