I applaud your honesty!! I'd much rather spend the money on what I am happy with and the neighbors won't complain about. DH would be more upset if he found me out dumpster-diving!
We've spend about $120 on hinges, wire and paint. All of the wood we got for free though. Our coop is 4x8 and about 7 feet tall. If we had planned better we could have spent about $40 less - I should have been checking the mis-tinted paint for a month or two before we started building.
I have no idea what my hubby has spent. We are not exactly allowed to have chickens in my neighborhood, but I would rather apologize later than ask permission now. We are keeping the coop on the down-low and blending it nicely with the swing set and the shed.
I had surgery last Tuesday... so my hubby is in the giving mood... he started building me a little coop this weekend. I came home and he had it half built. All new material... and we are going to Lowes tonight to pick out the "siding" for the cute little coop. Our yard has a 6' privacy fence, so no one can really see in.
He was the one that stomped his feet and said we don't need no chickens! No, we don't... but I want them. We have a nice sized back yard and now have 3 little bantam chickens. He spoils them more than I do now. They spend a lot of time in our fenced in garden, and love to run around on the patio when we are sitting out back. They currently have a very nice cage in the sunroom and know where the sliding doors are to ask to be let in and out. They are the coolest pets and I don't care if they ever lay an egg.
ours is an 8x8 coop and 8x16 run. We bought all but the tin for the roof and the 4x4s for the run. Not counting the $200 nail gun to make things faster, and DH feel appreciated, we're at arround $700 now.
However DH said he didn't want the coop to be an "eyesore" or blow over in a stiff wind so it's pretty industrial. One day I'll get my page made.
My DH and I were in agreement that we wanted to build a nice coop, with decent materials and to be safe, warm in the winter, cool in the summer, plenty of ventilation, and that our girls would like and have plents of room in. We ended up spending close to $1,500.00 on the coop and another $200 or so on the run. The only thing we didn't do was use 1/2" hardware cloth on the run. So we will eventually re-do it and change the 1.5" garden fencing to 1/2" hardware cloth.
I spent 867.22 on first coop (8x4) and 706.34 for second coop (5x6). I think most ppl don't keep track of all the trips to home depot. I kept track of every penny. Hardware is expensive, paint is expensive, hardware cloth is too expensive and we used 2x4 fence for both runs. this price includes 2 automatic door openers, windows, 11x25 and a 12x7 clear covered runs, stain for wood, nails, you name it every dime spent.
I think most would be shocked if they kept such records. I had used materials, left over materials and went to the restore place for cheap paint, got fence on craigslist. and it was still expensive.
so on both coops and both runs I spent... 1573.56
But they are beautiful coops and I am proud to have said we built both of them.
It has a cement floor, insulation through out, five 8X10 breeder coops, one 8X16 layer coop and each has a 8X16 enclosed run.
I have two other coops, one is 8X10 and houses two seperate breeder coops and another 14X16 that houses one breeder coop. The latter cost about $2,000.00 by the time we insulated it and made the run and the second aroung $1,200.00 as it was built from scratch.
Well, my husband and I decided to build something that was functional AND looked nice in the backyard.
(And then there was this guy who was really looking for something to do, so we caved in and told him he could build the coop. That obviously made it a lot more expensive, but gave him a job for a little while.)
We built a nice 4x6 "castle coop" with a 10x20 fenced/covered run, with an electric fence around the whole structure. The coop is 1.5 ft off the ground and on skids and the support structure of the run is made from PVC plumbing pipes to keep it light. The idea is to keep it sort of mobile, so we can shift it from one side of the garden patch to the other on a yearly basis.
Materials were about $700 (total ~$1400 with labor)
My 7 girls will have to lay pretty well to return that investment...