Thanks! In 2019, TSC came out with a couple of prefab coops that were labeled as “better quality wood”. They were a LOT more money than the regular balsa wood prefab types. But they did look like nicer quality. And they didn’t come pre-primed. All over the box it warned you that you had to paint or treat the wood yourself.
Well I couldn’t stomach the high price, but I kept an eye on whether they were going to clearance out the display model. Lo and behold on Memorial Day weekend that year they had them all on clearance, not just the display models. AND, they were running a holiday weekend special of half off the clearance price! $500 chicken coops for $150 each!!
There was one at my local TSC, and then I started calling around to all the other TSCs, and I ended going on a road trip that day an hour west of me to get one and an hour east of me to get another. I was alone on a holiday and it was a beautiful day for a drive and I took the scenic routes and had a great day going around collecting my scores.
The package suggested treating all the pieces before assembly. That was the best thing ever. From now on if I ever buy a coop kit again, or even if I do a self build, I am totally going to pre-paint. It was a huge job leaning the pieces against sawhorses and such all around my garage and painting one side at a time, flipping them around, shuffling the done pieces out of the way until I got them all done. (I only built the red and blue coops that year. The 3rd coop I stored for a couple of years and then just got lazy and painted that whole one white.)
DH couldn’t park inside for weeks (I am slow and OCD). But that effort was SO worth it. These coops have been so much better than the cheapo prefab ones I have. Painting really helps preserve them. The pre-primed ones really ought to be painted too. And it is so much easier to paint pieces when you can walk up to them and move them however you want instead of trying to contort yourself to reach the insides and outsides of an already built coop.
Anyway, TSC had a different style of better quality coop the next year that I didn’t really care for. Since then I’ve never seen the good ones again. Probably because of the pandemic. There got to be such a high demand for easy chicken coops that now they can sell the cheapo coops for a lot more money so why bother using expensive quality wood? And wood was hard to source for a while.
That's a breed I've always really wanted but just haven't had the right opportunity to get yet.
