A Chicken Coop Christmas Ornament

[bjmoose]

I'll post up the ventilation calculation next week, but with both those doors open there's going to be a total of about 7.5 sq feet. There's a big open window on the far side opposite the nesting boxes, an even bigger window on the back, space you can't see under the eaves, and I've yet to cut a couple 5" round holes right at the peak.

 

[bjmoose]

I've been working without posting, so this will be long with a lot of updates.

I promised ventilation calculations:

Front Doors (when open) 2x 12"x12" = 288 sq in = 2 sq ft
Left side window: 18"x11" = 200 sq in = 1 & 3/8 sq ft
Back window: 48"x8" = 384 sq in = 2 & 5/8 sq ft
Under eaves: 2x36"x2.5" = 180 sq in = 1 & 2/8 sq ft
Gable round holes 4x 5" dia = 4x2.5x2.5x3.14=80 sq in = 4/8 sq ft

Total (doors open) = 7 & 3/4 sq ft.

Gable round holes? What gable round holes?? We want some ventilation as high as possible to let the warm moist air out. So let's cut them. Using 5" hole saw.

Exactly WHERE do we cut those? Well, I used the hole saw from the INSIDE to locate where the holes could go without cutting the framing.

I cut the vent window in the back using a jigsaw. (Earlier, it was a solid back waiting for vent calculations to be done to determine the size.) Now add trim around it.

And add trim around the left side window, which has been cut since the beginning.

We need hardware cloth over the non closing windows. Attached with a mix of #8 1/2" screws that only go into the siding, along with some longer screws that set into the trim on the other side of the window. Large fender washers over the screw heads.

This photo shows the ventilation space under the eaves, and the hardware cloth covering those openings.

And cloth the gable holes.

Now, when we set the roof, it was clear that it's a little fragile. I hadn't built rafter reinforcements before, because there's not space for them on all four rafters. But there IS space for rafter reinforcement beams on the MIDDLE TWO rafters. So let's brace up the roof before we disassemble the whole thing to move it.

OK, it's now almost done. we're going to have a big family "chicken coop raising." Everyone's involved in getting it out of the garage where it's been being built, and into the back yard. This sequence will show how the coop comes apart (relatively) easily for transport. There are a lot of photos, but the whole disassembly/move/reassembly only took about an hour.

Get ready to raise the roof! (The garage door will have to be closed, to provide enough vertical space!) Ready....

And Lift!

And shift!

And out the door...

Here's the side passage we've got to take it through. It's possible I have the smallest yard in all of "backyard chickens."

Easy does it...

Careful...

The roof was the hardest. Let's come back and detach the front:

and carry it out...

And the back...

Now from here, we can detach the two sides from the floor, and set the floor on the ground. Each of those pieces is smaller and (relatively) easy to carry.

Now, reassemble on the grass in the backyard. Not the final location yet, as we still need good access all around to finish a few things and most importantly to paint it!
Everyone gets involved, even Grandma (age 77!)
Those plywood "tabs" allow the floor to "rest" on the side cross members, so we don't have to hold its weight while assembling, we only have to hold everything roughly in position so it doesn't all fall over. I'm furiously inserting bolts in the background.

OK, it's almost free-standing again.

Put the back back on.

And bolt it up. The whole thing is held together with twelve 3/8" bolts of varying lengths.
There are four for the floor, four for the back, and four for the front. The roof just stays in place with weight and friction. I suppose you'd have to bolt it down in hurricane country, but not here.

Now the front:

Aligning it is a little tricky.

Once it's bolted in, time for the roof. We need four folks, one for each corner.

Tolerances between the rafters and the front and back are close, so settling it into place takes a bit of shifting, finagling, and persuasion. Ready for the final phase:

Just a few things to go now. First is vinyl flooring for easier cleaning. We've had this leftover scrap since we refloored a bathroom a few years back. Start by flatting it out, since it's been rolled up. Yes, those *are* Girl Scout cookies holding it down.

Trim it a few inches oversized and plop it into the coop. Don't go too large. It's actually easier to align and trim neatly if you've put in a piece trimmed to be only a couple inches oversized. Now, the thing you need to know here is: I absolutely suck at flooring installation. So there are NOT going to be any closeups here. That would just highlight the ugly flaws... Starting now. This piece is too big. We only want to be a LITTLE oversized. This is a LOT oversized.

Once it's in place, roll or fold it back to reveal half the floor:

Glue that down, trim, roll/press it flat, and then fold back to repeat on the other side. Sorry, no photos at all once I started working with glue. DO wear gloves. That stuff is messy! Glued down.

Mrs bjmoose wanted me to cove the flooring around the edges to help confine the mess. No way was I doing that much work. But I tacked down a little bit of corner cove trim to help hold down the edges and help keep any "liquid" confined for cleanup.

We need some chicken perches. On a small coop, they should be removable for cleaning. They're 2x3, that runs along the depth of the coop (front to back) supported by "T" brackets on the ends:

Here they are in place. They're roughly about 18" apart. Those brackets rest on the roof supports, and you can see the additional trim pieces to hold the perches in place side-to-side so they don't shift around. But they're easy to lift up and out.

Really getting close to the end now. Most of the roofing nails were aligned with the rafters. But a few needed to be on a different offset line, and those are sticking down into the coop.

Dremel to the rescue. I cut them off with a cutoff wheel, then smoothed them with a stone. I probably don't need to point out this is *NOT* recommended practice when roofing your *real* house.

OK, a little sanding of a few spots, a little caulk, and I proclaim this coop "DONE" and ready for paint.

Some fastidious, persnickety folks *might* point out that there's no ramp. But since it doesn't FASTEN to the coop, I'm calling that part of the pen, which is phase 2. :-D

 

[aart]

Awesome...Congrats!!

 

[Soon2BChixMom]

Wow. Very nice!

 

[Kiki]

I love it!!!
Great job!!

 

[jthornton]

Looking good!

JT

 

[bjmoose]

And today, finally, finished the pen. Not a lot of progress construction photos on that. The run is just a bunch of 2x4 framing with hardware cloth tacked to it. As with the coop, it's a bunch of individual modular panels that can be taken apart and transported, if there's ever future need to do so.

This is the best photo of the painted coop, taken before all the panels are in place.

Here's the coop and pen with the door open. The roof is just hardware cloth, but I did a slope for two reasons:
1. Off to the left, it's needs to be low to fit under the trees, but it would be uncomfortable if the whole thing was only that high
2. There's a nice slope in case later we decide we want to add a waterproof plastic panel roof.

The coop through the open door.

...and my wacky chicken ladder

 

[bjmoose]

I've aggregated the information in this thread into an article:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/a-modular-ikea-style-coop-for-an-urban-backyard.73775/