We got the thing down to a floor size of one 4x8 ft sheet of plywood! First off, I’m not a big ‘document my life with pictures’ kind of guy my apologies for not having a lot of pictures from the early stages of construction. An hour later, I had a basic redesign, reducing the overall footprint of the structure from 80 sq.ft. Argh! We chatted a bit more about what she wanted and I got started on the redesign with a pencil and ruler. Shortly after arrival, I learned the plans I had created would be completely scrapped – the design was vastly larger than what they had envisioned. I printed up the plans and headed to Susie’s house (about an hour away) to show the plans and get started. If I say so, myself, the design was pretty impressive, given my novice status with the software and coops in general. Given the 4 ft2 recommendation, I spent a couple of evenings designing and redesigning an 80 ft2 coop. If I need to do much of this type of thing in the future, I’ll definitely spend the money on a license, it’s easy to use and quite intuitive. I have to say the SketchUp software is a great tool and much more powerful than what I needed for this project. I downloaded the software and started to play around to relearn some basic CAD (I hadn’t drawn anything electronically for maybe 20 years). I also learned about the free version of SketchUp software. My research turned up a recommended four square feet of coop space per chicken. With this info, I started searching my internet search for coop design ideas, helpful hints and sizing suggestions. She had a couple of parameters for me to work with: 1) she wanted to be able to stand inside the coop to make it easier to clean out 2) she wanted to house approximately 20 birds and 3) she liked Quaker styling. I jumped at it – with no chicken coop building experience, although I do have some basic construction skills. During one of our get-togethers, she asked if I’d be interested in doing the project for her. Last spring, my sister Susie got a quote from a local handyman to build a new chicken coop and was told it would cost around $1,500 for the entire project.
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