California Craftsman Coop

With attached covered run/garden potting table

by Gardenerd

We live in a large urban city about 4 miles from the ocean in Southern California. I love to garden and I incorporated the design of the run into a potting table.  Pictures of my little city yard and garden  http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=20741-garden-photos

Our coop had to be attractive since we look at the location immediately as we walk out the back door. Also, neighbors would be able to see it slightly over the block wall if they tried.   Ventilation was an important consideration in the design, but not really insulation.  Our summer temps rarely go over the mid to upper 80's and the winter temps don't often go below the 40's. I located it next to an outlet so I can put a heat lamp inside if necessary.  It will get afternoon shade from a large Chinese Elm tree.  In designing it, I tried to make it blend in with all the other decorative elements I had created in the yard and garden over the years.  The "Lowes playhouse" that many BYC users have converted to coops appealed to me, but I wanted storage for food and supplies to be incorporated within the structure.  So, I decided to improvise by designing and building it from scratch myself.

  

 

There is a storage compartment under the nest box area that is accessible from the outside on the left. I determined the size of the storage compartment based on the containers I needed to put in it.  The containers are in the bottom of the coop, pictured here in the early stages of construction.

  

 

All of the framing wood came from either my garage, my neighbors backyard, or a demolished a redwood pergola.

The coop is pretty small by rural and even suburban standards, but we live in the middle of town on a 6100 sq. ft. lot and will never be able to have a large flock here.  Once the run was attached, if it was any longer in length, it would be in violation of the minimum distance requirements to dwellings.

 Here it is just before priming and painting.

 

My dog must have been thinking I was building a grand dog house for him.  He spent a lot of time in the run section when I was working on the coop. Here he is demonstrating that the pop door is too small for a dog door.  I ended up altering that area and removing the panel.  He has managed to go through the new improved existing pop door on the coop.  It has 11" x 14" opening, but he won't be doing it anymore.  Poor George.

 

 The pop door is a light weight plexi-glass panel, primed and painted to match the coop. 

The pop door slides up and down using a nylon string that started out on the outside by the door.  It locked in place using a locking cup hook and a washer on the end of the string. 

Since the end of summer, I have installed a automatic opener made from a drapery motor and timer. 

 

The cow shaped handles were salvaged from my son's room and had been in the drawer in the garage for a few years.  When he was a toddler, his nursery was farm themed. They worked out nicely on the outer doors used to access the nest area and storage.

Another of my coop decorations

 

 The roost and the newspaper under to catch the droppings.  This is the second roost design.  I take the paper and droppings straight to the compost each day and shred it in.

Below the roost is the space where the nesting area is.  I sealed this off with a cardboard cover until the pullets were around 17 weeks.

Before

 

 

After

Most of the time there is only one chicken in the area, but I snapped the photo when three of the four crowded in at the same time one day.  The nest boxes are actually kitty litter boxes with bedding inside.  I had placed rock and wood eggs in the boxes to encourage laying in there.

 

The roof is enclosed using hardware cloth and aluminum screening in the eaves and over also all the window openings to help with ventilation.  I fastened it in place with screws and washers.  Over the windows, where ever the chickens could come in contact with it, it is covered with trim to prevent it from scratching them.  The coop has 3 windows, the open front and back gables, and openings under the eaves.  When the pop door is open, and I was inside, I could feel a gentle updraft.

My eight year old daughter is artistic and helped with the project by painting the mural below for the pullets to enjoy.  I'm still unsure why it has cats. My son named this painting "chicken nightmares."

There is 2 x 4 for a lip on the floor in front of the door and the pop door is raised off the floor.  This is so I could do the deep litter bedding and not have it spill out whenever the door opened. 

 

 

 

The Run

I used an old work bench for the run.  My husband originally wanted the coop on top of the work bench so it would have a smaller foot print, but this was our compromise.  I am still able to use it for a potting table this way.  Since our house and city lot are so small, things have to do double duty around here or be small, especially in the garden.

I put sand about 2 to 3 inches deep on top of the cement in the run.  It is easy on the chicken feet and fun for them to scratch in.

My daughter painted two more murals in the run before I put the sand and chickens in.  Each chicken that she painted was a representation of one of ours, including one science project chick that was a rooster and went to a friend and the two that went to new homes at the end of the summer.

 

Amber demonstrating the scale of the mural with her in it.  She is about 10 weeks old in this photo.

There are two doors on the front of the run area.  They have latches at the top and bottom of each door. 

I am not a carpenter by any means, just a lady that enjoys building and fixing things.  I am sure the city inspector would have shut the project down several times for my methods of building the coop.  Whenever I messed up on something, I just kept telling myself “It’s just for chickens.” 

The food and water is kept outside in the enclosed run.  It started inside on the bottom floor, but they didn't really seem to use it after dark. 

I built the coop in generally the location it would stay.  We only moved it back a couple of feet to the wall once it was complete.  It is very heavy and would take 4 people to move any real distance.  We put a couple of handfuls of sand underneath and just pushed it.  I had read someone else's horror story here on BYC of moving a heavy one far, so that is why it was built in the permanent spot.  Plus, I am a weakling, so that was the only option.  My coop is on concrete, so I didn't feel I needed to use pressure treated wood on the base.  I know some folks use it where it comes in contact with soil and they strongly recommend it. 

Thoughts on what I would change after using it for a while.

1.  The exterior yellow paint was left over from when I painted our stucco house 3 years ago.  It is a flat paint. If I was purchasing new paint, instead of using leftovers, I would probably have chosen a semi gloss paint for the easier cleaning.  The interior is semi gloss and wipes off nicely. 

2.  I would not have purchased or used OSB (oriented strand board) in the project. I don’t like the chemicals used in the manufacturing of it.  It is also very difficult to prime and paint.  I was okay with using it in the coop because my neighbors were throwing it out.  Using it kept it out of a land fill.  I only have OSB in on the roof area.

3.  We started out with 6 chickens in it.  The interior of the coop was fine for 6, but the run is a bit small for that number to be confined to most of the day. They chickens have been allowed a lot more time to forage in the yard than we planned as a result.  After much consideration, we downsized our flock from 6 to 4 chickens.  We still get plenty of eggs and they are happier in the run for longer periods during the day. They are not as crowded as before, and they still get to go out most days.  Even now, if they didn't get time to forage in the yard, the run would need to be bigger or we would need to have less than 4 chickens in there.

4.  I plan to make canvas covers for the windows to help cut down on early morning sunlight getting in.  The chickens wake up way too early in the middle of summer and want out.  Right now, I cover the whole thing with a sheet at night and take down in the morning to serve this purpose.

 

I salvaged for free the following+ a few other things I can't recall:

door

hinges

door handles

framing wood

OSB

plywood

3 latches

wooden grooved curtain rods (roosts)

supports under roosts - they were feet from a discarded trellis

vinyl floor adhesive

roof underlayment

string

some trim

some of the screws and washers

primer

brushes

cans of paint

acrylic paints

locking cup hook

and the decorative chicken in window.

It was painted to sort of match the coop.

 

Materials purchased from two different Habitat for Humanity Restores, one in Garden Grove and one in Santa Ana:

$17.00 siding (actually beadboard turned around)
$10.00 2 cabinet doors
$12.00 trim
$3.00 window cover (1 more narrower cabinet door that opens over the south facing window.)

_______
$42.00

Materials purchased new:

$17.85 3 boxes of screws
$1.99  washers
$7.96  2 more latches
$15.00 hardware cloth
$8.00 aluminum screening
$3.19 plexiglass panel for pop door
$35.64 vinyl flooring
$29.96 shingles
$24.95 more primer (it will be used in many more projects)
______
$144.54

 

 *For more pictures of my small garden go to http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=20741-garden-photos