The Chicken Plan Part III - Building The Hen House Finale

Looking back now I realize this was a big project. A few things could have been done differently. For the most part though I am extremely happy with how this all turned out.

Let's get this done!

The outside was coming along nicely, the roof was on and the inside walls up. See it? There's our wedding dance floor! Not many people would find it nice that their wedding dance floor was being turned into one that chicken poop would gather on but I was/am okay with it. It's being put to good use instead of being burned.

 

The roofing was almost finished too.

 

With the roof on and no siding materials collected as of yet it was time to get started on the inside. Grabbing a couple gallons of left over paint from home projects Cameron and I got started.

On to the siding. Like I had said before, we tore siding of an area of an old barn on the property and used that so we could keep in the rustic rough look of our house.

Here things seemed to be progressing faster. From the point I started to paint to the point I had the inside dividing wall up and the inner door (that dad built) installed to when this photo was taken was 6 days. Siding had to be done on the weekend. I had my dad's help with the studs, inner walls and the roofing, the rest was up to my husband and I. That meant that we had to build around his work schedule. But it was all coming together.

In the photo above it looks like there is a white box on stilts. There is. I built the nesting box into the dividing wall. There is a divider in the box also so it's a double nesting box. I used a leather belt cut into short lengths and nailed on as hinges. Keeping it rustic I guess, plus as any builder or home owner knows hardware gets expensive!

Pop door cut out and bats being added to finish the siding.

 

An inside look at the pop door. I have since attached some hardware & cable so that I'm able to open and close it without stepping foot in the hens living quarters. To the left is the roost and the white corner in the lower left is part of the nesting box.

Pen fence being built. Hand held auger helped with the hole digging, whew! Sunk rail road ties as the corner posts and cedar posts for the center.

And after all that I leave you with the finished product's outside look.

There have been a few touch ups and changes since this photo was taken almost four years ago. My goal in the near future is to take more photos, showing the finished inside (soon I hope since I just cleaned it) and give a bit more detail on how we fenced the pen.

I apologize for it not being a more detailed process with photos. Like I said, there was so much work to be done, and me doing a lot of that work left little time or thought for taking decent photos along the way. I hope you found at least one thing in my series that was usable for your situation. Thanks again for stopping by.

 "What you talkin' 'bout Willis?"