Chicken Coop Progress, Week 3

what the chicken coop looked like at the beginning of the week

Last week I only got on the treadmill once, but we were also able to finally go on a hike! It's been a month since our last one because it kept raining on Wednesdays and/or Thursdays, which made the trails too soggy to use. Last week it didn't rain Wednesday or Thursday morning so we decided to give the trails a try. It was a bit muddy in a few spots, but most of the distance wasn't too bad. I'm so glad we finally made it outside. Now if I could just convince River to stay in the jogger the whole time (Ocean is on my back), I could get an even better workout.

I worked on the coop two days. The first day I worked on the coop I started by standing up the wall I'd built the week before. That's when I realized I hadn't thought things through as well as I'd thought. 8' walls are overkill for a chicken coop. Oops.

the bottoms of the windows are 4' off the floor

it all looked reasonable when laying on the floor, but the reality was much different

I braced it in place and built the west wall with 6' studs to see if I liked that height better.

So much better. And it will be easier to work with when it's time to put the roof on. I may be just a bit scared of heights, and Mr M isn't available to help with this project because he has to work some long hours right now. Two feet shorter is two feet closer to the ground :)

it kind of looks like that one wall is just leaning on nothing, but it's leaning against a small tree

The second day I took apart the first wall and cut all the studs down to 6', then put it all back together. It wasn't as time consuming as I was afraid it would be, but it still felt like a waste of time to have to undo and redo everything. Despite that, I'm glad I took the time to do it as I'm much happier with the shorter height. I'm also glad I used screws rather than nails. Nails would have been a nightmare.

the floor is 8' by 12', so it's easy to see the height difference once I shortened the studs

After the south wall was put back together I braced it and the west walls together and laid out the pieces for the north wall. This wall has the door, the other walls have windows.

it's hard to see window and door openings with all the open studs, but this is the wall with the door

Once the north wall was together and braced in place, I built the east wall and braced it in place.

I tied the top corners to each other with 2x4 scraps and then used more scraps to tie the bottom corners to each other and the floor frame. I need to attach the wall frames to the floor joists still, but I want to leave some wiggle room while I get the door hung.

At this point I ran out of wood and DIY budget, so I worked on another project that I've been doing a little here and there on. I haven't like our kitchen walkway for years and I've finally decided to do something about it. I'll do a post on this project next week, I think, but for now I'll just say that between the coop and the walkway I'm getting some pretty good strength training in :)

my before pictures are all from a different angle (oops), but I wanted this angle to show the walk leading to the kitchen stairs, so this old one from a couple years ago will have to do