Chicken Coop Remodel, or How Not to Build a Chicken Coop (2)

To read day one of the chicken coop remodel, go here.

The chickens were completely freaked out by the changes to their home.  The first night, many of them wouldn't even go in the coop.  They tried roosting in the mower shed and on top of the coop yard fence.  I had to catch them and put them in the coop for the night.

In the morning, the chickens are usually out of the coop and clamoring around the gate waiting to be let out.  But after the first night of the remodel, I went to open up the coop to get started on the walls and all of the chickens were just sitting on the roost, apparently afraid to jump down onto the new floor.  I finally coaxed and shooed them out the door.

On day two, we put the linoleum on the floor and put the ceiling up and started on the walls.  On day three, we finished all of the walls.  I didn't take pictures of any of that because, frankly, I was too exhausted to care about pictures.

On day four, Tom had to go out of town and I spent the day painting the walls and ceiling.

I bought some mis-tinted paint at a local surplus store, exterior latex.  The first coat was a very light lavender.  I covered that up with a second coat of white.  I left the corner support poles unpainted because they're old creosoted telephone poles.  I hung a couple of cup hooks on the wall to store some cleaning supplies. Little whisk broom for sweeping away cobwebs and such.  My hope is to do a little regular maintenance so that the filth doesn't build up to an unmanageable level like before.

It won't win any beauty contests, but I think this set up is going to make life a bit easier for us.  The neat freak in me wants to caulk every seam and corner, but chicken coops need plenty of ventilation, so I don't want to seal it all up and make it airtight.  We left a big space in the ceiling open so the air can circulate up through the rafters.  We're going to cover that space with half inch hardware cloth so that it's snake proof, but will still allow airflow.  Still to come...a new, easier to clean roost and sand on the floor instead of the hay that we've been using as litter.  (Do a google or Pinterest search on using sand.  There are a lot of positive things about it, so we're going to give it a try).