Chicken coop: wall wrap

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:

Chicken coop: sheathing walls

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.

Beehives assembled

As previously mentioned, we’ll be getting into beekeeping soon, as the next homestead adventure. About a week from today, in fact! Eeek.

Yep, next Friday we’ll be picking up two “nucs”, or nucleus hives: a few frames of established hives, each with a queen, all ready to go.

So we’ve got two sets of hive boxes etc that we’re preparing to house them. They are all assembled, and waiting to be stained & painted (one each), which Jenn will do this weekend.

Chicken coop: sub-fascia & barge rafters

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):

Chicken coop: mounting rafters

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.

Chicken coop: left & center wall framing

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.

Chicken coop: right wall framing

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.

Chicken coop: front wall framing

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!

Mower & beehive

It’s raining today, and the canopy is rather out of commission, so I spent some time today replacing the blade drive belt on the big zero-turn mower, and assembling one of the two beehives.

The belt had become derailed and damaged while cutting really long grass on the field — we’d left it a bit longer than we’d liked for the first mow, due to the lack of sunny days recently. So I needed to remove the damaged belt, and feed in a replacement. Not a trivial operation, but I’ve done it a few times before; takes about an hour.


(I also cleaned off the mower, of course.)

Next, I started assembling one of the beehives. I didn’t have time to finish, but I got the two brood boxes and the honey super done. Some other day I’ll finish off the frames and roof, and set up the second box.