Buying a ready made coop wasn’t going to happen. After all, anything decent is expensive and where’s the fun in owing something that anyone can have? After a little head scratching and having the more ambitious plans vetoed by Mrs. SolarB the girls (that’s daughters, not chickens) and I came up with this idea.
The coop stands around 6’ tall with three interior levels. The ground floor is for the storage of sawdust and other materials and isn’t accessible by the chickens. The first floor is nice and gloomy for nesting while the second floor has a full 270 degree view of the garden and is ideal for chilling out and watching the world go by. Access to the interior is via an integral ramp hidden behind a sliding panel. Full height double doors on one side open for easy cleaning and egg collection without having to enter the run. The coop was designed to be flat packed for ease of building and assembly. It isn’t 100% finished yet but it is habitable so a here’s a record of the build to date.
Once we'd decided on the coop design naming the chickens was easy, just run through a list of the female characters from Dr. Who.
Madame de Pompadour, River Song, Sally Sparrow and Rose.
The coop was sized to match plywood offcuts left over from the lining of the shed we built last year. Each side of the coop is made from two sheets of ply joined together with a center batten.
Corner beams are made from two pieces of wood glued and screwed together.
Horizontal battens are glued in and have drip strip strips on the underside and a sloped upper side for water run off.
Double doors on the left, front panel with chicken hatch on the right.
TARDISes(?) are a strange design with little in the way of conventional weatherproofing features. There’s no overhang on the roof of a police call box with the design relying on weather proof materials instead. We changed the design a little to have a 1" overhang and a drip strip on the underside. If we had kept to the traditional design the weatherproofing would have been a challenge and a flat pack design would have been much harder.
Middle roof section.
Final section made from four pieces of waterproof ply glued and screwed to reinforcing battens at the corners.
Primer on the roof.
Coop will sit on a simple square base made from four large pieces of pine.
Base glued, screwed and chamfered on the edges.
Undercoat applied.
Chickens come into the shed to check progress on their new accommodation.
Kit TARDIS coming together nicely.
First coat of colour, somehow a bit of blue makes all the difference. Windows are glass left over from the old shed.
First colour coat was far too light. We had to add a fair amount of black to bring it down to an acceptable shade.
For window framing we used the lid off rectangular section electrical conduit and glued it straight onto the glass.
Paint drying in the sun while the dog keeps an eye on things.
Interior ramp made from offcuts.
Two interior floors, a couple of ramps and the sliding hatch.
We need adjustable ventilation and the obvious thing was to have at least one window that opened. After a little head scratching a plywood frame encased in more conduit seemed to work OK.
Conduit moves on the wet glue and needs to be taped and clamped while it sets.
Interior ramp sections visible from the outside are given a top coat.
The big moment, DIY flatpack Chicken coop TARDIS ready for assembly.
Dog still monitoring things.
It only took 10 minutes to build the sides, hang the doors and fit the roof. Coop sits on a row of bricks to keep the wood off the ground.
The chickens have the run of the garden while the coop is assembled. Dog wants to be friends but the chickens aren't interested in cross-species relationships.
Interior fittings rest on blocks and battens. The whole interior can be removed if necessary without tools.
Access hatch will slide up and down between runner on the left and the blue panel on the right. We wanted one full panel on the outside to slide up and down for access but an opening one panel wide would mean an excessively wide ramp and loss of usable space in the coop. The rectangular blue board in the photo reduces the width of the access ramp by half but allows the door to be one full panel wide.
First floor.
Second floor.
Madame de Pompadour and River Song try out their new accommodation while the dog looks on.
Rose inspects the second floor (penthouse?).
Vinyl self adhesive signs printed from my jpgs. by Martin at StickyFingers (Roofless on TMF). Signs were exactly what I was after, they were stuck to a plastic/aluminium backing board and edged with UPVC trim from Wickes.
Paint still drying but they will go up this weekend.
Light on the top is a combination of a Pimms bottle, white paper in a plastic envelope and the remains of a garden lamp bought at a car boot sale.
Chickens have no respect for minimum focusing distances.
The signs and exterior furniture should be fitted this coming weekend. Interior lighting will take another few days as I need to get 12V into the coop from the shed. I’ll take a few exterior photos when it’s all finished and post them.
