Just posting up ours for moral support and a plug for imagination being as useful as a rip saw:
This was our daughter's playhouse years ago and was slowly weathering away so, I guess, it qualifies as a `found object' coop.
A bit of sweat and Baer wood treatment later (field tested by generations of raccoons):
A warm, dry climate and minimal predator load allows for construction with lighter materials. Good quality sheds can be constructed using something like the EZ framer kit. A circular saw is all that is really required and the quality is much better than pre-builts costing $200 more (our turkey shed was up in a day and ran $400). Maybe invest in some `social' engineering, i.e., enlist friends and relatives to do the actual construction.
EZ framer turkey shed:
Don't worry about `cute' just focus on utility and have fun!
Thanks for all the replies everyone! None of your coops look that bad-in fact, some are pretty nice!
Once I rested and soaked my sore foot for awhile I decided it really isn't that bad. After all, the chickens don't seem to mind that it is not as aesthetically pleasing as I intended it to be. Like my husband said, chickens don't really seem like the Martha Stewart Living type.
I'll take some pictures and post them later today.
It's great to see what everyone is doing. I appreciate all your ingenuity! It makes me appreciate the coop we got on Craigslist that is very functional, albeit not perfect. I am going to work at fixing it up. Thanks for the inspiration everyone!
My coop is done from left overs...Hurricane Ike hit us hard, we picked up peoples knocked down fences...our coop door is an actual fence door with hinges, our left over dog 10x10 kennel we hadnt used in almost 2yrs....
it was hard, I have back injuries, and DH works alot...I had to take out all the old nails out of the boards, seperate them, pull out only the good wood...we still have a large pile of wood in our yard for more coops
didnt know a thing about chickens!!!! so our nest boxes were just shelves open two on each side to fit 2 chckens on each shelf...Well it didnt work!!! the roost was even with the shelves...
DUMMY ME...so now, we have placed from resale shops or trashed book shelves side ways as nest and they lay in them...for the roost I hung branches over the top of the inside of the coop even with the ventilation area that runs across the front of the coop
Ever since then they only roost there and love it!!!
branches from our yard and all inside the coop its now covered in deep litter...