Coop Build - Walls
All the walls were built like the floor - continuous pieces of 2x4's joined together with half lap joints. Here's the north wall:
Got some shed windows from Amazon:
Found an old door thrown out on somebody's curb. Decided to rescue it and use it for the coop. It needed a lot of work, but it was otherwise solid!
The south wall all framed out. It's stacked on top of the other frames because I didn't have enough working space.
Some wall pieces - also stained with solid color waterproofing stain. Blue to match our house
With a busy life, a lot of the work got done at night after the kids went to bed... My head lamp was crucial.
Back to the human door. It had some horrible peeling old paint on one side. I tried dissolving it with a paint stripper. Massive fail. Then I tried a manual planer. Another massive fail. Hacked away at it with a chisel and a scraper...
What saved the day was the electric planer, hooked up to a shop vac:
I couldn't get in the cracks so there was a bit of old paint left over, so I decided to paint over it with paint, as the stain would've needed a cleaner surface. I ordered some paint to be mixed in the same color as the solid color stain I used on the interior of the coop, to match (this will be the interior side of the door). Turned out quite nice!
The exterior of the door is black, to match our house, which has a black front door.
I love that I happened to find a door with a window built into it. My original plan was to build a door that would have a window in it, to get more light into the coop. So I found exactly what I needed! One of the panels was broken when I found it, and another one broke as I was hacking away at the old paint (okay maybe I put my foot through it...). I bought two pieces of glass and a special glass cutting kit, followed all the instructions precisely, but the glass still shattered to $#!t, so... I gave up and replaced it with plexiglass instead. The plexiglass was SO much easier to cut!!!! Nice, easy, perfect clean cuts. And now I won't have to worry about it breaking. It does look different after a while, now that the coop has been up for some time... It doesn't shed water and dirt as easily as glass does. So, the two glass panels look nice and clear, while the plexiglass looks kinda cloudy, with dried up dusty raindrops and crap on it... The occasional wipe solves the problem, and I don't think the chickens care either way.
Here's what the door looks like on the coop:
Got some shed windows from Amazon:
Found an old door thrown out on somebody's curb. Decided to rescue it and use it for the coop. It needed a lot of work, but it was otherwise solid!
The south wall all framed out. It's stacked on top of the other frames because I didn't have enough working space.
Some wall pieces - also stained with solid color waterproofing stain. Blue to match our house
With a busy life, a lot of the work got done at night after the kids went to bed... My head lamp was crucial.
Back to the human door. It had some horrible peeling old paint on one side. I tried dissolving it with a paint stripper. Massive fail. Then I tried a manual planer. Another massive fail. Hacked away at it with a chisel and a scraper...
What saved the day was the electric planer, hooked up to a shop vac:
I couldn't get in the cracks so there was a bit of old paint left over, so I decided to paint over it with paint, as the stain would've needed a cleaner surface. I ordered some paint to be mixed in the same color as the solid color stain I used on the interior of the coop, to match (this will be the interior side of the door). Turned out quite nice!
The exterior of the door is black, to match our house, which has a black front door.
I love that I happened to find a door with a window built into it. My original plan was to build a door that would have a window in it, to get more light into the coop. So I found exactly what I needed! One of the panels was broken when I found it, and another one broke as I was hacking away at the old paint (okay maybe I put my foot through it...). I bought two pieces of glass and a special glass cutting kit, followed all the instructions precisely, but the glass still shattered to $#!t, so... I gave up and replaced it with plexiglass instead. The plexiglass was SO much easier to cut!!!! Nice, easy, perfect clean cuts. And now I won't have to worry about it breaking. It does look different after a while, now that the coop has been up for some time... It doesn't shed water and dirt as easily as glass does. So, the two glass panels look nice and clear, while the plexiglass looks kinda cloudy, with dried up dusty raindrops and crap on it... The occasional wipe solves the problem, and I don't think the chickens care either way.
Here's what the door looks like on the coop:
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