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| Chicken Coop Co-op |
Yesterday was double-C-Day. Coop construction had been planned a week in advance to happen on Sunday. Plans were laid. Details were attended. Saturday, the shed destined to become the coop was tugged out of its resting place and prepared for moving. Things were looking good.
Sunday morning, about 10 o'clock, I pulled the truck in at Beaner's. He quickly showed me all the construction materials left over from his new log home construction project. We selected a bunch of leftover foam insulation materials, a few pieces of stray lumber, and loaded all of it along with the pressure washer into the back of my truck. I was to go down to my house and get the site ready while he ran to the site where the shed was located, to get the shed donor's sons to help load it on the borrowed trailer.
Our other coop co-op partner's boyfriend, Ryan, showed up at my place, and he and I did a little preparation for unloading the shed. We discussed potential site layout, and made a couple minor decisions about how to proceed. Mostly we just BS'd since he's new to the community and just learning his way around. We got to know each other a little bit. I decided he's going to be a good neighbor.
After a pretty long wait, the shed showed up aboard the flatbed trailer. Apparently loading had not gone so smoothly. But it was here, and in one piece.
The first step was to power wash the building because it was covered with a thick layer of moss on the roof accumulated from years of placement under a thick forest canopy. Ryan took on that task, and he did a nice job of it.
Next we jockeyed three trucks and a trailer around the small cul-de-sac at the residence end of my driveway. It took a couple of attempts before we figured out what approach and angle were going to work. Ryan's truck was the smallest and fit the trailer hitch best, so we had him backing it in. I'm always a little cautious with trailer-backing, because over the years, I've found not everyone knows how to back a trailer very well, and as a former farm-boy, it can be painful to watch one botched attempt after another. Ryan did a great job, however, and placed the shed directly on target.
Getting the shed off the trailer proved to be a tricky business. You'd think you could just tip it up and drive away. Well, it doesn't work that way. We had a heck of a time getting it started. Eventually Ryan had to leave for work, so Beaner and I were left contemplating the problem.
Eventually we settled on a solution whereby we would leave the trailer with the tongue tipped high in the air by the weight of the shed on the back half of the trailer. We hooked the safety chains around the hitch ball on my truck and I slowly, very slowly, pulled the trailer ahead. The weight of the shed kept the trailer tilted backwards, and gradually the trailer pulled out from under. The shed dropped only a few inches with a bang, but it was much less violent than we had feared, and everything was in pretty much the right spot.
Beaner and I raised one end of the building up by prying on it with a 4x6 beam intended to become a new runner for the shed to replace those that had rotted from under it in the previous location. I was able to lift, and he slid the new beam into place. We placed four under the building, one by one getting them in proper alignment, then allowed the building to set upon them for a few minutes while we reviewed our handiwork. Once we determined everything was ok, we took a screw gun and twisted everything up tight. The whole building stiffened as each beam tightened up against the floor.
Then we put some new trim pieces around the bottom of the shed to cover the rot along the lower edges and to make the building look more like a little barn. When we were done with that, it really looked more like a chicken coop and less like a shed.
We discussed strategies for arranging the nest boxes, feed, and water inside, as well as options for how to construct an easy clean floor that would be healthy for the birds to live upon. Gradually we found agreement, and determined how we would proceed. Last we installed a couple pieces of insulation so I would have a pattern to work from when I had time.
And we called it a day. It had been 10 long hours, and when I returned to the house I was absolutely exhausted. I didn't even want to have to cook anything in the microwave, so I called Byer and and arranged to meet him at the Riverside for dinner. Even getting there was a chore. But it was worth the effort because I got all kinds of good advice from others who had excellent ideas and tips. And it was fun to celebrate our work, too.
Today, after work, Julie came over and she and I put the red paint on the exterior walls. We didn't have time to do the white trim pieces, and will have to do those tomorrow. We both agree it looks pretty good with the red walls and brown trim, and even considered leaving it so just because brown would be a lot easier to paint rather than to try to cover it with white. But we didn't have to look at each other more than a second to see that we both really want white trim, and quickly agreed we will just paint the white tomorrow.
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Posted by Bearville on 2009-05-04 23:34:50 | Rating: | Views: 26
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