The chicken coop is complete! It’s been a lot of work, especially over the last few months, but it feels awesome to have the project completed.

We’ve scheduled a pick up time for our chicks this weekend, and it feels a bit like counting down to Christmas or another important holiday. We’re going to a local farm instead of ordering them online, so while we have an idea of which breeds we’re looking to bring home, it will depend on what they have available when we arrive.

And don’t worry, you will get full updates with pictures next week (and sooner via social media). Back (side) yard chickens, here we come!

Friday’s Frugal Five

1. The lovely slanted windows in the chicken coop were found by my mother in law at Second Use and really add some awesome character to the structure. Buying salvaged materials are a lot more affordable than buying new, and it keeps those materials out of the landfills (as well as not needing new materials to be manufactured).

With materials costs skyrocketing the way they have in the last year, this has been even more important for this project. The cost of all of the material new would have been at least five thousand dollars, and likely more. Thanks to the federal stimulus, I was able to subsidize these costs quite a bit, but sourcing used materials saved us even more.

2. As I mentioned previously, we were able to also salvage a bunch of lumber (old deck trellis, etc), roofing, and hardware cloth from my parents. A lot of this was previous mention, lots of lumber, roofing, etc from my parents.

They built their home a few years ago and they had materials saved from the home that was previously on their property. We were super lucky to get those materials from them, and I so so appreciate the savings, both monetary and resource, that came from those salvaged materials.

3. We painted the coop with house paint leftover from when we painted our home a couple of years ago. Other than primer and small quarts of paint for the paintings on the interior of the coop, the paint was all the leftover green from our house trim.

We still have more of that green house paint, so clearly I’m going to need to find a way to use it before it gets too old. Perhaps sharing this here will be my reminder to put up a post on my local buy nothing group.

4. Having Thursdays off from my day job thanks to my 80% schedule meant that those days for the past couple months have almost entirely been chicken coop work days. Having a third day a week to get projects done is huge, especially when I had a deadline of wanting to have chicks in June – which is now happening!

Working fewer hours means that my income is smaller, but it has been completely worth it. While I don’t always have a big project to work on like the chicken coop, having an extra day a week to do all the “other” things I do is so appreciated.

5. A shout out to my mother in law and to my husband’s godfather, Bob, who helped so much on this project. (Really, my mother in law took point position, and we simply followed her directions)

My husband is clearly extremely handy with any and all things related to construction, but my construction knowledge is much more of the “laptopist” variety. I really enjoyed getting to do more hands on work with this project, and I felt such a sense of satisfaction when I finished painting that last wall.

Exercise Update

Friday, Monday, and Tuesday were all long walks while on work phone calls. I’ve been working hard at adjusting my work day to phone calls instead of Zoom calls whenever possible. Clearly, there are times were being at a screen looking at details together is great, but if we’re just having a conversation, it makes way more sense to do it by phone and let me get outside during the week.

Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday were all long chicken coop days. We started each day at 9am and didn’t finish up until 4pm or later (painting finished at 6pm Thursday night). They made for long tiring days, but it was so worth it when the project was finally complete. T-1 day until we bring our chicks home!

Have you ever considered backyard chickens?