New to chickens, questions about the floor in my "coop"

I bought a pre-made coop with a hardware mesh floor, and before it arrived I asked a lot of chicken keepers about it, and pretty much everyone said the wire floor wouldn't work well. So I covered the floor with pine boards when it arrived and have been happy with that. I think blooie is rignt that wire will end up being hard to clean -- one person who replied to me mentioned using a wire grill brush to clean it when I asked about this, and that seemed like a lot of work to me.

So, I think your plywood/lino floor is a good idea!

They might not necessarily need an 8x8 thing, that is kind of big, but 5x5 is way too small I think. I think there's gotta be some middle one. Commercial the standard is 2 sq ft inside and 4 outside and that may be more manageable to you? But I wouldn't go any lower. A lot even say that even 4 sq ft inside is too small and the bare minimum so it depends. Personally I'm going with 4 sq ft so a 4x8 coop for my 8 and that might be more able to hold 15. Although I was considering an 8x8 thing for them or at least something a little bit bigger than that because they spend a lot of time in it. And that's another thing, if they only go in it to sleep and lay eggs and they free range or have a large run you may be able to get away with more birds in a smaller space but personally mine hate bad weather and are inside a lot and also only confined plus they're big breeds. Those are also all things you have to consider. Sure they may be happy if they have a big pen or get to free range but what happens if they have to be confined for some reason? Again, they maybe don't need a huge 8x8 thing but even 4x8 might work better and more space means less work for you