Das Hühnerhaus

[Alabama Jack]

Girls aren't scheduled to arrive until 12 January, but I wanted to be ready, so we went ahead and bought an EcoGlow20 straight from Brinsea. They seem to have the cheapest prices and they post coupons on facebook for almost every holiday. Now, if we can get some dry and warm weather for continued construction...

 

[Alabama Jack]

Got a lot done today, but wasn't able to finish the roof in-time for the rain that's coming here tomorrow. I ended up putting a tarp over the whole thing tonight, and will unwrap on Wednesday when I have time and weather to work on it.

Framed the front windows, the shed door, two service doors on the back side, and one service door between the coop and the run. The nest boxes will go right below the windows. I'm kicking around the idea of making the service doors convertible, so I can just have a hardware cloth door in the summertime, and plywood in the winter.



Framing for the service doors on the back side. This is where I plan to access the poop board. I may add some cripple studs under the framing. I plan to section off the top areas by half and add hardware cloth and a hinged plywood cover for max ventilation in the summer.



Framing for the front windows. I think I will do vents above as well.



Sheated the majority of the coop and shed to give the structure stability before doing the roof. I will go back and cut out the shed door, windows and vents. I watched a trick on youtube to do this. Put screws through the corners from the inside, string chalk line between the screws and snap it. Then use a sawzall or circ saw to cut it out.


Gable trusses installed. 4" overhang on front and 1.5' overhang on back. We plan to continue the front roof line 6' out in front of the coop and put some 4x4's in to hold that roof.




It's tarped right now, as I couldn't finish the roof before nightfall. Now that I have time, thinking about a cupola instead of a turbo vent. Thoughts?


For the roof, I first installed the two end trusses, after constructing them on the ground with a placeholder for the ridgeboard. Once they were up, I put the ridge board between the two ends. Then I started adding the trusses, by tacking them to the ridge board with a single nail, nailing to the top plate and coming back to nail to the ridge. You should lay the ridge board on top of the top plate before doing any of this to mark the spots for the trusses to line up with the vertical studs.

 

[N F C]

I vote for a cupola! That would be a unique touch. You did make a lot of progress today, way to go!

 

[Alabama Jack]

Thanks North Florida, I'm now set on a cupola.

Got a little more done. Sorry for all the pictures, but maybe it will help somebody out in the future. Plan to finish the porch roof and shingle this weekend. Rain is coming Monday, so I need to get 'er done!

Got the gable overhangs done and the porch posts set in concrete. Test fitting a 2x4 to figure out the slope in the first picture.


Quick set sackcrete. Sort of followed the directions. The tube in the background was scrap I had laying around, but we didn't use it.


Uprights are about 6' from the structure. We will use a doubled up 2x6 as a header. We're thinking about building a small retaining wall and filling with river rock, or pouring more concrete for under the porch.



Started the roof sheathing. Went a lot easier than I thought for the first two sheats. Using a handheld circ saw to cut the plywood to measure up to the trusses. Also did a fascia board before starting. Key is snapping a chalk line along the bottom of the trusses to make sure they are all the same length of overhang. I also plan to


Another view of the backside, with the two service door openings and fascia board.


One comment on this build, compared to the Wichita design. I'm right at around $1000 in wood and concrete right now, if I hadn't got a lot of the timber for cheap. The Wichita or similar builds are definitely more cost effective than building 16" on center construction with a concrete slab. On the other hand, I'm pretty tickled with the way it is turning out.




Plan on doing a ridge vent and cupola. Not sure if I can get the cupola done before Monday. Should I just shingle the whole ridge line, but leave the ridge venting off the center section??

 

[aart]

"Not sure if I can get the cupola done before Monday. Should I just shingle the whole ridge line, but leave the ridge venting off the center section??"

Makes sense to me....but you'll want to have flashing around the cupola to under the roof shingles, so keep that in mind.

 

[Alabama Jack]

As another note on the sheathing, I started installing the plywood and nailed the first two trusses, then I snapped a chalk line for the last truss. Then I used the circ saw withe plywood propped up a 1/2 inch to cut the line.

 

[Alabama Jack]

Make that $1,500 after roofing materials. Porch came out pretty nice. Still trying to figure out the edges and how to tie the lines together aesthetically.



Got most of the sheathing done on the roof. Ran out of plywood, so had make a run to the store. Another lesson learned on nails, the small box of nailgun nails was not enough. Had to go back and buy the bigger box (4,000?), since it's a ton cheaper to buy in bulk.



Looking back, here's a picture of the coop I was planning to build at first from plans on ebay. Darn chicken math...

 

[Alabama Jack]

Here's the roofing calculator I used. Pretty nice for doing the bird's mouth cuts.

http://www.blocklayer.com/Roof/GableEng.aspx

 

[N F C]

Too funny...chicken math strikes again!

 

[Alabama Jack]

Got the roofing paper, drip edges, and about 1/3 of the shingles up. Rain is coming around 1200 tomorrow, so we'll have a busy morning. Roofing sucks, but luckily my DW can swing a hammer! That's her on the roof!



Quickly ran out of light. On a run to home depot, wife was able to instal hardware cloth over the ridge vent:



We bought the lightest color shingle we could find; "cedar." Almost looks like wood shingles...



And yes, she was using the 20 oz hammer. Gotta love German women!