I quickly learned pallets are not easy to break apart and borrowed a chop saw from my wonderful neighbor to finish cutting the pallets apart. We collected two types of pallets. Your typical 4 feeters built with 2x4's and 1x4's. And then I scored some awesome 8 feeters covered in partical boards from a cabnet installation company.
We ended up using one of the 8 footers that was broken to a 6 1/2 foot section for our base. A friend of mine was getting new windows installed on her house and saved me 4 sashes to use on my coop. How sweet of her!
My husband and I started building the walls and added the roof framing with pieces of 2x4's from the pallets. The walls were framed from the smaller pallets wood and the roof was 8 foot 2x4's from the larger pallets.
The only thing I had to purchase at this point was screws. We ended up needing3 lbs of the Deckmate star head screws. We also ended up purchasing 100'x4' of hardware cloth that was 1/2 inch squares online and 2 gallons of paint. Oh and one 4x4 cut into 4's for the legs.
I sized in the 4 windows and trimmed them out in the 1x4's. Then I used the 1x4's for siding and making the nest boxes. I removed the side windows and installed hardware cloth for ventilation in the summer. I can slide the windows back in place in the winter for warmth. The side windows were also made into the doors so I have access to either side easily.
I then made a 8x8 run for the chicks. We are on 11 acres but the neighbors a few farms over let their German Shepard run anywhere and he already killed 2 of our cats. Besides we have coyotes and other random predators near by so better safe than sorry.
Painting and finishing touches were last with two roosting bars and we're doing the sand method of keeping the coop clean. Oh the pop door is an old doggy door I repurposed.
I believe we ended up spending about $200 on screws, hardware cloth, paint, staples, and saws all blades. Not to bad for a 6'x3' coop with a 8'x8' run. All the wood was free thanks to pallets. It took me a week to break apart pallets and another week to build the coop and run. You could save time but spend more money. Oh, by the way, I've never built anything before that wasn't a kit. I just kind of winged it and it worked. No plans used. I just browsed through tons of coop pictures and picked and chose what I liked. What a great summer project this was!
