Hello from Encino, California...home of Valley Girls, the Galleria...and my chickens! Everyone thought I was crazy, especially my husband....but after doing lots of research (mostly on www.backyardchickens.com) I couldn't resist and brought four babies home (one turned out to be a rooster and we found him a home at a nearby farm)....then I sweet-talked my husband into helping me build a coop before they could outgrow their box in the garage!
His two prerequisites before firing up the saw: 1) it has to look good and 2) you need written plans with measurements. So I did some more research, figured it all out and designed a coop that could be recycled as a playhouse if the great chicken experiment didn't work. 18 months later, it is still a coop and my kids are even happier than they would have been with the playhouse!
Now if I could just figure out how to upload pictures and my scanned plans, I could enter that contest!