Build A Chicken Coop On A (very) Tight Budget (part 1)

Hello and Welcome. In this blogpost I intend to go over exactly how I built a 4'x7' chicken coop that is about 4.5' tall and has 9 laying boxes (potential) for less than $40 USD.
I am not big on lengthy story lines to intro my articles, I'd rather just jump right in. Beside, you can read all about why I do what I do in another blog that I will make called "The Intro Blog" or something. But I am going to walk you through construction of this project and I will get to the money-saving advise as I got to it during construction - because most of my ideas came to me while I was yet working on it. "Necessity is the mother of invention", as a proverb, certainly applied in my case.
Anyway, I bought our first chickens in July and was by then under a deadline to build a chicken coop suitable for our avian friends. I went cheap because, well, I enjoy the challenge of making something out of nothing and because it has been a tight year (compared to previous years) for us.

I did a great deal of research before I even started. I combined that with a basic knowledge of construction principles, a detailed knowledge of wood types and trees, a very resourceful and creative ability to "find a deal" or to create one where one cannot be found and then in July (about the time that the little chicks came home) I started on the chicken coop. I knew the basic design and how I wanted it to look. I wanted it to look like an old barn that you might see while driving through the countryside in the fall time. Thought must go into the function of the structure as well as the way it looks if you have neighbors that might see it from their house, or a wife that has her own "code" of proper cosmetic homesteading. Or whatever that might even mean.

So based on some other designs that I saw online and elsewhere, I knew that I wanted my chicken coop to be up off the ground. Last year was a very wet year and I did not want the chicken housing to be sitting on wet ground where it might rot out or spread disease more readily. I saw that other had made their coops on stilts  and high enough that the area underneath was accessible by the chickens and would become part of the run. This is something else that I wanted.

So I got started. The first action of construction was to choose the "stilts" themselves. I had recently cut down a red cedar tree from my Virginia property and had brought it home. I choose this little tree specifically because of a red cedar's resistance to rot when wet. There are a few trees out there that do not rot, locust is another, and knowing the properties and use of trees and their lumber helps greatly in DIY projects like this.
I cut two foot sections out of the cedar and those became my stilts upon which the rest of the coop would be supported. I then attached 2x6's to make the frame. The 2x6's were left over after the construction of our home so I lucked out there by having them. I also started, early in this project, to look on Craigslist for pallets - under the "Free" section - and there are plenty of people listing them (in my area). This is the first key to building cheap - PALLETS! Some people leave the pallets whole and build with them as such, but I took to them with a tire iron and a hammer and disassembled them. I wanted them broken down to their basic parts and I will go over "why" in just a bit.
When you break down a pallet there are two basic parts (three if you save the nails): the 2x4s and the rough-cut lateral pieces. I used some of the 2x4s to help support this basic foundation structure and here is our first photo below at this point of the construction.

 SO here you have the natural-looking legs (or stilts), 2x6s down the long side, and pallet-reclaimed 2x4s piecing the rest together. Well you can also see the plywood resting there and yes, that is going on next. That piece of plywood was one of the few expenses that I occurred and counts towards that $40 that I spent. It was also a waste of that money as I will show later that I didn't need to buy it. It was that flimsy stuff, perhaps $9 at Lowe's. But this project evolved as I went on, so at this stage of construction I didn't know about some of the free resources that I do now.

Next I put that floor on and then I started going upright. In this next photo you can really see that I was using the pallet-wood 2x4s for much of the structural base. You can clearly see the notches cut out so that forklifts and lift the pallets.

You will also see that I lined the floor with a 2x4 border before attaching the upright supports, just as you would see in stick-built framing of houses or other structures. I then added other horizontals at the top of the uprights.
What you are looking at is the "human door", meaning that I intend that big opening to be my access to be able to clean out the coop or get a sick hen out, etc. If you look down along the right side you might see two 2x4s close together and another cross beam about 15 inches above the floor - this is the (or will be) the chicken access door. The back side of this structure (facing out of the garage) will be solid. If you look closely along the right side you will see the early framework for the nesting boxes that will be built. Here is a look from the other side.

Now you can certainly see the supports for the nesting boxes.
Know what you are building for! That is pretty much key for this or any project. If I were building this as a playhouse for kids I would have built it with more sturdy (and more expensive) materials. But since I am building this "for the birds" (LOL - literally) and I would be lucky if any of them ever even approached 20 lbs. - I build with this in mind. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't build this thing poorly, but I didn't overbuild either. And that is mainly my point here.
So what else helps to hold those nesting boxes up? Top supports that act as "suspenders" - because nothing else was added under that. We'll see more of that momentarily. So let's take a look at the nesting boxes a little further along.

That length is just over six feet long (the nesting box area) and it will make six individual nesting boxes - three on one side of the center divide and three on the other.

It was about at this point in the construction that I began to have bigger ideas about where to find free or at least cheap lumber/construction materials. You see the plywood floor and wall in the nesting box area? I got them from a construction site - and THAT my friends is the second key to building cheap: dumpster diving construction sites. In my area home construction is back on the rise. Companies like DR Horton, Beazer Homes, Ryan Homes, etc. etc. - come in to up and coming towns and lay out grand neighborhoods and build them up. The result is usually alot of waste.

Outside of each individual homesite is usually either a roll-off dumpster or at least an area cordoned off with silt fence that is intended for construction debris and trash. What constitutes "trash" on a home-building site will not necessarily constitute trash for a chicken coop. I have found 2x4's in abundance with lengths of 3'-5', and much longer if it is a crooked piece. The longest 2x4 that I have found was 14' long, but yes it was as crooked as a politician. For me it was still usable in lengths of 7' - (conveniently cut in half).

But construction is much more than 2x4's. Let me tell give you a partial list of some of the items that I have found in construction site dumpsters: good lengths of 2x6's, 2x8's, even up to 2x12's (much smaller lengths like 2-3'), plywood in odd shapes and sizes (but sometimes surprisingly large), roofing shingles, nails, gutter and down-spout pieces (maybe 1-2' pieces at best), Sheetrock as large as 4'x5', carpet scraps, linoleum scraps, roofing nails, counter tops (never have found granite but Formica pieces a few times), 1/2 empty cans of paint, PVC piping up to 4" diameter and 4' length, cut pieces of copper wire, HVAC duct pieces, roofing tar paper, and Tyvek housing wrap. This is not all. One time I found an entire screen door in a roll-off dumpster. It is now the screen door by which I enter the chicken run yard.

Not long after the photo above I knew that I needed to move the chicken coop project outside - to the place that it was going to remain. It was getting too heavy to keep building it in the garage and hoping that I would magically inherit a skid-steer. My wife and I lifted it by hand to its present location.

After that was when I began to utilize the other parts of the pallets that I had collected and disassembled. Remember when I talked about the "rough cut" lateral parts of the pallet and the "why" (that I would discuss in a little bit) as to why I needed them? Do you also remember that I wanted my chicken coop to look like and old barn that one might find driving through the countryside? Ok good, because now everything gets brought together.

The rough-cut laterals that you can take off of the average pallet, look amazingly similar to the rough-hewn siding on the old barns that I see driving around the countryside. Isn't that cool? Let's take a look below.

Yea, well, match up the old and new I guess. Also in this photo you will also see that I added another three nesting boxes on the right side. I may just keep this area as a nursery/brooding area, but I do have the option to make it into a nesting box, should I decide to do that. This is why I stated early on that there is the "potential" for 9 nesting boxes. At the present time that right side area holds fresh cedar shavings and a whisk broom for cleaning out the coop.

So by this next photo you can see that I added a "barn-looking" front door - the "human door". This is the view seen from our house. I bought those hinges for cheap (that was another of the few expenses that I incurred - $4) but they were silver in color, so I spray-painted them in flat black to help the "old barn" look. I think that it was successful.
You can also see the roofing trusses nearby. These were made out of 2x2's that again I found in a construction-site dumpster. They had once been considered as part of the railing around the deck of a home being built, but I guess that they were bent too bad.

Now you see them at work and some roofing plywood in place. That solid piece of plywood was likewise salvaged. Since the time of this photo I have completed construction, including an asphalt single roof and a run surrounding it for the chickens. All of that in the next blog.