Chicken Coop Progress, Week 6

what the coop has looked like for the last two weeks

I kind of feel like the coop project is stretching out for ever. But when you're building on a budget and with limited work time, you take it all in stride. I do feel like I'm finally making good progress and anticipate even more this week.

This week I had 4 coop work days, 1 treadmill walk, and 1 hike. Our hike was gorgeous- the park we go to has multiple loops you can combine to go different distances. This week since we were by ourselves we took a longer loop and the trail was completely under the trees. Nice and shady and cool. Which was nice since the new section of trail was also steeper and more of a workout.

love all the shade!

One day we made a trip to Lowe's for 2x4s for rafters. Another day I screwed the wall frames to each other and to the floor frame and removed the 2x4 blocks I'd been using to hold everything in place. I also added a 2x4 header to the tops of the walls to help tie everything together.

blocking removed, walls secured, and header on

I also tried to figure out what angles I needed to cut the 2x4s for the roof. I wasn't completely successful, so later that night I spent some time with pencil and paper to figure out the angle I needed. Some of those geometry equations really do have real life applications.

The next day I didn't have much time so I decided to use what time I did have to figure out how I was going to put the rafters together. I used a scrap piece of 2x4 to stand in for the ridge piece. I cut the center upright 2x4 to length and checked how it all balanced. I used scrap plywood to hold the top angles in place.

Because of all my prep work before, I was able to move a lot quicker the next day.

Getting the roof ridge pole in position took some balancing and fiddling, but once each end was secured, the rest went fairly quickly. There was still a lot of moving up and down the ladder and shifting it and such as I secured each rafter in place, so it wasn't fast, by any means, but it was pretty straightforward.

I used scrap plywood on all the rafter angles. It doesn't look as neat as I'd like, but it uses up some of my stash, so I'm ok with the mismatched look. When we went to Lowe's I forgot to factor in the roof ridge pole so I ended up being short one 2x4 and two rafters on the north side. Despite that, it's finally starting to look like something!