2017 Coop Contest

Our Hen House is a chicken coop with design elements inspired by a little farm and country, vintage Hawaii and modern folk art. The resources and inspiration shared on Backyard Chickens have been invaluable during the early phase of our coop planning.

The journey to where the coop is today has been an innovative one with many detours. From the decision to actually purchase chicks, to deciding how to house them, how to build what we had in mind, and to make it special for the chickens but also for us. What I had in mind and what has developed has far surpassed my expectations in quality both functionally and aesthetically.

Early on in the coop endeavor I scoured the internet for ideas, plans and other how-to's. We quickly found that simply reading through a set of plans wasn't going to be enough to get a good grasp on what this would entail, what we might need to learn, purchase and also adjust our expectations to. I consider myself a frugal person (though not at the expense of quality), so the idea of spending a ton of money up front was not appealing. Admittedly, we did not desire dedicating every weekend to this project when we were in the planning phase. Truth be told, with just the two of us, and the hot sun, the project has ultimately taken a lot of time, over the course of a few months. However, it has all been a joy, truly. This is a project that we have enjoyed pursuing, executing and continue to develop. What's the saying...? Rome wasn't built in a day folks!

The first coop design we settled on was from: http://media.blog.homedepot.com/wp-content/uploads/Chicken-Coop-Plans-TheCreativeMom.pdf. After dismantling, retyping and sourcing out materials before diving in, I found the plans had too many issues. The course shifted and I found: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/my6chickss-chicken-coop. This is the coop that certainly served as the point of reference and the model we worked from.

Modifications included types of materials, positioning of the doors, an additional window cutout. We utilized the ingress, egress that was originally designed for sweeping the coop also as the chickens entryway to their run which is directly runs off this area. They showed us for long enough that it was tall enough for them.

To meet our functional needs and aesthetic desires, within the bright and happy colors of the coop feature wood-inlayed scenic folk shutters, a hand-built dutch-style door, wood burned signage, a manual lifting line chicken door system and an egg collecting hatched door.

As time goes on, we look forward to sharing how the coop continues to develop.

If you are inspired, SHARE! We also encourage you to connect with us!
http://www.hometalk.com/30255172/the-hen-house