Friday, June 26, 2009

Coop Construction Part 2

Today my dearest hubby and I found time again to work on the chicken coop. We are planning to work on it tomorrow and Sunday as well. Today we added Styrofoam insulation between the existing studs, added a back wall, and framed in holes for the two windows.

I have thought and thought about how we would do the windows to get them to fit between the existing studs and without spending a lot of money. I think we've figured it out now. I will show and explain the details once we get to that step. Today, my husband just used one of his new saws to cut holes in the existing wall boards. Below you can see the outline cut out and then in the next photo you can see how we framed it in with 2X4 pieces at the top and bottom. Our next step for the windows will be to attach pieces of window screen and hardware cloth to the inside prior to adding the side walls. That way there won't be any rough edges on the inside where the chickens will be. I was originally just going to use hardware cloth, but several people on the BYC forum suggested the screen as well as it keeps wasps from building nests in the coop. We have what we hope will be a great idea for adding plexiglass window panels that can easily be slid in and out. Already it's so much cooler inside the shed with the two window holes cut out. My boys had a great time playing in the coop and peeking in and out of the windows. DH even suggested that we turn it into a playhouse for the boys and actually asked me if I could cancel our chicken order!! AS IF!!! I told him building a playhouse for the boys would have to just be our next building project. Should be fun!








Adding the Styrofoam to insulate was really easy as we had bought precut pieces at Home Depot. Of course the studs in our shed were not uniformly the same width, so I had to cut them a little bit lengthwise and also crosswise. I just used a steak knife to score the Styrofoam and then broke it off. It was pretty quick and easy. Below you can see the insulation we've added so far. The blank area is where we cut the window holes. Tomorrow we will be covering the Styrofoam with new side walls using more OSB. We will also be adding insulation to the ceiling and covering it. Hopefully that too will be done yet this weekend.





The next picture shows the back wall we added using a piece of OSB. The area above will be kept open for storage and we will be adding a new OSB shelf there. The shed did have a shelf there previously, but it was really nasty and was installed in a really stupid way (IMO....in my opinion) so we will be redoing it..........since we're experts now you know. :0)






1 comment:

Cris said...

Wow - there is no rest at your house. You always have some project going, and this was a big one! We'll be listening for the cock-a-doodle-doo's over the hill.