The Blue House Coop

The run has a clear polycarbonate roof. The chicken area is under trees and very shady and pleasant in the summer, so I didn't need extra shade. On the contrary - it can get a bit gloomy back there, so I wanted them to have light in the summer. And, of course, light in the winter was a bit thing, too, as our winters are long.

I decided to use 2x4's for the rafters, instead of the usual recommendations for 2x6 or 2x8, because they are more manageable and I was building this on my own. The roof was going to have a nice pitch, and the slick polycarbonate should shed water and snow easily. Also because we rarely get snow anymore, and will keep getting less and less in the future.

Rafters going up:


I used post brackets to attach the vertical 4x4 posts to the horizontal 4x4 top plates, and hurricane ties to attach the rafters to the top plates. The ground was uneven and my last two sections of fencing panels came up just a little higher than the previous ones, so I cut across the top plate a bit to make up for the difference.


The awkward angle section where the diagonal wall connects to the coop side wall of the fence. I had to bungie the boards together because clamps were useless there. I used a 6" screw, because brackets were useless, too.


I used 1x3 furring strips as purlins, and I stained them with the same dark brown stain (later stained the rafters, too - everything):






Polycarbonate panels going up:


I clamped the end strips down to keep them from lifting up as the screw was going in:


And the roof is done! Everything got covered, and everything fits



Here’s the diagonal section:



And the short section by the coop:


I covered all the gaps all the way around with 1/2" hardware cloth (spray painted black), and painted all the brackets and hardware black, too. I'm very happy with how it turned out!


Check out the next page for some fun extras I added to the interior of the run.

Note: You may wonder if the runoff from the roof goes into the neighbor’s yard. It does not.The roof drips into the space between the run and the privacy fence I put up there, and flows back towards our lawn because their yard has been raised and is higher than ours. They did try to claim runoff issues (we’re at war over the chickens because the neighbor doesn’t like animals and is trying to get the town to make restrictions stricter), but the torrential rains of this week have clearly demonstrated the path water takes by dragging the mulch around the run down towards our lawn, away from the neighbors. I made a video showing the slope going from their yard towards ours and the trenches the water has dug, carrying material away from the run and into the center of our yard where the lowest point is, and I sent the video to the town.