A work in progress

[Folly's place]

I'm dazzled by your industry and enthusiasm! Especially as 'walking wounded' and pregnant! It all sounds really good, but do try to take it easy too.
More pictures!
Mary

 

[K0k0shka]

Lots of potential here! And yeah, wow, that's a lot of enthusiasm to be doing this pregnant! (though I was in the wood shop building when I was 8 months pregnant too, haha). Good luck with everything, especially the combination of newborn + birds, and do post pictures as you go along!

 

[milkandpeaches]

Thank you! I thought it would be a good time to post an update.

SO a lot has happened!

The first day after my post it was POURING down rain. Theres a very muddy hill to climb up and down to get to our coop (we're building stairs) and with my fractured hips and pregnancy I didnt want to fight it all day.

The next day we realized we couldnt cut wood because my partners Dad took apart the miter saw. We spent the day buying supplies and grocery shopping (in hindsight we couldve done that on our rainy day, but we previously thought we had everything we needed) It wouldnt of took long, but I like to browse for inspiration. We bought 5 gallons of white paint from the restore and I found a great saw on craigslist 2 miles away for 30 dollars. We also picked up 30cu ft of pine bedding and found a local seller of different feeds for our flock/rabbits.

We finally got to work. I started pulling the blackberry bushes away from the left outer side until I noticed SEVEN wasps nests. I am severely allergic to wasps and immediately stopped. My partner sprayed for bees as I hid inside.

As my boyfriend took down all the pre-existing chicken wire, I got to work painting. The paint maybe wasn't necessary, but it did look super nice. Now the whole outer/inner color scheme is white, natural wood, and metal.

Painting is done!

We took the sheet metal we had found, washed it, measured it, and cut it to fit the back of our Ikea Cube nest boxes. I found 4 1 1/2" pieces of wood to attach to the fronts so the boxes had an edge.

Nest boxes are done!

I brought more tires up (also a pain because they were all downhill and heavy.) They've been washed and are currently waiting to be placed.

Blackberry bushes still need to be demolished, but because of the wasps I decided to give it a day to see if they come back, but in the mean time my partner added more paneling underneath the shed to prevent digging predators. When the blackberries are cleared we will be adding large sheet rock around the perimeters as an extra pre-caution.

Inner ground protection - done!

Before we called it a day we worked together to put the chicken wire back up. This wasnt too big of a job as the wire is only a small portion of the coop.

Chicken wire is done!

Maybe we're not where we wanted to be at this point, BUT we do have a brooder prepared and the lady we are picking our ducks up from postponed the delivery for tomorrow. We have all day today to work on the coop and approximately a week before we will move the ducklings in. Dont worry they wont just be thrown in there! They will still have heat lamps available to them, there are just too many of them to keep in our brooder.

Our next to do list
-A new door
-Window coverings
-Paneling back walls (just for aesthetics)
-Clear Blackberry bushes
-Lay down sheet rock

We will probably only install the wood pieces for the window covering sliders and maybe work on the wall panelings today. My body is extremely sore today and the last thing I would want to do is too much one day then nothing the next.

Pictures are coming soon!