In the Fall of 2015 my husband and I made the decision to tear our back porch off the house. We had found (during a stressful, get the damn cat back in the house moment) that underneath the porch was a concrete patio as well as steps that the previous owner had built the deck over without removing. They never stained or protected the wood properly, so the porch was in horrible shape. We did some work when we moved in, but it seemed to be too little too late. This has turned out to be a wonderful blessing! Not only do I love my little patio, but from the wood we recovered we have built garden boxes, a little library and now our amazing new chicken coop.
First, my husband spent weeks planning, reading and Googling to decide what kind of coop we needed. After he questioned me, then drew everything out, we made a list of what we had and what we needed. Then we hit Lowe's (my daughter is pushing the lumber cart on the left there). We ended up having to spend about $100 at Lowe's, then making a couple more trips for about $25 each. Not bad for an 8x4 coop with a good size nesting box.
The legs, base and some of the framing wood is pulled from the deck. New studs were purchased on our first run to fill in the 2x4s as the deck didn't have a lot of 2x4s, mostly 2x8s and 1x6s. We were able to put the 1x6s to use for the sides and it almost completely covered everything. We picked up a few more 1x6 boards to wrap that up.
One of my favorite parts is the nesting box my sweetie designed and built so I could access eggs from the patio, just my short self.
The lid opens up perfectly from the patio and inside is a 2x8 board separating it into 2 boxes. I plan to hang a curtain giving it a little more privacy.
Inside is the cool roost I built when my sweetie was still in bed in the morning. I'm super proud of it. :-) I also painted the floor with a bunch of sample paints I have remaining from painting the inside of my house. I just tossed them all together, not caring about the color.
We started working on the coop in the Fall of 2015 and didn't paint it until just this week, when the weather would cooperate more. As a result, the chickens chose to sleep in the door to the coop and cracked me up. I blocked them from the old one, putting the new chicks in that one. Two chickens slept in the new nesting boxes and the other two slept here, in the open door.
Once the warm weather hit, I started with the paint sample colors. It took quite a bit, but I finally was able to color match to the super dark blue I wanted.
My husband also added the coolest thing ever, a door that slides up and down so I can easily open it without having to go into the run in the mornings. I love the man so much.
We are talking about adding some white lettering on it declaring it the roost, but I haven't decided exactly how I want to do that yet.
So, here we are. My gorgeous dark blue coop.
*A few of the pics below were taken while I was mid-painting still.
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