Thank you so much for documenting this in such detail!
A Chicken Coop Christmas Ornament
- Thread starter bjmoose
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #52
bjmoose
Songster
Once it's all done, I'm hoping to create an article in the "chicken coops" section, and hopefully it'll just be a matter of copy/pasting these daily status posts into a single article with some light editing and revising.
- Thread starter
- #53
bjmoose
Songster
Didn't really do anything yesterday, except get over to the lumberyard for more 2x3s.
Construction update Day Four:
It's time to think about those opening front doors, and get the rest of the coop sided.
To have opening double doors, we need a door jamb to mount the hinges on. I used some 1x4. If you're hanging a "real" door, you're gonna shim the door jamb to level it. I've done that, and it's lots of fun. But for a chicken coop that sits on legs on the dirt, there's not going to be any durable concept of "level" so I just attached it directly to the rough opening with glue and decking screws.
Yes, it sticks out. That's what we want, because we have to build up the door from studs, siding, and fascia trim. Once that's all done, we'll need the door jamb to be this far out from the rough framing.
Now we'll build up the door frame. It's going to be framed and sided basically the same as the rest of the coop. For "door within a door", we need a center stud for mounting the chicken pop door or vent window onto. And it adds rigidity to the whole thing.
I do most of my construction using deck screws. They're expensive, but worth it to me. Mostly, they are self drilling. But for thin pieces like these, decking screws can cause them to split. So I pre-drill thin pieces.
The door frame is built from 3 studs and a thinner top and bottom plate. The middle stud is NOT aligned on center. Rather, the line below is on center, and the EDGE of the center stud is placed on the line. The stud goes to the HINGE side, so the larger gap goes to the center side.
Here's the completed door frame. (There are two.) As we go, always check to make sure the work remains plumb and square.
And resting in their position.
Now that the door jamb is in place, we can do the siding for the front side.
We'll start with the left strip next to the door jamb. In this photo, I've got the siding strip deliberatly too low, so you can see how it will sit.
The brown pressure treated 2x4 on the left is part of the left side. The 2x3 stud is part of the front side. In order to preserve the ability to disassemble the coop for transport, it's critical NOT to attach these two together (except with the removable bolts) So the siding strip must be screwed and glued ONLY to the clear stud on the right - and left free and unattached from the pressure treated stud on the left.
Sides and top sided. The front actually has six separate pieces of siding. Two interlocking on top, one to each side, and two on the bottom.
Gotta side the bottom now. These are attached to the "FLOOR" assembly. So don't accidentally glue or screw them to the front side bottom plate.
Front siding completed.
Need to notch the front and back siding for the secondary ridge support. I got impatient and botched this - I was using the jigsaw in an ackward position and just wanted to get it done. "Cut in haste, repent at leisure."
I am NOT recutting and reinstalling those siding pieces. It'll get covered up with a wider fascia trim piece than I originally planned.
OK, the siding's all completed. Time to move on to some of the finish trim. We'll do the four edge corners.
They're a piece of 1x3 on the front and back, overlapping 1x2 on the sides. As with the siding edges, there's a challenge in not permanently attaching the sides together. In fact - it's worse and unsolvable. So the front trim pieces are glued to the siding - and then screwed into the 2x4 leg studs that belongs to the side. This makes disassembly impossible!
So after the glue sets and when I'm ready to move the coop, I'll first remove the ABOVE shown trim screws, then put a shorter screw in from the back that just attaches the fascia trim to the piece of front siding. Together with the construction adhesive, that'll be sufficient.
Here's the side view of the corner trim. This is screwed into the side studs, and causes no problems.
The side trim gets minor trimming in order to clear the removable bolts that hold the front and back to the sides.
With all four corners edged trimmed, the next step should be to build the opening panel doors.
But I'm almost out of construction adhesive, and it's almost time to call it a day. But we can install the floor of the nesting boxes. As you see, this is notched to accommodate the center support. The floor of the nesting boxes is 12.5" deep, and intrudes 2.5" into the coop.
Tomorrow, with more time and more glue, I'll return to and finish building the front door panels.
Construction update Day Four:
It's time to think about those opening front doors, and get the rest of the coop sided.
To have opening double doors, we need a door jamb to mount the hinges on. I used some 1x4. If you're hanging a "real" door, you're gonna shim the door jamb to level it. I've done that, and it's lots of fun. But for a chicken coop that sits on legs on the dirt, there's not going to be any durable concept of "level" so I just attached it directly to the rough opening with glue and decking screws.
Yes, it sticks out. That's what we want, because we have to build up the door from studs, siding, and fascia trim. Once that's all done, we'll need the door jamb to be this far out from the rough framing.
Now we'll build up the door frame. It's going to be framed and sided basically the same as the rest of the coop. For "door within a door", we need a center stud for mounting the chicken pop door or vent window onto. And it adds rigidity to the whole thing.
I do most of my construction using deck screws. They're expensive, but worth it to me. Mostly, they are self drilling. But for thin pieces like these, decking screws can cause them to split. So I pre-drill thin pieces.
The door frame is built from 3 studs and a thinner top and bottom plate. The middle stud is NOT aligned on center. Rather, the line below is on center, and the EDGE of the center stud is placed on the line. The stud goes to the HINGE side, so the larger gap goes to the center side.
Here's the completed door frame. (There are two.) As we go, always check to make sure the work remains plumb and square.
And resting in their position.
Now that the door jamb is in place, we can do the siding for the front side.
We'll start with the left strip next to the door jamb. In this photo, I've got the siding strip deliberatly too low, so you can see how it will sit.
The brown pressure treated 2x4 on the left is part of the left side. The 2x3 stud is part of the front side. In order to preserve the ability to disassemble the coop for transport, it's critical NOT to attach these two together (except with the removable bolts) So the siding strip must be screwed and glued ONLY to the clear stud on the right - and left free and unattached from the pressure treated stud on the left.
Sides and top sided. The front actually has six separate pieces of siding. Two interlocking on top, one to each side, and two on the bottom.
Gotta side the bottom now. These are attached to the "FLOOR" assembly. So don't accidentally glue or screw them to the front side bottom plate.
Front siding completed.
Need to notch the front and back siding for the secondary ridge support. I got impatient and botched this - I was using the jigsaw in an ackward position and just wanted to get it done. "Cut in haste, repent at leisure."
I am NOT recutting and reinstalling those siding pieces. It'll get covered up with a wider fascia trim piece than I originally planned.
OK, the siding's all completed. Time to move on to some of the finish trim. We'll do the four edge corners.
They're a piece of 1x3 on the front and back, overlapping 1x2 on the sides. As with the siding edges, there's a challenge in not permanently attaching the sides together. In fact - it's worse and unsolvable. So the front trim pieces are glued to the siding - and then screwed into the 2x4 leg studs that belongs to the side. This makes disassembly impossible!
So after the glue sets and when I'm ready to move the coop, I'll first remove the ABOVE shown trim screws, then put a shorter screw in from the back that just attaches the fascia trim to the piece of front siding. Together with the construction adhesive, that'll be sufficient.
Here's the side view of the corner trim. This is screwed into the side studs, and causes no problems.
The side trim gets minor trimming in order to clear the removable bolts that hold the front and back to the sides.
With all four corners edged trimmed, the next step should be to build the opening panel doors.
But I'm almost out of construction adhesive, and it's almost time to call it a day. But we can install the floor of the nesting boxes. As you see, this is notched to accommodate the center support. The floor of the nesting boxes is 12.5" deep, and intrudes 2.5" into the coop.
Tomorrow, with more time and more glue, I'll return to and finish building the front door panels.
Last edited:
- Thread starter
- #55
bjmoose
Songster
Thanks, but it's not a competition.
We get better by doing, and practice. I hope you'll take this thread as encouragement to keep going on your own building projects.
Nice work!
- Thread starter
- #57
bjmoose
Songster
Construction update Day Five. This is the one you've all been waiting for. "Hey, bjmoose, how are those front panel doors supposed to work, anyway??"
You previously saw the door frames. First, we simply panel over them.
Now, these are DOORs. So we want them to have maximum stiffness. So for the non-opening part, we also panel over the inside passive non-opening part with 1/8" plywood. As with the main panelling, use construction glue in addition to fasteners, for maximum strength and stiffness.
We need cutouts. One's going to have the pop door, and the other is going to have a shuttered vent. But figuring out where those cuts go requires looking at where the trim pieces are going to go on the doors. We don't want to WAIT until the trim pieces are installed, because then there won't be clearance for the saw. So we mock up with tiny pieces of trim, measure, and mark.
Take note of what you're looking at. On the right side, the shutter hinge will go so the shutter trim MEETS the trim that it will be hinged to.
But on the left side, the shutter trim will OVERLAP the door gap to provide a neat closure.
Do that on both doors, cut the openings in both doors, and look at it in place:
With those cuts in place, we can add the needed trim to the doors.
On the HINGE side, the trim is flush with the door edge. This is extremely important. But on the other three sides, the trim "splits the difference" half way on the door, and half way overlapping the gap between the door and the coop. So the trim covers the door gap, providing a "finished" appearance.
And with both doors:
The coop is "designed to be imperfect." You'll recall earlier I fastened and glued the door jambs. "Normal" door jambs are shimmed to be perfectly plumb. You can now see how that's going to shake out here, with non parallel gaps on the hinge sides of the doors. It's OK, it's just a chicken coop.
and
Oh, hey. Speaking of the door jambs. The coop breaks apart by loosening 12 bolts (It'll be 16 after the roof is attached...) But two of those bolts protrude through each of the door jambs. Those will interfere with the doors. So we have to mortice out a gap for them with a chisel.
Here's the start of the process. There are lots of YouTube videos on cutting a mortice, so I'm not going to give a lot of detail here. This is also how we're going to mortice the hinges. It pays to get a good sharp chisel. I've bought "off brand" chisels and they're not hard enough steel, and they visibly flatten and dull even when simply cutting wood. For this job I'm using a 1&1/4" chisel. You could use a 1&1/2 (might be better) or a 1".
Time to set the hinges. You can buy templates for using a router and they work really well. I don't set that many hinges, so I do it by hand the old fashioned way with a chisel. Like I said, you can find youtube videos on mortising hinges. So I'm not going to provide too much detail here. But it's critical to know that you can drive the pin out of the hinge, and you mount the jamb part, and the door part, then align the door and drive the pin back in. It is IMPOSSIBLE to hang a well fitting door of any size using a fixed pin hinge. (We'll use cheap miniature hinges later for the shutters - but they're only about a foot square.)
First, mark for the mortices. 2" from the bottom, and 2" from the top.
Cut the mortices. and set the hinges. I use 4" hinges because they're big and strong.
This picture is hard to understand, but if you sight down the top hinge pin hole, it must perfectly line up with the bottom hinge pin hole. If it doesn't, you're gonna hate your life.
A quick calculation sheet on setting the hinges on the door. It's critical that they line up exactly and perfectly with the jamb.
Setting up to cut the door mortice. You can see how it cuts across the fascia, the panel siding, and the door frame. This is why we took great care to fasten and glue those together, to make the whole of the thing an inseparable strong door. You can also see that the trim fascia has a knot exactly at the place where we need to chisel it. If you can avoid that with piece selection earlier, it's worth it to do so. But we can work with the knot. It's just not as neat.
We set the top hinge, and use only two screws to hold it in place for an early test fitting.
Uh oh! There's a problem. The door won't quite close. We need to set the hinge deeper into the door, to allow the door to protrude slightly further out from the door frame!
Recut the top mortice 1/8" further back into the door, and then cut the bottom mortice. When it comes to hinges, small adjustments are key. We fill the old screw holes by driving tiny shim splinter/shims into the old holes with a hammer before drilling the new ones. And again, we're only drilling the deeper two holes for each hinge until we confirm door fitment.
It is CRITICAL that the spacing on the hinges on the door EXACTLY matches the spacing on the hinges on the jamb. If they're off by as much as 1/16" you're gonna hate your life because you won't be able to hang the door. This is a 1/32" or better measurement. Take your time and get it right. Also remember to make sure the hinges align to the same exact depth on the door. I align the hinge, and then drill a SINGLE screwhole at the desired position and drive a screw to set it. Then drill and set the second screw.
Both hinges set on the door with a pair of screws, so we can do a final test fitting. At this point we EXPECT everything to line up right.
And it DOES. This is the view with the door fully open. But I've checked it through the full range of motion. You can see the second screws are going to drive into the joint between the siding and the stud. So I use a longer screw here ever-so-slightly angled to favor driving into the stud.
And here's the right side door/front panel in the closed position. it fits nearly perfectly. I used a chisel to remove a tiny bit of interfering wood so the door would swing clean. That's OK and is part of a normal door hanging fitment process.
You can still see that uneven door gap (wider at the top, narrower at the bottom.) that we highlighted earlier. If you're hanging a "real" door by leveling and shimming the jamb and building a full floating door frame, you don't have to put up with that. But this is a simplified hang. So it's OK and we don't care. It'll mean that the left and right won't align perfectly when closed. That's OK too. You gotta know what your goals are.
You previously saw the door frames. First, we simply panel over them.
Now, these are DOORs. So we want them to have maximum stiffness. So for the non-opening part, we also panel over the inside passive non-opening part with 1/8" plywood. As with the main panelling, use construction glue in addition to fasteners, for maximum strength and stiffness.
We need cutouts. One's going to have the pop door, and the other is going to have a shuttered vent. But figuring out where those cuts go requires looking at where the trim pieces are going to go on the doors. We don't want to WAIT until the trim pieces are installed, because then there won't be clearance for the saw. So we mock up with tiny pieces of trim, measure, and mark.
Take note of what you're looking at. On the right side, the shutter hinge will go so the shutter trim MEETS the trim that it will be hinged to.
But on the left side, the shutter trim will OVERLAP the door gap to provide a neat closure.
Do that on both doors, cut the openings in both doors, and look at it in place:
With those cuts in place, we can add the needed trim to the doors.
On the HINGE side, the trim is flush with the door edge. This is extremely important. But on the other three sides, the trim "splits the difference" half way on the door, and half way overlapping the gap between the door and the coop. So the trim covers the door gap, providing a "finished" appearance.
And with both doors:
The coop is "designed to be imperfect." You'll recall earlier I fastened and glued the door jambs. "Normal" door jambs are shimmed to be perfectly plumb. You can now see how that's going to shake out here, with non parallel gaps on the hinge sides of the doors. It's OK, it's just a chicken coop.
and
Oh, hey. Speaking of the door jambs. The coop breaks apart by loosening 12 bolts (It'll be 16 after the roof is attached...) But two of those bolts protrude through each of the door jambs. Those will interfere with the doors. So we have to mortice out a gap for them with a chisel.
Here's the start of the process. There are lots of YouTube videos on cutting a mortice, so I'm not going to give a lot of detail here. This is also how we're going to mortice the hinges. It pays to get a good sharp chisel. I've bought "off brand" chisels and they're not hard enough steel, and they visibly flatten and dull even when simply cutting wood. For this job I'm using a 1&1/4" chisel. You could use a 1&1/2 (might be better) or a 1".
Time to set the hinges. You can buy templates for using a router and they work really well. I don't set that many hinges, so I do it by hand the old fashioned way with a chisel. Like I said, you can find youtube videos on mortising hinges. So I'm not going to provide too much detail here. But it's critical to know that you can drive the pin out of the hinge, and you mount the jamb part, and the door part, then align the door and drive the pin back in. It is IMPOSSIBLE to hang a well fitting door of any size using a fixed pin hinge. (We'll use cheap miniature hinges later for the shutters - but they're only about a foot square.)
First, mark for the mortices. 2" from the bottom, and 2" from the top.
Cut the mortices. and set the hinges. I use 4" hinges because they're big and strong.
This picture is hard to understand, but if you sight down the top hinge pin hole, it must perfectly line up with the bottom hinge pin hole. If it doesn't, you're gonna hate your life.
A quick calculation sheet on setting the hinges on the door. It's critical that they line up exactly and perfectly with the jamb.
Setting up to cut the door mortice. You can see how it cuts across the fascia, the panel siding, and the door frame. This is why we took great care to fasten and glue those together, to make the whole of the thing an inseparable strong door. You can also see that the trim fascia has a knot exactly at the place where we need to chisel it. If you can avoid that with piece selection earlier, it's worth it to do so. But we can work with the knot. It's just not as neat.
We set the top hinge, and use only two screws to hold it in place for an early test fitting.
Uh oh! There's a problem. The door won't quite close. We need to set the hinge deeper into the door, to allow the door to protrude slightly further out from the door frame!
Recut the top mortice 1/8" further back into the door, and then cut the bottom mortice. When it comes to hinges, small adjustments are key. We fill the old screw holes by driving tiny shim splinter/shims into the old holes with a hammer before drilling the new ones. And again, we're only drilling the deeper two holes for each hinge until we confirm door fitment.
It is CRITICAL that the spacing on the hinges on the door EXACTLY matches the spacing on the hinges on the jamb. If they're off by as much as 1/16" you're gonna hate your life because you won't be able to hang the door. This is a 1/32" or better measurement. Take your time and get it right. Also remember to make sure the hinges align to the same exact depth on the door. I align the hinge, and then drill a SINGLE screwhole at the desired position and drive a screw to set it. Then drill and set the second screw.
Both hinges set on the door with a pair of screws, so we can do a final test fitting. At this point we EXPECT everything to line up right.
And it DOES. This is the view with the door fully open. But I've checked it through the full range of motion. You can see the second screws are going to drive into the joint between the siding and the stud. So I use a longer screw here ever-so-slightly angled to favor driving into the stud.
And here's the right side door/front panel in the closed position. it fits nearly perfectly. I used a chisel to remove a tiny bit of interfering wood so the door would swing clean. That's OK and is part of a normal door hanging fitment process.
You can still see that uneven door gap (wider at the top, narrower at the bottom.) that we highlighted earlier. If you're hanging a "real" door by leveling and shimming the jamb and building a full floating door frame, you don't have to put up with that. But this is a simplified hang. So it's OK and we don't care. It'll mean that the left and right won't align perfectly when closed. That's OK too. You gotta know what your goals are.
Attachments
Last edited:
Excellent!
Are you going to test your disassembly/assembly before putting chickens in there?
Are you going to test your disassembly/assembly before putting chickens in there?
- Thread starter
- #59
bjmoose
Songster
I have to. We live on a small 70x100 city lot and there's no way to get the completed coop into the backyard without taking it apart first. It's too big to fit or be carried through the side yard gates.
Ha!!I have to. We live on a small 70x100 city lot and there's no way to get the completed coop into the backyard without taking it apart first. It's too big to fit or be carried through the side yard gates.
Right after I posted, the thought crossed my mind that you might have to disassemble to get it out of the 'shop'.
Similar threads
New posts New threads Active threads
-
Latest threads
-
-
-
-
Favorite Hen That Lays Your Fav Color is?
- Started by Three Stents
- Replies: 2
-
-
-
Threads with more replies in the last 15 days
-
-
BYC's 52-week Photography Challenge. Week 4: (Jan 26 - Feb 1, 2026). Theme: Books!- Started by thecatumbrella
- Replies: 64
-
Wind chill doesn’t count, right?- Started by Lulu-vt
- Replies: 58
-
-
-
