Make Room for Chickens!

Like I said, building our chicken coop ended up being a bigger endeavor than we intended...I mean, it's for chickens- shouldn't be too complicated, right?  Uh welllllll...lucky for us Trent was working nights so he had time during the day to work on it.  Unfortunately that meant he didn't have much time during the day for sleeping.



We used the playhouse part of our old swingset as the base for the house.  Trent used the rest of the wood from it to build the nesting box and frame for the run.



 







We wanted to build it entirely out of reclaimed wood but ended up making a trip (or two or three) to Lowes...Darling husband's ideas kept getting bigger and better with each passing day! lol
I have to say that I do like the panelling we ended up using for the side walls.

Next comes the barn red paint... this is probably the closest we'll  come to having our own barn.  Yes, I did help paint but trust me, you don't want to see those pics!  It didn't take very long for the fun to wear off and eventually my three helpers dwindled down to one.
The only reason the two smallest helpers lasted as long as they did was because their daddy told them they absolutely, positively could NOT lay their brushes down!!




 A view of the nesting boxes...Trent built that part low enough so the children can collect the eggs.  I'm not sure exactly how many will make it to the house with Annaliesse picking them, though.



I don't know if you can really see the wheels or not but my amazing husband
built those himself out of one of the trees from the storm.  Yes,  he did, in fact, reinvent the wheel :) 
We ended up with more money than we had planned to invest, and I had to keep reminding Trent that it was for chickens not his family, but he really wanted a tin roof...It does look pretty cool, doesn't it!




All we have left to do is to put the swing door on the top of the run and then we are ready for our chickens!