Let the coopening begin!

I made them bigger than I thought I would need to. The small one (below the two windows) is 12x16 and the other two are 16x16.

Awesomeness! How big is your building?

14x24 are the outside measurements.

A fine job...you have much to be proud of, Authentic!

Thanks Schipperkesue! There are lots of little details left to complete, but the end is in sight.

I wish I had 10% of your abuildity. I'm so jealous. I could probably learn, but you must have had lots of encouragement as a kid to be able to build and fix and renovate as you are. Great job - thanks for sharing this with us.

Then you get to fill it up YAAAY!!

Yes, I grew up building alongside my parents, everything from small projects to renovating basements to putting up pole barns. I didn't really realize how much I had absorbed until I stumbled blindly into renovations and restorations and realized I already knew how to do most of it.

I also have an awesome husband, who is not at all emasculated by having a wife who builds.

Or as he puts it, "I don't care. It's better than me having to do it for you."

He is so romantic. Lol

Lucky you Authentic I have hopes and dreams of becoming as talented as some on this forum if my hubby will stop saying just wait a min. I'll get it built for you. Even though that is not what I said.

Anyways is that barn red or is it brighter than that?

Barn red. I think the red paint is from home hardware.

It looks good. Nice size too. How have you split it up? You may have said already but I am to lazy to go back and look.  

The east side is about 11×13 on the inside and I have it split into three pens for different breeds/groups. I will take photos later.

The west side is just storage, but I have plans to add brooders and a couple small breeding pens. Winter project! It's a disaster right now so no photos yet.

Photo of the inside, chicken part of the building. Still a few more things to build - a nest box and a roost, mostly. Panoramic cell phone shot makes it look all cattywumpus. It's a crooked old building, but it's not *that* crooked! lol

Beautiful!!  

just waay cool. I like how much light you have in there. looks like three areas?

Yep, three areas. It is nice and bright. The windows are built so that in the summer, I can take them right out, and let the breeze move through freely. It was cooler in there than in my house on hot days this year!

In the winter, the sun comes in the south facing windows and helps warm everything up.

whoops, only a couple of posts back you said it was three areas, that's embarrassing. Really like the way you can take those windows out in the summer, chickens will be so happy about that. Breeding pens, now there's something to contemplate . . .

Haha, no problem. Sometimes things get lost in the shuffle.

thanks authenticfarm but I'm getting a bad rep with myself over not reading stuff properly.  

Little bit envious of all that lovely sun getting in there during the winter. If I were designing a new chook house I'd try to arrange that access to natural light for sure. Brilliant.

I wish I could take credit for the south facing windows, but that bit of genius goes to whoever built it, 75 years ago or so ...

I did add two windows on the north side, for a nice cross breeze, and made the windows so that they actually open.

75 years old - that's nearly "historic". Bless the original mind for thinking ahead to the future when your chickens would be living the life of riley in there  . Like your improvisations.

Just had a flash back to my childhood house in NZ. It was old when my folks moved in, I think around the 75 year mark (old-colonial farm house, a goat was living in it, got kicked out quick smart I guess :-) and when they renovated it quite some time later it became a relevant topic that the original builders had come from the northern hemisphere because it faced north and south in all the wrong places. It was a basic box shape with four main rooms sort of thing. Now quite different, they changed it totally but the floor boards were all native wood that is now protected. Saw it polished up just before leaving NZ, beautiful.

Magdelan, some of the old housed down there are funny! I was told in Australia it is because the Poms were afraid of the sun and it's intensity down there so they built the houses to avoid it. You could have something in the whole Southern Hemisphere thing thou.

Pomeranians afraid of the sun? Hmm, never hear that! Usually it is their owners who keep them out of the sun to avoid sun bleaching. It is hard to maintain those coats to keep the dogs in show quality coat as it is.

Schipperkesue wrote:Pomeranians afraid of the sun?  Hmm, never hear that!  Usually it is their owners who keep them out of the sun to avoid sun bleaching.  It is hard to maintain those coats to keep the dogs in show quality coat as it is.

Are you kidding Shcipperkesue?  I am not sure if you are pulling legs   I don't know if you call the folkies from the British Isles "Poms" here or not, as Coopslave referred to them as.  I am afraid to say when I was a kid someone told me that they took the word gullible out of the dictionary and I, poor nice kid that I was, believed them  Still a little too nice and bit trusting but if you ask my kids they'll say I'm wicked and evil, but in a nice way.   

The sun sure is fierce down in the southern hemisphere though, did you notice that Coopslave?  Ausie sure gets hot in that center desert.  I would be putting sunscreen on my kids in NZ early in spring and not stop until all acknowledged it was winter.  Darn that hole in the ozone layer.  Malanoma is a huge issue, my sister got everyone in her family to have a mole map done on their bodies, mostly backs, with a specialist.  

I always thought the early settlers built houses in the same formatting for the northern hemisphere in their new location of southern hemisphere because they were sort of stubborn, change resistant and trying to make the world in the shape of where they came from.  Sort of cynical attitude I developed which I would not mind letting go :-).  Never thought it was because they were trying to avoid the sun but perhaps that is true.  I always liked the houses in Aus with the verandah that goes all the way around the outside.

The only Poms I ever meet are at the dog show. They come in many colors but the black ones seem to sun bleach the worst!

Yes, I am joking...never heard of a group of people called Poms before. Where does it come from?

Oh oh... The worst case of hijacking is occurring here! Sorry, Authentic, let the Coopening continue.