Garden Shed is Sided

We still need to finish installing the little chicken door and the interior wall, but the exterior is complete!

I might have installed the windows flipped with the small panes on top, but it will be fine. LOL

Between the heat and smoke and ash falling on the city, our weather really stinks. Hopefully it cools down next week so we can stand to work outside again.

Finally, Shed Started

We had a beautiful sunny day last Thursday so Jeff, Eric and Aaron got started on our chicken coop/garden shed. They spent about half a day and got the base built. It has started raining again, so who knows when they'll get back to it. This is all pressure treated lumber so it should be fine exposed to the rain until we get more good weather.

After the busy day working out in the yard, Bailey found herself a nice spot to rest up.

Beautiful Day

Our spring weather finally arrived, and the guys got the mulch spread out in the yard. Yeah!! We got our driveway back.

The front planting strip.

We're starting to have a little problem in the backyard with a new invasive, Lesser Celandine.

It's pretty but also, apparently, evil. It will take over the whole yard even worse than the mint we battled last year. So, today, the guys removed it the best they could and mulched over the area. We need to find a source for a TON of cheap ferns. They should keep the ground shaded in spring. Or, hopefully, the chickens will take care of it for us.

Spring Planning

First off, most important, Happy Pi Day! Jeff is currently in the kitchen making some Pi Day creation, so if there's a picture later, I'll add it.

We found a website to sign up for free wood chips from tree removal companies, called Chip Drop. Last time we got free chips we called around to different companies, but this time we're going to try and see if this website works. I'm not sure how active this site is, but if it works we'll let you guys know. If we don't get anything in the next few weeks, I'll probably go back to calling around.

We especially want mulch to cover the front planting strip to kill the lawn in preparation for filling it with flowers.

The before photo of the planting strip

This year we've had record-breaking amounts of rain, so we still haven't been able to make headway on the chicken coop/garden shed project. We have most of the materials staged in our garage, but we'd like about a week of dry weather to put the structure up.

The shed/coop design we're planning to build (with different windows)

The crocus bulbs I planted last fall are starting to come up. I'm really looking forward to some sunny weather.

Clearing Mint

Aaron and Jeff and have been working hard at clearing out the lower portion of our backyard. In the years since we got rid of the chickens the mint had quite taken over.

I hadn't quite realized how much the chickens helped in keeping invasive species like this down. I used to moan about the mud back there in winter, now I can moan about all the out-of-control weeds. LOL

Anyway, a few weeks ago the guys started slowly digging out the mint plants (including the roots). Aaron did most of this work while Jeff and I were sick, but the last couple days Jeff joined the effort. Jeff also trimmed the overgrown bushes along the fence.

Today, the guys started digging out the footings for the chicken coop and clearing the slope to install the steps. Here is how it looks now.

Supervisor Shasta carefully inspected the ditch.

The plan is to go buy the wood tomorrow for the steps and get those in before finishing the patio. Once the pergola floor is finished, we're planning to start work on the chicken coop. I've missed having chickens and I hope we'll be able to get them again next spring.

Pergola Time!

I guess we got burned out on working on the house, so we've enjoyed an extended vacation from working on it. And we really haven't been doing anything interesting to blog about, so my blog was sadly neglected. But our friend Eric, who built the side fence with Jeff's help, needs some work this winter and so we're going to turn our attention to the backyard pergola.

Here is the plan we shared in July 2012:

We're going to go buy the wood as soon as we figure out what we need, and Eric and Jeff will start putting it in. We'll post pictures once they do.

And, on another topic related to the backyard, Jeff and I found new homes for our backyard babies. We had actually planned to kill the last two chickens because they had stopped laying, but we found a friend who was happy to have non-laying chickens in her yard to eat insects. We also "returned" Quiana (the rabbit we got in April 2012) to the same friend who raises rabbits. Quiana is going to be used as a breeder. She actually turned out to be the most unfriendly rabbit I've ever met and neither Jeff or I could pick her up without being scratched.

So now that we're not tied to taking care of all these pets, we've been free to do stuff like visit family in California. This will be the year we do some traveling, and then hopefully we'll get a chicken coop built later in the year and we'll get chickens again in 2015. We really like having chickens and I actually miss seeing them wandering around our backyard, but this is for the best for now.

Anya the hen is no more

Jeff just found Anya, our favorite laying hen, in the bottom of the chicken coop dead. There were no signs of trauma. We're not sure what happened. She seemed fine yesterday, so her death is quite a shock.

Anya (May 1, 2010 - May 29, 2013)

Anya was actually our biggest troublemaker because she was always trying to get out of the yard and find a better place to lay her eggs or look for better greenery to munch on, but she was also the most attached to Jeff and she would follow him around the backyard. It was always cute to see her running when Jeff called them for their daily scratch.

It's a sad day here and a day of fond remembrances.

Here is her story.

Anya getting her first wing clip

Our girls, on their first day with us

Where is Anya hiding?

Anya, in the foreground, Willow behind

Motivation Broken

I ran across a blog post today at Hyperbole and a Half that perfectly describes us right now. I wish I could write so well about my failures.

Borrowed from Hyperbole and a Half

I feel like I owe you all interesting projects to post about but we've gotten a bit burned out. Even though we hired out most of the hard work, the 2+ years of remodel wore on us and our motivation has apparently abandoned us.

That being said, we're having problems with the chickens escaping from the backyard into the front yard and messing up Jeff's garden so we are currently trying to get to work on the side fence. Yes, the side fence we were going to finish in October 2011.

I got together the material list again and wrote for a couple quotes. It is possible we'll start work on this project this week because the chickens are making Jeff crazy. Either that, or we'll be having chicken soup next week (which will make me sad).

Commercial Shop Time

We went and bought two cute windows for the shed/coop project from Eric in SE Portland this afternoon. They're a real nice size, I think. They do need cleaning up and reglazing, but they were a pretty good deal off craigslist.

When we picked them up, Eric brought us into his "shop" in his backyard. It was quite the woodworking shop; he had a commercial planer that was probably bigger than a smart car. I'm sorry I didn't ask to take a picture, but it seemed a little tacky. He runs a business, called Willow Classic Woodworking, which apparently makes custom doors, windows and millwork.

We got to talking to him about planing painted wood and he said he runs painted wood through his machine all the time. It's apparently a workhorse and he can just open it up to clean and sharpen the blades in place. Anyway, the point of this paragraph was to tell you that I'm excited we found a place to plane down all that salvaged fir wood we scored last fall. He's going to charge us $60 an hour to come use his planer. I don't have to strip the paint! Woo hoo!

We'll have to cut down the long pieces because his shop isn't big enough to plane 18' pieces of wood, but really we'd have to cut them down anyway for transport. So, we're going to try and get all the pieces gathered for our closet and basement projects and haul it all to his house later this week. Maybe we will be able to make some progress on our closet project this month after all. (I had sort of given it up when I thought I'd have to strip the paint first.)

Tomorrow, however, we're planning a big basement sift.

New Chicken Coop Plan

Last year I designed a cute little chicken coop.

It was cute and probably would have worked, but it really only housed the chickens. We've decided we could really use some extra space for chicken and rabbit stuff, i.e. tubs of feed and litter, so Jeff doesn't have to keep tromping through the yard to the garage or basement to get them food everyday.

When I was cruising around the internet, I ran across this cute shed at the Family Handyman website.

It's so perfect! The brackets and roof slope are the same as our house. Though, I'm going to rearrange the door and windows a bit, and definitely use salvage. And we'll probably not bother with the cupola on the roof. Hardly anybody will see it as it will be tucked way back in the backyard.

I'd also like to put up a dividing wall down the center so it will be half-shed, half-chicken coop. Then we'll put a door on each end, or one on the end and one on the interior wall; I'm not sure of the details yet. It's probably going to depend on what salvage we find for this project.

I got motivated to start a sketchup file Saturday night when Jeff was off at game night, and then I continued to work on it on Sunday; it's hard to stop halfway. The file still needs some work, but this is basically what I was thinking.

For this SketchUp project, I tried planning it from the framing out, but then when I got to the siding I could not figure out how to put on the outer siding layer, so I basically just ended up "painting" the plywood sheets with the siding color.

We're planning to use leftover siding and shingles and whatever salvage we have at home and we'll scrounge for the rest. Though, we might have to call in some help for the framing; it's probably too complicated given our lack of experience.

One of the fun things about using Sketchup is the opportunity to play with different views.

Sunny Day = Outside

Today's nice weather found us outside starting some yard projects.

Jeff resumed work on digging out the new urbanite path he started last fall. That huge pile of dirt was excavated when they put in our basement door. Jeff wanted a berm there but got, I think, quite a bit more dirt than he bargained for. So now he's trying to dig a wide trench for the path and figure out what to do with the rest.

Even I made it outside for a bit of sun today. I don't dig, but I did go around and gather up salvaged wood leftover from the 2 years of remodeling. I didn't get all of it, because the remaining pieces were too big for me to carry alone. But I moved what I could to the driveway where I'm hoping we can sort through and see what we can reuse for the chicken coop.

I need to cut some short pieces so I can stack this wood with air gaps so it can dry out.

You can see more about Jeff's garden and path exploits (day 2) over at his blog.

Makeshift Chicken Pen

Our chickens have recently become escape artists. We've come home several times to find them grazing in our neighbors' yards. Our neighbors have luckily not complained, but we are worried that some neighborhood dog might finish them off.

While we have plans to build them a nice matching coop and enclosure along with the garage project, we felt a need to come up with a temporary solution in the mean time. So we wrapped that metal gazebo frame in the backyard with chicken wire. We jury-rigged a door with a piece of bamboo and bungee cords. We'll come up with something better if it doesn't work well enough.

Jury-rigged chicken pen

We didn't quite finish wrapping the top portion this afternoon. We have the chicken wire but we need to get some more wire. And it was getting quite hot working out in the direct sun.

Then this afternoon Jeff finished up the front yard vegetable garden. He shows some process photos here. He put down the straw as mulch so it would hold in the moisture and it should also break down and add organic matter to the soil.

Jeff is going out of town for a week starting on Tuesday morning so it's going to be Sharon's job to keep this watered in his absence.

Chicken Coop Design

We've been trying to spend some time everyday working on small house improvement projects. And during the evenings, this week, we've been spending our time learning how to use Google SketchUp.

Last night, Sharon drafted up this preliminary design for our chicken coop. The roof is still a little messed up around that side gable; we'll still have to figure out the framing. The floor is 4'x6'.

We have a short and narrow four-panel door stored in our garage and she designed the door dimensions to accommodate this salvage door. We also have some salvaged kitchen cabinet doors that we're going to use for the small door openings, for the chicken entrance and nest box, on the exterior of the building. We're hoping we'll be able to salvage many of the scraps for this small project from when we rebuild the garage. The windows are quite small, so we'll probably be buying them new from eBay.

Jeff did some wonderful work last night framing our garage project. Though, we still need to figure out the trusses. (We've ordered some framing books from the library so we can do some research.)

Fall Has Arrived!

The great fall leaf migration has begun! And many of our neighbors appreciated our afternoon efforts as we mostly cleaned up their yards. (We don't have trees in our front yard yet.)
The chickens love to dig around in the pile.

Jeff had an exciting morning climbing a tree. See his post here.

Plant Day!

Today was finally the day we got to go pick up our 55 plants from the Audubon Society Native Plant Sale. We spent quite a while juggling around the plant arrangement then Jeff got to work planting.He got most of the plants in the front rain garden planted, but he had to stop and leave for a meeting this evening. Hopefully, the rest will make it in the ground tomorrow; we're hoping the decent weather will hold out.

Our little Anya chicken is moulting—poor cold baby. We wonder how long until the other two start moulting. Looks like we'll be buying eggs this winter.

Heading to California

Our neighbor has kindly agreed to open and close our chicken coop for us so we get to slip out of town for a few days to visit family. Yeah!

I've already scheduled an appointment with the prosthetist to take care of my messed-up prosthetic.

And I'm going to be sure and drop in on the Fireclay Tile Boneyard. I'm hoping to find a score for our bathroom shower. I called today and it sounds like they have the perfect cream-colored subway tile down there for $5 a square foot.

We're also trying to squeeze in as many family and friend visits as possible.

Held Hostage by Chickens

We'd like to go travel down to California later in the month, but with the daily responsibility of opening and closing the chicken house, it's difficult to get away.

Every morning, shortly after 7AM, the chickens start clucking to be let out of their sleeping quarters, then at the end of the day at around dusk, they put themselves back in the house and we close up the ramp. Really, not much responsibility, but someone has to be here to let them in and out, everyday. And finding somebody reliable, and who doesn't cost a lot of money, is proving to be a challenge.

But we have found it worthwhile to have the chickens. Even though we're not talking about money saved here, because we could buy a dozen cage-free organic eggs at Trader Joe's for around $5, it just gives us so much more satisfaction to go retrieve the eggs in the back yard.

Also, our dog has decided that chicken eggs taste yummy. Twice now we have found the evidence of broken shells on the lawn. So, at the moment Shasta has lost her unsupervised backyard access (which really sucks for us too).

So, I think it's time we build a more permanent chicken enclosure. Something where we could just have a neighbor come over and check on the chickens once every few days to make sure they still have water and food. We can still use the chicken tractor when the weather is nice, but having a house will really give us more flexibility to leave for weekends and for vacations.

I'm cruising around the internet for a while today to figure out the best way to build such a thing. While Jeff and I have never built anything like this, I hope this is a project we can successfully take on. I'm hoping to accomplish this project over our too-short winter break.

Improvised Nest Box

Our poor chickens have been having a horrible time trying to figure out where to lay their eggs. Their coop has nest boxes, but they sleep in them, so I guess they don't understand we want them to lay their eggs there.

Over the last few weeks, they've laid their eggs in a variety of places throughout the yard: on the lawn, tucked under ferns, in the leaf pile and on our back deck. So, I decided the other day to try improvising a quick nest box out of a cardboard box and, after a couple days, it finally worked!

We've had at least two eggs everyday since they figured it out. We've now added a couple more cardboard nest boxes and we'll try to make something more permanent when we finish school next month.

Leaves!

Our tree-lined street is so pretty right now. Too bad I didn't take a picture about a week ago — before we had two days of steady wind that brought a lot of the leaves down.

This afternoon we finally had an opportunity to go out and clean up the front yard. Since it was so was nice out, we also grabbed the leaves from in front of a couple of our neighbors' houses; they make great mulch.

The chickens also had fun rooting around in the pile.

Buffy and Anya have been great layers this week. Now that we've got their hiding spot figured out, we're gathering the eggs before they get damaged or dirty.