Yellow Belt

I started the special order coop today. I'm going to talk about that, but I have to share something awesome that happened first. While I was working up on the trailer, two trucks pulled off the road in front of the house. The first I recognized as my neighbor Jerry's, the second I couldn't place. Jerry and the guy in the other truck stood around talking for a little while, then the second truck pulled off and Jerry walked down the driveway to see me. "You know who that was?", says Jerry. "No". "That was Dicky, we was just talking about your coops, he says they're nice looking coops." This might not seem special to anyone, but you have to understand what it's like being a young guy (we're the youngest of any of our neighbors by at least 25 years) in the country. Dicky, who lives a little further down the road, is widely known as one of the best tomato growers in the county (though Jerry's 8 ft. tall tomato vines have reputation all their own as well); and, he and Jerry together are so awesome that when they didn't like any of the woodstoves commercially available, they got out their welders and flippin' made their own. Any time I cut the grass, stack firewood, get within 10 yards of anything motorized or so much as think about foolin' with the garden, I subject myself to the keen judgment of older, wiser and more experienced dudes. Most of the time I look like the idiot that everyone thinks I am, but today was different. Today, I finally passed the test; actually, a test. I passed one of the many rigorous tests of manliness, having your craftsmanship meet the approval of a pair of scrupulous old-timers. I got the yellow belt.

Before I forget. I have pictures of the coop I just finished. Actually, I don't, yet. Brinn needs to get them off the camera. You can catch a glimpse of it in these moving shots, it's basically like the first one but a little roomier, little taller and with a big ole door for guys like me.


On to business. I got coop number 2 out to the end of the driveway. This may seem like a simple task, actually it is, but simple doesn't always mean easy.

I'm pretty sure that little tree was cock-eyed before I hit it with the trailer.

I use a very intricate technique for moving these things, I call it "push as hard as you can until it moves". I'm serious, they are way heavier than they look.

This is basically what's left from the load we picked up last week. Someday I'll have a nice place to put all this stuff.

Earlier this week I took an order for a custom-built coop, though I suppose everything I do is custom. I'm titling this project the "budget build" because they came to me with a budget and a square footage requirement. They also wanted to know if we could pare down the cost by substituting some of the more expensive materials. I took it as a challenge and immediately drew up some elaborate blueprints to send to the buyer, see blueprints below:

You know, in some places you have to pay extra for this kind of high-dollar engineering.

I'm quite pleased with myself, as these plans are much more extensive than anything else I've done in the past. The one change not illustrated in the blueprint is the addition of posts in the corners to elevate the coop, the engineer was gone for the weekend when I took the changes back to him, so I guess we're just going to have to wing it!

I'm using some pressure treated 4x4 posts (originally meant for the fence the City said we couldn't build at our old house in town) that I had laying around. The posts will support the front and rear panels, similar to yesterday's coop; but, unlike yesterdays coop, I'm not going to build a third or fourth panel, those boards will span the posts from front to back, forming the sides. Here's a couple shots (Brinn wasn't coming out in the cold, so I took these today).

I've got the first two posts stretched across the rails of the trailer, with a board screwed on each end to hold them six feet apart. Measuring opposite corners is a simple way to make sure you have made a rectangle, not a parallelogram.

I made a panel with the squeezies and screwed it down, super strong.

Turns out the width of the T-square matches the width of the sawz-all, which will come in handy when we cut between these supports to make the door.

The front wall (bottom) is done, see how the overhanging stuff was ripped off using the circular saw, that leaves a nice corner to butt into later.

The side planks go all the way up, then the trim piece is set directly on the wall, angling from the top of the front wall to the top of the back wall. That piece will guide the saw as I lop the excess off.

It may not look like much from the pictures, but you will see the transformation tomorrow, I can see the whole thing in my noggin. One of the timesavers on the "budget build" will be the asphalt shingle roof, they go up super quick. I happen to have an unopened pack of shingles someone was about to throw away, so they're definitely going on this one.

I guess that's it for now,

F.W.