big chickens need a big house

As the chickens grow, it has become apparent that they will not be able to live in the office forever. As you may imagine, there are several reasons for this, the first of which is that they are HUGE. The Orpington will be 8 lbs when full grown; the Barred Rock will be about 7lbs. It was time for them to have their own house. After much research, it became apparent that to buy a chicken coop already built or in a kit was ridiculously and unnecessarily expensive. Not to mention, there would be no room for customization. For instance, what if your chickens really did need that window box with flowers planted in it and little shutters that open and close depending on the weather? We decided to build one.

First we mulled over drawings and ideas for hours, finally settling on a simple house-shaped house. We have a fairly small yard, so we wanted to maximize the amount of space they would have, while conserving the amount of space the coop would occupy in the yard. We decided to build the coop with their enclosed house on top and a caged-in run on the bottom. They would have access to both areas using a little ramp that descended from the upstairs.

After enlisting the help of the men in the family, we set out to start construction. This quickly proved to be a mistake. The importance of men directing construction projects is highly overrated. Eric and I decided after an excruciating afternoon of mistakes that we would continue on the project alone. This quickly evolved into me building the coop on my own since the weather in Seattle generally tends toward rain on the weekends when we both have off work at the same time. So, I built the coop on Friday's while Eric was at work. And you know... Let me just say that there's no reason why a woman can't figure something like this out on her own, dammit.

Regretfully, I didn't take pictures of the coop until this point, when it's close to completion...