Thanks. I am devoting enough thought to this that I may have to start a blog. This is not my first cool project, but I am getting a bit "cocky" about this one (and love that there is an entire community of resources). Unfortunately, I am emotionally invested enough in the final product that I may cry if/when the chicks "fowl" it with feces. (Note to self, stop with the bird puns.)
We girls are always rightThanks guys. I sort of take other people's experiences with breast implants and tattoos to heart. Women always seem to go back in upsize their cup size when one surgery would have been so much cheaper. Someone who gets one tattoo usually gets ten. This is my chicken coop version of going straight for the double D's and an inked bodysuit. Overbuilding and allowing for future expansion from the outset will make it far easier if a few chickens are simply not enough.I would rather build it right the first time when I am still in the honeymoon stage, with a flood of energy for a new project. After all, I am motivated to finish so that I can get to the really fun part...acquiring chickens. Retrofitting and tweaking can certainly be done...but is far easier to procrastinate about. The significant other is even on board for this project. We usually cannot agree on things because of very different philosophies. We both prioritize functionality/efficiency. However, he has an Occams's Razor approach: that the cheapest/easiest plan that meets your needs is the correct one. I do not want to take out a loan for materials, but put a high value on aesthetics and am happy to devise elegant solutions that may be difficult to design/implement. His vegetable garden was fenced in hogwire and t-posts, mine in decorative wrought iron widow covers used as a fence. His plan for a chicken coop involved dismantled shipping crates. Mine incorporates insulated glass door inserts. This usually ends with one of us throwing our arms up in exasperation and the other using building the project themselves (but exactly how they wanted it). To each their own. While, my current plan is fairly high-end, it is comprised of discarded materials from the home renovation (roofing shingles, lap siding, windows, etc) and inexpensive finds from my treasure-hunting (leaded glass door inserts, wrought iron lanterns, iron trellises) to get him on board with the upcycled, eye-candy version. We both think that our solution is best,...but I am the one that's right.
Honestly I was the same way. I really wanted tons of windows and a large coop, but I compromised and was not happy with the end results. Our new coop is actually a HUGE barn that I hope to paint/stain a nice barn red and I'd love to put a proper garage door on the front. Always build bigger. In chicken coops, bigger IS better if you don't have a limit on how many hens you can have 
Dutch doors sound like a fantastic idea. I have reconfigured the back side of the henhouse to include them. I am creating two identical 3' square openings along the 7' back wall. Each 3' square opening will be comprised of three doors, a 3'w x 1.5'h door that is hinged on the bottom to open down and two 1.5'w x 1.5'h centered above it that open out from the center. The logic is that that side of the coop is designated to be 3' off the privacy fence to allow running a push mower behind it. Constructing the doors this way means that that they have an 18" clearance with another 18" of free space. I may move the proposed coop another foot off the fence to give a bit more breathing room if I am going to access that side regularly. Thanks for another great idea to tweak my design!
