Our coop has gone through many a change during the planning. We are trying to make it look like a playhouse, so we can have undercover chickens.
It is 4x8, and the human door is 6 ft tall.
We originally wanted the one that looked like Cezanne's Garden coop from Judy Pangman's chicken coop book, but wanted it bigger... and, you know how it goes... the more you build, the more "ideas" pop in your head. I likedLilBizzy's coop, but forgot about it, until we started adding the cedar boards. Then, I remembered it & looked it up... it looks a bit like it.
I am so proud of my hubby, since we have NO building skills, except my working alongside my dad & building walls for the inside of our house...
The Plan
(so you can see what we thought we'd have, and what we ended up with
.)
Building the walls
My dog thinks we are building her a house and has been sooo happy.
Putting the walls up
Hubby & I posing for the daughter to take our pic.
I was going to use a lot of scrap wood I had found beneath our new house (We've been here since February, so ignore the messy yard... we are working on the front first.
)... so, I went from the Cezanne's Garden coop to thinking it'd be a clapboard type coop... (I also found red paint beneath our house, too.)
Here is the egg box I made with some wood recycled from beneath my house... We THOUGHT it was going to be painted, and "playhouse-y", so, I decorated it like a mailbox:
<---inside of box. Needs to be painted, still.
BUT, figured out that the wood idea SEEMED easier than we thought... there were gaps, and not enough wood... so, we went to Lowes, intent on buying some siding. The siding wasn't all that cute to us, and hubby said, "Why don't we buy fence boards. I think that'll look cute." (Gotta love a man who says "cute"
) So, I mentioned remembering seeing someone else's coop like that, and that I KNOW it will be cute, because I loved hers... so, we loaded up on the planks, and this is how far we got on day one:
It was 109 out, and sweltering, but we stayed the course until we ran out of screws.
A couple days later, we had it all sided, and added a door. Here is my personal Ziggy:
Beneath my house, I found a gigantic box of fencing nails with square heads. I spray painted them black, and attached them so they'd look like those board and batten type screwed doors...
Front of the coop, as of today:
View from the chicken run side:
Back/side view:
ALMOST ready for my girls...
Things I still need to do as of 7/7/09:
1. Cover the "mail" box/egg box with wood slats to make it look like a crate. I did this before we decided to make it look like Little House On The Prairie & the mailbox just doesn't fit anymore
2. Get another hinge/lock for the bottom of the door.
3. Reinforce the bottom of the people door. (The holes of the dog eared fence slats makes me nervous!)
4. Make & install chicken door.
5. Attach egg door cover & lock.
6. Add trim around the windows.
7. Put in the new plywood floor for reinforcement.
8. Paint plywood.
9. Add the roof peak connector thingy & shingles
10. dig trenches & put hardware cloth around the bottom of the coop.
11. Add river rock to the top of the hardware cloth.
12. Hardware cloth on the spaces between the roof and the walls.
13. lay linolium.
14. build roosts.
15. BUILD A RUN!
16. Make a "How we built this" page with more pictures!
We originally wanted the one that looked like Cezanne's Garden coop from Judy Pangman's chicken coop book, but wanted it bigger... and, you know how it goes... the more you build, the more "ideas" pop in your head. I likedLilBizzy's coop, but forgot about it, until we started adding the cedar boards. Then, I remembered it & looked it up... it looks a bit like it.
The Plan
(so you can see what we thought we'd have, and what we ended up with
Building the walls
My dog thinks we are building her a house and has been sooo happy.
Putting the walls up
Hubby & I posing for the daughter to take our pic.
I was going to use a lot of scrap wood I had found beneath our new house (We've been here since February, so ignore the messy yard... we are working on the front first.
Here is the egg box I made with some wood recycled from beneath my house... We THOUGHT it was going to be painted, and "playhouse-y", so, I decorated it like a mailbox:
BUT, figured out that the wood idea SEEMED easier than we thought... there were gaps, and not enough wood... so, we went to Lowes, intent on buying some siding. The siding wasn't all that cute to us, and hubby said, "Why don't we buy fence boards. I think that'll look cute." (Gotta love a man who says "cute"
It was 109 out, and sweltering, but we stayed the course until we ran out of screws.
A couple days later, we had it all sided, and added a door. Here is my personal Ziggy:
Beneath my house, I found a gigantic box of fencing nails with square heads. I spray painted them black, and attached them so they'd look like those board and batten type screwed doors...
Front of the coop, as of today:
View from the chicken run side:
Back/side view:
ALMOST ready for my girls...
Things I still need to do as of 7/7/09:
1. Cover the "mail" box/egg box with wood slats to make it look like a crate. I did this before we decided to make it look like Little House On The Prairie & the mailbox just doesn't fit anymore
2. Get another hinge/lock for the bottom of the door.
3. Reinforce the bottom of the people door. (The holes of the dog eared fence slats makes me nervous!)
4. Make & install chicken door.
5. Attach egg door cover & lock.
6. Add trim around the windows.
7. Put in the new plywood floor for reinforcement.
8. Paint plywood.
9. Add the roof peak connector thingy & shingles
10. dig trenches & put hardware cloth around the bottom of the coop.
11. Add river rock to the top of the hardware cloth.
12. Hardware cloth on the spaces between the roof and the walls.
13. lay linolium.
14. build roosts.
15. BUILD A RUN!
16. Make a "How we built this" page with more pictures!
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