My last two days

   

I am so exhausted and I think my husband, Mike is too. We spent the last two days working on our chicken coop. Last time we were only able to get a small rectangular frame finished but we got a lot more done this time. This post is very picture heavy and I will tell my story through the captions.

My son sitting in the frame. We had the frame done before and at the start of the day yesterday we got the six legs up.

Then we added the coop supports. We had to use flat brackets for part of it.

Henrietta is checking out the new digs.

We added the top frame.

Here is the side view of it.

We added hardware cloth to under the coop before added the floor. Much easier to get under that way.

Mike is added notches for the floor to sit flush.

Here are the notches.

He had to cut again. We had measured the floor too big. Oops.

The floor is finally in.

Mike is cutting the wood for the roost supports.

All of our pieces of wood. We had Lowes cut all of the wood for us. All we had to do was cut all of the angles (and fix our measurement mistake)

Here are the roosts. They stretch the whole width of the coop. About 4 feet.

We made sure to sand all of the edges. Lost of splinters.

Mike is adding the wall where the nest box will go.

My son got to help cut the door stops.

Here is the door stop for the coop doors.

And the stops for the run doors.

 We had all of that done last night. It was a very long day and we were both very tired. However, my husband was awake most of the night trying to figure out how to put the roof trusses on. He was successful in his thoughts and today we were able to begin on that part of the project.

These are the boards for the roof trusses

We had to get the angles just right.

They went on nicely.

The Angle brackets really helped.

We needed to cut a window for one side.

And add hardware cloth. There will be a plexiglass window over this, that we can open and let the fresh air in.

We added the large side panel. It has a vent hole and a door hole. We will add a door we can close at night.

Here is the side with the window mesh.

Make sure to charge your drill when you are doing a big project.

More mesh over the vent hole.

Here is one of the coop doors.

These are the doors attached. We actually need to figure something else out, because the doors stick out and don't close properly.

And the last thing, was putting on the final roof panel. 

 

 

We are tired and we are not done, but we only have a few more steps to go. They will have to wait until next weekend, but we'll get them done. On a side note, here is one of the things I am working on. A basket quilt. Obviously I have not gotten much done in the last two days. :-)

The coop beginnings

 Our little chicks are growing fast. On Friday we will have had them for five weeks. It's time to start the coop. I am really hoping this is not going to take longer than I expected, but we'll see. Here is the beginning of our adventure.

This is the spot we are placing our coop.

Here is the lumber for our frame.

My husband drew up plans for our coop so we knew exactly how much of things we needed. However when we were figuring out the 2x4s we missed one, so we will have to go back to the store and get one more.

This is my husband getting ready to saw.

Make sure you know how to use your saw first.

This was our first time using this saw. At the very end we were getting kick back. So this is my husband trying figure out what is wrong. (Don't worry mom, we didn't remove any guards). It turns out we just had the blade showing to much and it was missing the teeth at the very end. We fixed that and began sawing with the piece hanging off the end of the saw horse and it worked fine.

This is where it was binding. See how the piece is falling toward itself?

That was the last piece. I think I might have heard a small Tim Taylor grunt from that direction.

Our stacks of cut lumber

 Here is all of our lumber cut into pieces. We needed 14 eight foot 2x4's (we bought 13). We didn't cut the boards for the roof yet so we will just get the other board later.

My husband blowing the saw dust off everything.

Measuring to make sure we get the right board (always a good idea)

This will be the bottom frame.

Making sure to get the right angle.

You had to push really hard to get the screws in.

We decided to use screws so that it would be easy to take apart later on if we needed to. We drilled holes in the wood first and then drilled the screws in.

Even my daughter got to help some.

The only thing was that the drill battery died, so we couldn't go any further than the bottom frame. Hopefully it was just because we forgot to charge it and it just needed a good charge. We'll see.

The chicks are growing

 We have now had the chicks for two weeks as of today. They have grown so much. I am going to have to get a bigger box for them very soon. We will start building the coop very soon too.

Sunshine: a few days old

Sunshine: two weeks

Henrietta: a few days

Henrietta: two weeks (our flyer)

Shimano: a few days old

Shimano: two weeks (does she look much different?)

Chickadee: a few days old

Chickadee: two weeks

Blue: a few days old

Blue: two weeks