Life Alaskan Style: our new coop!!

I am so very excited to finally be posting pictures of our new coop! It's still not completely finished, there's little things here and there that need to be tweaked or painted, but it's totally functional and the girls have been moved in and are loving it!

I'll start at the beginning. When I found the chicken breeds I wanted on Craigslist, Steve hadn't been working Saturdays, so I figured he'd be able to whip together a new coop asap. Of course (of course) he came home literally the day I picked them up and said they were working Saturday. Lovely. So our hardy girls have been living in the doghouse that I haphazardly adjusted to accommodate their needs (nesting area and roosts) and to be somewhat safe from predators.

Then Steve finally had a Saturday off, and instead of just laying around and relaxing like I'm sure he wanted to do, he went out and worked on the coop for me. I knew he was a keeper! ;)

my hero

Steve completely designed it based on what I wanted

here he is 'figuring it out' [his words haha] and getting started building it

quality control

Riggs testing out the new floor

the peanut gallery

the girls were fascinated by what was going on outside their home

little helper

Riggs loved watching daddy work and

tried to be just like him. that's a pretty heavy

sledgehammer for such a little guy!

rain or shine

of course it would be rainy the second weekend Steve had to work on it

but still he went out and worked all day in the drizzle

did I mention how much I love this man?

details

this nesting box is my favorite

with a lightweight lid and at the perfect

height for me to collect the eggs in the morning

more details

once the coop was built, it was my turn to get to work

I cut out vinyl flooring I picked up from Lowes to line nearly

every surface with for easier cleaning (chicken poop + rough wood = sticky mess)

all ready

after the flooring was in I stained the walls

then added the roosting bar

then hung the curtains for extra privacy in the nests

I also added some relaxing and pest-resistant dried herbs

in the nesting boxes for my pampered chickens...makes

the whole coop smell marvelous!

all done!

I sewed a little banner for decoration

also painted the little 'fresh eggs' sign and hung it up

I'm so happy with out it turned out, such a cute little coop!

Alot of work went into getting the coop ready for the girls to move in. But it was really fun to have a project to work on everyday and to be able to visually see the fruits of my labor.

It took one whole day to paint the outside of the coop. Our house is white with blue trim (that I hate) and so I used to the coop as a test to see if I'd like the colors I had picked in my head for painting our house. I love the gray trim and black door, definitely going to go ahead and update our house in the spring!

I also had to put up the fence for the new enclosure. Took forever since I had to dig for the posts and for the entire perimeter so that the fencing would be buried to prevent predators from digging their way in. I'm hoping it will work for winter. I'd eventually like to increase the height to 6ft so that the chickens can't fly over the top. But since we've had them it's only happened twice, and it's the same chicken who tends to get a little 'flighty' when she gets scared. She just stands outside the fence by the coop waiting to be put back in, so it would only be a problem if I wasn't home and a predator found her before I did.

Here's some pictures of the girls enjoying their new home: