Next up in the chicken coop progress is building nesting boxes! We have seven chicks right now and I’ll be adding a few more at the end of the summer so we’ll probably end up with about ten chickens total. Everything I’ve read over the past few months has said that you need one nesting box for every three or four chickens. What do they use nesting boxes for? Laying eggs hopefully! So, the chickens will share these nesting boxes…happily laying their eggs in a few months. I love all the chicken coop designs where you can access the eggs from outside the coop so we went with a set of nesting boxes that can be opened from the inside of the potting shed:

When we built the wall to divide the depot Brett framed out a hole for the nesting boxes. It’s 18″ off the ground so that they won’t just hang out in it and also lower than the roosts we made on the other side which I’ll show you later.

The nesting boxes were made from plywood:

The overall dimensions were 36″ long, 14″ high, 14″ deep. This makes each nesting box about 11″ x 12″, a good size for Bantam chickens which are a little smaller than standard sized chickens.

The moment of truth as Brett inserted the box into the wall. It fit!

Securing it to the wall:

Everything was painted in semi-gloss exterior paint to make for easy cleanup. I made sure it had a few weeks to cure (and have fumes go away) before the chickens had their ribbon cutting ceremony. We added a 1″ dowel to the front of the boxes to make it easy for them to enter:

The lid to the box was attached using a piano hinge:

The window was salvaged from my sister’s house when she replace her windows. We added hardware cloth to the opening and the open window is held in place by a chain and s-hook from the ceiling. I wanted the option for as much ventilation as possible during the summer and to be able to close things up a little in the winter:

I think I’ll put either hay or shavings in the boxes when it comes time for them to start nesting. You can even buy nesting box herbs. Who knew? I’ve seen boxes with cute little curtains for privacy too. You could go chicken-crazy with coop decorating…I probably have already. The black boards are galvanized metal boards from Michaels and I spray painted them with chalkboard paint. I made the “fresh eggs daily” sign the other day from a round wood table blank. You can find a tutorial for that here or at the image below:

Can’t wait to show you the rest! The chickies spent their first night in the coop last night. It was thundering and lightning all evening and I was so worried I checked on them quite a few times. Every time I peeked in they were just having a ball. Here’s a video of Boo at the ribbon cutting ceremony:

The chicks seeing their new coop for the first time! FoShizzle shows her excitement right at the beginning. Max just wants to eat them. #chickencoop #thecooponhospitalhill #raisingchickens

A video posted by Ashley Hackshaw (@lilblueboo) on May 2, 2016 at 5:49pm PDT

You can read all my posts on chickens here and all about our chicken coop design here. Thanks for reading!

A big thank you to Lowe’s Home Improvement who made much of this project possible!

Our chicken coop renovation of the depot is going great…we are so close to finishing and it’s a good thing because the little chicks are starting to fly out of their box!  When I first found the old train depot I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to use it for…only that I was sure that I needed an old train depot. This is what it looked like the day we moved it 50 miles from Waynesville to our property (a cool story in itself if you have time for a quick read):

This is what it looked like inside once we cleared it out. The coal stove had been venting into the attic for years so Brett and our friend Warren tore the whole ceiling out soon after I took this photo:

The depot is bigger than it looks….it’s 15 feet by 12 feet. I thought at first that I would use it as an office/studio but then the basement became my studio. We decided that we wouldn’t need all that space for potting shed/playhouse etc if we planned well.  It takes a lot of materials to build a large chicken coop…and so many people have sheds in their backyard…what if  we could convert half of our shed to a chicken coop?

To convert the depot/shed to a chicken coop we needed to build a wall, make sure there was enough ventilation and add a little outside door for the chickens to enter. In the construction of the wall we had to allow for a large window, a human-sized door and nesting boxes. The wall needed to have a large lip to hold in sand or shavings, whatever bedding we decided to use, so we started with a base of two 2x4s:

Brett drew a basic diagram for the wall and we constructed it on the floor. We used Grip-Rite 3-inch deck screws because they are the easiest to use without any pre-drilling.

Once it was lifted into place we placed plywood against it and traced the openings that needed to be cut out:

Brett cut out the opening with a skill saw up to the corners and then a small saw was used to chip out the last piece:

For the reverse side of each wall we could just trace the plywood:

The plywood was then nailed up to the wall. The right side of the wall is a solid wall. The left side will have a window and the nesting boxes where the chickens can lay eggs:

Materials used for this wall were:
Grip-Rite 1-lb #9 x 3-in Countersinking-Head Polymer-Coated Star-Drive Deck Screw

15/32 CAT PS1-09 Pine Plywood Sheathing

2″ x 4″ x 8′ Dimensional Lumber

Here’s a sneak peek on the progress and next “coop” post I’ll share how we built the nesting boxes!

Read more about the Old Depot Project here.

 

A big thank you to Lowe’s Home Improvement who made much of this project possible!