Hi - I am converting this old porch into my coop. It is an old building that we plunked down over our basement well, and the whole building is going to be moved in a few weeks. In the meantime, I'd like to clean it out and move my 5 wk old chicks into it.
I found the missing front door and will be installing it ASAP. The glaring problem is that there is no back wall on it. It used to sit up against a mobile home originally.
FIRST ISSUE:
I am going to site it in my old garden, it will be facing the road & sidewalk so I'd like the front to look reasonably nice. The back will have a door to the enclosed chicken run. I would like to have egg boxes on the front that I can get to from the sidewalk. So I need to either:
Build the missing back wall to include a door and egg boxes and use this as the front of the coop, and somehow make it look nice
OR
Add egg boxes onto that existing building front, and build the back wall to be the access to the run area. I am leaning toward doing it this way, because the front of it already looks nice.
Also consider the back of the building does not have a nice looking eve because it was made to sit against a house. I am not sure how to make the roof look good without doing a LOT of work, pulling back roofing and adding an extension... Though in thinking about it, I could make a nice roof extension and porch over the sidewalk to deal with the missing roof eve. Hmmmmm. Tempting thought, though it sounds like a lot more work.
So, those of you knowlegable about construction, which option will be better to build, look nicer, etc? I obviously need to get that back wall built before the chicks can move in, so I'd like to get busy on it this week. Errr, probably tomorrow actually.
SECOND ISSUE:
The walls are covered with plaster, but it's delapidated around the edges by the back wall (see second photo). I think that will be OK since I am going to build a wall there. Should I cut the plaster back and then build the wall? Or do I frame the new wall right over the plaster? How do I cut plaster??
That's it for now. I am sure I will be asking more questions as I go along.
Cheers,
Michelle
I found the missing front door and will be installing it ASAP. The glaring problem is that there is no back wall on it. It used to sit up against a mobile home originally.
FIRST ISSUE:
I am going to site it in my old garden, it will be facing the road & sidewalk so I'd like the front to look reasonably nice. The back will have a door to the enclosed chicken run. I would like to have egg boxes on the front that I can get to from the sidewalk. So I need to either:
Build the missing back wall to include a door and egg boxes and use this as the front of the coop, and somehow make it look nice
OR
Add egg boxes onto that existing building front, and build the back wall to be the access to the run area. I am leaning toward doing it this way, because the front of it already looks nice.
Also consider the back of the building does not have a nice looking eve because it was made to sit against a house. I am not sure how to make the roof look good without doing a LOT of work, pulling back roofing and adding an extension... Though in thinking about it, I could make a nice roof extension and porch over the sidewalk to deal with the missing roof eve. Hmmmmm. Tempting thought, though it sounds like a lot more work.
So, those of you knowlegable about construction, which option will be better to build, look nicer, etc? I obviously need to get that back wall built before the chicks can move in, so I'd like to get busy on it this week. Errr, probably tomorrow actually.
SECOND ISSUE:
The walls are covered with plaster, but it's delapidated around the edges by the back wall (see second photo). I think that will be OK since I am going to build a wall there. Should I cut the plaster back and then build the wall? Or do I frame the new wall right over the plaster? How do I cut plaster??
That's it for now. I am sure I will be asking more questions as I go along.
Cheers,
Michelle