I didn’t have time yesterday after sheathing the walls, though I did add the canopy over the roof. So this morning I added the Tyvek wrap to waterproof the walls.

Certainly not as tidy as a professional builder would do, but that’s consistent with the rest of the construction. The wrap covers all of the windows and doors at present (with loose vertical sheets temporarily over the front window and door, to keep the rain out). Later, I’ll cut holes where needed.

The inside view:

The coop is starting to look a bit more real now: today I added the OSB sheets to the walls.

The forecast for today was for sun, with the next week rather rainy, so I started rather early, to make the most of the sunny day:

Sheathing underway:

These quick-grip clamps were invaluable in holding things in place:

Done:

Inside:

Tomorrow I’ll add the Tyvek wrap before the rain starts, to protect the walls.

After finishing assembling the beehives (I should take photos of that), yesterday I worked on the sub-fascia and barge rafters for the chicken coop.

Here’s the sub-fascia, the boards connecting the bases of the roof rafters. They have a bevel cut to match the roof slope, and stick out beyond the side walls for the barge rafters:

Next up was constructing the aforementioned barge rafters, aka roof ladder, which are the bits of the roof that stick out on the ends:

Here they are installed (this morning):

As planned, today I mounted the rafters, that were previously constructed.

Firstly I needed to cut a smidge more off the birdmouth notches, to leave enough room for the OSB sheets:

Then I mounted the rafters on the coop:

Here’s a close-up showing the hurricane ties that help reinforce the attachment:

I didn’t have time to add the barge rafters (that extend beyond the walls) and sub-fascias (that connect the ends of the rafters); a project for another day.

Nice weather this weekend, so I’m taking advantage of it to continue work on the new chicken coop.

First up is the east wall, on the left of the coop. This is much the same as the west wall, except it has a “poop door” at the bottom. This will be a hatch to make it easy to remove trays that catch the chicken poop that accumulates under the roosts where they sleep at night, making it easier to clean.

Here’s the design drawing:

And construction underway:

Complete:

Next up is the center wall, which will divide the chicken’s part of the coop from the storage area.

The drawing for the center wall:

Finally, I added the double top plates to the walls. This adds extra rigidity to the structure. Here’s a view from atop the ladder:

And the whole coop, showing all five walls:

Lastly, a picture Jenn caught of me:

Tomorrow I’ll mount the roof rafters, and perhaps do the sub-fascia.

Another day, another wall. Today I built & raised the west wall, i.e. on the right of the coop looking from the front.

Here’s the design sketch:

And the result (a little obscured by the canopy remains; sorry about that):

The double top plates and rafters will go on top of this, of course, as depicted in the sketch.

That’s it till the weekend, when I’ll do the left (east) and center walls, and may have time to install the rafters.

One more wall done: I’ve raised the front wall framing, and built and raised the back wall framing.

Here’s the back wall sketch:

The front wall raised:

Starting the back wall:

Back wall framing finished:

And raised:

Today I built the framing of the front wall of the new chicken coop (on the north side).

Here’s my latest framing design drawing:

And the result, still lying on the floor for now:

Tomorrow will be rainy, so I’ll do consulting work, but Tuesday is looking like it’ll be fine, enabling me to stand up the front wall and start on the back wall.

Progress!

We’re having very high winds this morning (gusts up to 56 mph reported), which has knocked out our power, unsurprisingly. And thousands of others around the region. Here’s PGE’s outage map, showing the zip codes with outages… pretty much everywhere:

Unfortunately, the wind has also taken out my canopy:

It’s pretty much destroyed; several bent poles and broken connectors:

Not sure yet if I’ll try to repair it, or get replacement parts, or buy a new one, or just do without it. I was going to have to lift it up once I got the front wall raised anyway, as the canopy was 6′ inside at the edge, and the front wall will be about 9′ off the ground, but I had planned for that.