Building Red Door Coop

We had some help getting started. A local woman uses reclaimed wood and shipping crates to build and sell coops. We saw her on Craigslist and then found out that friends purchased a coop from her. We met with her and picked out a style and it was ready in two weeks.  The coop she built is on the opposite side of the chicken run from the Red Door.  Do you see it?  The coop is where the chickens sleep at night on their roost and lay their eggs in the nesting boxes.  The large screened in area in front of that is the chicken run where the chickens spend most of their time.  Making the run was a huge undertaking.  Want to see?

We plotted an area measuring 6' by 10' and started digging.

We dug one foot down.  It was hard work!  The next step was to line the rectangle with 1/2' hardcloth (wire mesh).  After we laid the mesh we lined the edge of the hole with cinder blocks.  These early stages of building the chicken run are important because they are key in keeping the predators out and allowing me to call this coop "Alcatraz." 

We filled in the hole and cinderblocks with dirt.  Then 2'x6' redwood boards went on top of the cinderblocks and were secured with TapCon concrete anchors. 

My favorite part of the process was when the 2.5 tons of gravel was delivered at 7am on a Saturday morning.  I'm sure our neighbors thought it was awesome too!  I was under the weather that weekend and my husband had the pleasure of shoveling all that gravel into the hole that we had lined with weed tarp.  This made his back sore.  Did I even need to tell you that? 

We, meaning my husband, built panels for the sides and top of the coop. That's him, hard at work. 

Building the door.

This blog makes it look so easy, but it took several weekends to build Red Door Coop.  We had to wait out rainstorms and snowstorms and 'deal' with the fact that we both work full-time and can't dedicate every second to projects. 

Let me leave you with this...

Fitz and Bill.