Monday, March 18, 2013

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.


3 comments:

  1. The Family Handyman photo is adorable! I can absolutely see it divided to allow for chickens on one side and storage on the other. All of the FHM plans that I have used are very easy to follow, with cut lists and everything, that should give you a good starting point to incorporate your salvage items.

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  2. You know how impressed I am that you mastered SketchUp...

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    1. Thanks! Mastered is definitely a stretch, but I am getting better at "building" stuff in it.

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