I've been lurking on the forums here for a while and fell in love with the playhouse coops. Since the coop is going to sit right outside my dining room window I wanted something super cute and not an eyesore. We also have very limited carpentry skills so it needed to be somewhat easy to build.
I found the playhouse on Craigslist, brand new in box for a little of nothing. First problem we needed to tackle was the height. I wanted to be able to walk in to clean it. We built a simple box for the playhouse to sit on.
Next up we added hardiboard to the sides and added a nesting box. We used the plans from here for the nesting box. The boxes ended up lower than we had expected so down the road we're going to try to figure out how to make the lid lift up so I won't have to squat down so low to get eggs.
We added a door, caulked any cracks to make it waterproof and did some painting...well...a LOT of painting...I'm still painting!
We added vinyl flooring and roosting bars. We also added an outside storage area on top of the nesting box (not pictured).
Then the rain came and we realized we had no way to keep water out. On Freecycle.org I found glass panes from a garage door that someone was giving away. We cut these to size and made little windows. To our surprize the plastic frame windows from the playhouse fit inside the frames we made allowing us to keep some of the cute factor. Each of the windows has lift off hinges so we can take them off, prop them open or close them completely.
And now we're working on the run. We got the posts set last weekend. This weekend we'll level the tops and add cross bracing. Stay tuned!!
I found the playhouse on Craigslist, brand new in box for a little of nothing. First problem we needed to tackle was the height. I wanted to be able to walk in to clean it. We built a simple box for the playhouse to sit on.
Next up we added hardiboard to the sides and added a nesting box. We used the plans from here for the nesting box. The boxes ended up lower than we had expected so down the road we're going to try to figure out how to make the lid lift up so I won't have to squat down so low to get eggs.
We added a door, caulked any cracks to make it waterproof and did some painting...well...a LOT of painting...I'm still painting!
We added vinyl flooring and roosting bars. We also added an outside storage area on top of the nesting box (not pictured).
Then the rain came and we realized we had no way to keep water out. On Freecycle.org I found glass panes from a garage door that someone was giving away. We cut these to size and made little windows. To our surprize the plastic frame windows from the playhouse fit inside the frames we made allowing us to keep some of the cute factor. Each of the windows has lift off hinges so we can take them off, prop them open or close them completely.
And now we're working on the run. We got the posts set last weekend. This weekend we'll level the tops and add cross bracing. Stay tuned!!
