darrell-sounds like you are on the right track. now think about the egg color you want. do you want brown, tan, white, green, blue, chocolate brown, tan, etc-possibilities are endless! i personally love my variations of colors i get. if you want eggs-enough to sustain you/family you need to look into breeds for egg laying. and if you don't want the headache of broodiness look into that too...
i have red productions which are the best egg layers..only one has gone broody which is fine with me, going to start hatching in April. mine are mixed breeds of this and that, from the hatchery. they are wonderful tempered, wonderful egg layers, and pretty and quiet. i haven't had a bit of issue with these breeds and we just love them all. now you can always go with the fancy kind, we plan on getting some silkies in around april, we also have polish too, and easter eggers that lay all kinds of green eggs.
you can always get hatchery birds, some even sell started pullets, but they do cost a pretty penny. it doesn't cost anymore to keep pure breed/heritage breeds. so you can always check around your local area to see if you can find pure's around you. lots of people have pure's and it is worth the money, but it will be soooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard to find started pullets.
you can do like i did, i knew the hardship to get ones already started so maybe look into getting ones that are freshly hatched or a few months old, get ones that are "muts" easier to find then start building up your flock in pure's..thats what i am doing. i wanted ones that were laying machines, so we can sell and eat the eggs, now we know the pure's we want, so that's our mission now...i can always hook you up with babies in a few months
GOOD LUCK!!