If you are serious about building a chicken coop by watching a video, you must see this!
Keep reading to get a detailed review and to access a full transcript of the video…
Unfortunately, I cannot embed this video on my website but if you want to watch it click on the photo above.
Apart from the video itself, this page contains three sections; my review of the video, the video highlights and a full transcript of the video.
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The picture quality is excellent
The sound quality is very good.
The commentary is confident and clear.
This is a true craftsman at work.
The video is a huge thirty five minutes long.
Relevance
Very detailed, terrific instructions.
If you are serious about building a coop, watch this video.
Ideal for a novice or beginner.
Trust
It takes a massive amount of dedication to produce a video of this quality and length.
There is a very detailed plan that accompanies the video and that can be downloaded here.
If you have any questions, Flemwad18 will in all likelihood respond to you. He replied to a comment made about this video 3 weeks ago.
By watching this video, you will learn how to;
- Build a great looking, solid chicken coop that will last for years.
There are 12 steps to this video, which are listed below.
- Build the frame
- Add the roof
- Finishing the frame.
- Building the nest boxes.
- Installing the roosts.
- Installing the windows and vents.
- Installing the metal roof.
- Finishing the nest boxes.
- Building the door
- Installing the door
- Building and installing a ramp
- Miscellaneous features.
Below I have included a full transcript of the video which will help you understand the video better or to find useful pieces of information, faster.
Start of Video Transcript
Hello everybody. After one of my first videos I had a lot of requests for plans and a little bit more detailed instruction on how to make a coop. So it’s taken me a while to get around to it but in this video. I’m going to show you how to make a four by four coupe with three nesting boxes and a metal roof and I’m going to do my best to try to keep it pretty straightforward. So that the average do it yourself kind of person can successfully tackle this project but if you do have any questions post it down below and I’ll do my best to answer them. Thanks for watching.
Step 1: Building the frame.
OK this first step here taking a notch out of these four by four posts is probably one of the most difficult ones in building the whole coop. Really, what you’re going to do here is you’re going to take a section out of the four by four posts and it’s going to look like this in the end because what you want is the weight of the coop to be sitting on a piece of wood that’s inside of the four by four posts so you’re not just relying on these screws to hold the weight of everything. So out of these pieces of wood, two of them are going to be notched out to hold a two by six and then two of them are going to be notched out to hold a two by four. So I think this is one of the two by six pieces here and what you’ll see what I do I’m essentially marking the depth of a two by six and the with of a two by six piece of wood. And then I’m going to make a lot of cuts real close together here. And you see I’m not quite plunging to the depth of that bottom line because with the blade being a circle you want to make sure you don’t over cut the middle.
And you’re just going to make a lot of cuts real close together and well you’ll see what happens in just a second here. All right so now I can kind of knock out all these little pieces. All right so then in this next shot you’ll see all. All four of the pieces of wood notched out like I just did. And now the next step. I’m just cutting this two by six to length this is going to go in between two of those posts that I just notched out. I just had a stack of piece of wood underneath it so that it could cut the full width of the board because it’s not a real big miter saw. All right so what you’ll see me do here, I’m pre-drilling any time that you get near the end you really want to pre-drill. So what you’ll see me do here is go in straight and then an angle it and then go in straight and angle if you try to go in an angle initially that the drill bit just wants to keep sliding down the want especially with this pressure treated stuff which is a little bit slippery. Real any time that your drill is screwing the the end of a board like this you want to make sure you pre-drill it or else you’ll crack it. So you see the piece of wood there runs kind of horizontally across your screen there. That’s that two by six I was talking about before and it’s sitting inside of those notches which we took took out before on the post. So now I’m just attaching these other pieces here obviously this is a lot easier if you have another person but it is easier. You can put your screws in a little bit of the way before you even get in the position so that it’s not such a. Such a pain to try to hold it and put the screw in. And then after that I’m going to go ahead and put the other crossbar in. The other two by well this is actually going to be a two by four here that goes across the other end.
OK. So in this section now I’m just going to attach my floor joists. This is really going to support the weight of the base of the coop, the plywood floor. So if you look at my screen here it looks like a little bit of if you look at your screen. It’s a little bit of overkill it looks like because you’ve got two pieces of wood real close together there. The one on the far left is going to support the far edge of your piece of plywood and the next one end actually is going to extend out past the coop itself and it’s going to be the floor of the nesting box so that’s the reason for that. So I’m just spacing those out you can check out the directions. The plan. I should say. You’ll note here if you’re putting the screw in straight into the end of a piece of wood you don’t have to pre-drill and here in that two by six I’m not anywhere near the end. So I didn’t pre-drill that part either but you can just go straight in just like that. And then on the far end on the far left of your screen kind of out towards the green grass of the top. You’ll see the two by fours here are resting on top of the other two by four the cross bar piece that we had notched into the post. All right. So in this shot. You just want to make sure you. Space them out the same as they were on the other side and then once they’re spaced out properly. You’re going to go ahead and screw the two by four piece on to the end of all those joists and the joists are those two by four pieces that come across. This was pre-drilled before.
OK. So in this section I’m going to cut the plywood floor the first thing I’m going to do here is mark a right angle right across the board at the correct length. This is going to cover both the nesting box area and the main coop area so I draw a line there and then you’re going to see me do something that you could use that other points in the coop construction also. I’m going to clamp down this straight edge. But I’m going to clamp it down so that my my cutting blade is on the line. So that when I go to make this cut then I can just run my circular saw right along this guide that I’ve set up in the place so. We said put your put your circular saw down and then and then figure out the spacing so that the blade then is right where you want to be when you make your cut. I’m going to clamp the other side here and now I don’t have to worry about making a straight in exactly straight cut it will make a real nice one for you. Here I’m just taking out the notches where my four by four posts are going to come up through this main piece of plywood just right all the at the corners. And then I’m going to take that out of my circular saw and finish it up probably with my jigsaw. Or my finger. And now I’m going to do the same thing on this other side. So essentially the nesting box portion is a little bit narrower than the main coop you can kind of see in that shot there. What I mean. Now I just I initially put this down. And then I think I flip it over here because yeah there was a knot on the top that I didn’t I didn’t want the knot I’m sitting on top of a real rugged knot because I was afraid it might tear it apart. So now I’m just going to go around and fasten my plywood floor. This isn’t really going to go anywhere. I probably put more than I really needed to in here and then I used my drywall square here just to you know help me to know where the right angle was so I didn’t need to measure anything to put my screws in. Just help me know where the studs were going down or the joists were going down through there. Now obviously I cut my linoleum to length here. To width I should say. All right so I’m going to take a good staple gun now and go around and secure this I think I ended up having to redo this one side I pulled the staples I think really what I should have done here started in the middle maybe and work my way out but really as long as you get it tight. You’ll be golden. And I think instead of just doing one whole side I probably should have done one in the middle of one side going around in the middle and the other side opposite that and then that’s kind of how I finished my corners up here. You see in that. In the shot here I cut the piece to length so I just left a little bit of it like maybe an inch lip coming down.
Step 2: Adding the Roof
All right so this is what the roof is going to end up like and just like we did with the other parts it’s going to be notched out. So. I’m going to kind of establish the height of the roof here and also the the angle of it coming down. Pitch I guess. Just set your circular saw in case you haven’t seen it you can set your circular saw at different depths so I have this is deep as it can cut right now but even with that I had to make a couple different cuts here. All right so just like we did before this is a notch. I’m taking out of the top of this piece for a two by four and again the objective here is you really want the weight of the roof sitting on a notch and not just on a screw so I’m marking this for the for the height and for the width of a two by four and again I have my saw set as deep as I can go here. And you’ll see it’s not quite all the way down. I’ve got to take my saw. And finish that to the to the depth of two by four. All right so that’s what it’s going to look like when you get all those notched pieces taken out of there. Are this what that two by four is going to look like once it sits inside the notch with the carriage bolt in. And this step here is probably the most difficult in making the roof I would say. The piece that you see running diagonally across your screen is not in its permanent place. I just put it up there temporarily because what I’m going to do is trace a line straight down from the piece of wood. That’s the two by four that’s kind of jutting out there. I’m going to draw a line straight down through the diagonal piece like I’m doing and that’s going to establish the angle of my cut to create these these roof two by fours. And then I’m going to go down and do the same thing on my other two by four piece that’s going to stick out the bottom and that’s going to stablish my cut at that end. And because I’m tracing down the inner part of these two, two by fours that come across there. It’s going to also establish the length of the cut that I need to make and I can have to take a measurement then. And once I get that into place. This is what it’s going to look like. So my angles are right there and then the the angle for those other pieces is going to be the same you just have to take a measurement. All right what I’m doing in this part I’m not sure that it’s recommended. But because I didn’t angle my post at the top there was a little piece that would have been interfered with the roof because of the angle of the coop coming down so I’m just using my circular saw and kind of buzzing the top of it off. I’m kind of not going. Usually you go straight forward with the with a circular saw kind of brushing just glancing over it. Side to side and you definitely want to make sure you don’t hit that carriage bolt. So when I’m done with the cut here this is what it will look like. You see I just kind of was able to shave a little bit out bit a bit of that off and that just made sure the roof didn’t interfere with the top of that post which wasn’t angled and.
All right. I’ve tried recording the section a number of times explaining exactly what you’re looking at but. I think probably the best thing to do in the section is take a take a good look at some of these detailed pictures that I have. Not this one necessarily or this one. But some of the shots later on and you’ll find them in the plans also of exactly how the roof looks put together and then that will probably give you a little bit better of an idea. In this shot I’m just attaching the last piece here to the outside. All right. Then here I’m going to cut a four by four square this is going to be the plywood section for the main coop area. The four by four piece. I didn’t use a guard here like I showed you before with the straight edge but I probably should have and maybe. It would be a little bit more accurate that way. So this is just an under angle of. What the roof looks like and that’s the top angle. You’ll see here I did add two more two by fours to the very middle there just to support the plywood main roof section.
Step 3: Finishing the Frame
OK so in finishing the frame the first thing that you’re going to do is put what they call a plate piece down that’s the very bottom of the wall. And that’s going to give you something to fasten your two by fours to. And I determine the the width of my two by fours in the section because what I’m holding up there is a vent. And I want to make sure I’d have something to nail to to nail my vent to. So that’s really all that wanted to terming the spacing there. And then in this next step the side that we’re looking at here. That’s closest to us is the door section the door side I should say and you always want to make sure that wherever a piece of plywood ends you’ve got something to nail to so I just I cut to length and then I inserted it up in there. And then I’ll make sure that I’ll give you something to nail the plywood to like I said. And then fasten that on there.
Step 4: Framming the Nesting Boxes
OK the nesting box is probably the most difficult part of this entire build now because there’s a lot of angles and a lot of weird places for water to get in and stuff. So this shot doesn’t really relate necessarily to this section but it’s going to help you out a lot. I think if you’re trying to prevent a piece of wood from like walking down like I don’t want the larger piece of wood there to keep sliding down the the greener piece. While I screw it in so I just put that little screw underneath and that kind of keeps it in place while I screw it in. And then pop that screw out of there. All right so this next shot then the piece that goes directly like straight across your screen. That’s the piece I was working on on the left. So finish putting that in. This is the tricky part I was talking about. All right so the first thing I did here was I just. Put a piece of wood straight up and down that’s the one I just grabbed now the angle on the one that I’m connecting to the green piece there that’s the same angle of the roof that I had cut before remember when I used that yellow triangle and trace it straight down. It’s the same angle. So I’m just going to trace the line now wherever that meets this piece that’s coming straight up and down. The piece the relight piece to the far right that’s not permanently in place. I just put it there to get the angle from my cuts here on my saw and then you’ll see I’m going to take this off altogether and I kind of have to template pieces now. I’ve got the vertical one and I’ve got the diagonal one. So what I’m doing here is just going to attaching all of my end pieces and pre-drilling everything like I said before you want to make sure that if your screw near the end of a piece of wood you got a pre-drill. So that establishes the end of my nesting box. And then all those pieces like I did before. Those are going to be the tops. Now this is going to screw this in here you don’t need to pre-drill. Well I did pre-drill that and like I said you don’t need to pre-drill to go into the like straight into a piece of wood like I’m doing there. Sorry this is really I’m trying to explain this the best I can. It’s pretty tough to in some part to. All right now I just got to go in and screw all those pieces to the main. Two by four horizontal piece that you saw before.
Step 5: The roosts
Be sure you do this step before you add the plywood walls!
All right. So if you take a look at the plans on the section. It should be pretty self-explanatory. Initially when I built this coop I only had one roost and I actually decided to go back and add a second one. A couple things I do want to mention the screws are used in the ends of the sapling the cherry sapling pieces I used here. Those are called headlock screws and you can get them at Home Depot. They’re a little pricey but they did a good job and they don’t strip very easily and. You probably would want to use any hardwood here would probably work well you probably wouldn’t want to use like pine for example and I know you can use two by fours. I just want with this a little more natural look and feel and into the next section of this video.
Step 6: Plywood/ Windows/ Vent
So we’re going to see me do here is measure the left side and the right side and I’m going to remember those two measurements and because the coop is four feet wide. Exactly. The width of the plywood. All I’m going to do now is connect. Well transfer those two markings on to the piece of plywood and then connect them. You see it the first time I did a line I made a. I did it at the wrong angle actually fortunately this stain covered that up but that’s my left measurement to the left side and my right measurement to the right side you just connect the dots there. You’ll see here when I determine how far down this piece should come. I guess what I’m showing there is I want to come down the same distance as my nesting box two by four will come down. So I just put a screw at that depth on there and that’s going to hold my piece of wood in in place while I screwed on. Some that trying to juggle that hold it up and all that. So actually what I’m doing now is I’m I ran around the back side and I reached in and I traced my nest, the opening where the chickens are going to come in and out the door and I’m going to cut that out. You really can’t go all the way with your circular saw with because it kind of is going to over cut them. Given that the blade is a circle. You’ll know what I mean when you do it. And then I’ll finish it with the hand so here I think. And now I was able to put that piece up on the side and screw it in. So I essentially do the same thing just take measurements for where your how big your window vent is going to be. I just trace it on to the back and cut it out the same way. This is probably the most difficult cut in terms of plywood. This is going to be the section that goes kind of around the nesting box on that side down. Well on the nesting box side. I just said it’s the most tedious cut because you’ve got a little lot of little sliver pieces to worry about breaking off in the. All right so that piece is now secured and now I’m in the inside of the coop. And I’m just like I did before. I’m just going to trace the window. And then I’m going to cut it out. Just you want to just cut the opening a little bit bigger than you trace your window out or it’s not going to fit. And. That’s a picture of the window in place.
Step 7: The metal roof
OK this part of the coop construction turned into a major fiasco for me and it really should have been but I made a mistake as I was building in that I I bumped the top of the posts at some point and so they were no longer a four by four.
( I don’t know why I wasn’t wearing gloves for this part. Wear them!)
And then I went ahead and connected my joists and I also cut my plywood to that size. So what you want to make sure you do throughout the coop. Construction is to make sure that the top of your coop. At the post there it’s still four by four. And you can use a block of wood to hammer to knock those back into place if they’re out and the other thing you might want to do is not might you really should do is measure diagonally from corner to corner at the top to make sure that that is also the same measurement.
Actually I tried connecting the roof and I tried to cut it to length while it was screwed into place at the top and that was a big disaster so I thought of having to unscrew that also and bring it down to cut it. So I learned a couple lessons here. If you have an angle grinder. I fear that is also a good tool for cutting the stuff. All right. So if you remember when we did the plywood roof at the top or the only way to this next clip comes on here. OK if you remember when we did the plywood roof at the top there was a four by four section which was over the main coop area. So as a result because we didn’t put plywood all around there. The edges would have been about a quarter inch lower. So what I’m doing here is cutting strips which I’m going to use to make the height even. That being the height is now the same with those strips in there as it is in the middle where the plywood covers the main coop area. And here’s just a shot along the sides instead of running strips the full life. I just put a couple strips wherever I was going to be putting the screws
Step 8: Finishing the nesting boxes
All right, unfortunately I don’t have too much video of the nesting box construction but I think I got the most difficult parts here and if you have questions feel free to ask them. What you’re going to see me doing this next step is to. Round the edges of the nesting box lid and you’ll see why in the clip after but what I’m using here is a router to make that rounded edge. If you don’t have a router I wouldn’t buy one for this purpose you could probably use a sander for this you could even use your circular saw. Set at a forty five degree angle you just want to use the clamps and a straight edge like I showed you before in another step to make sure that the that the cut is nice and straight and we cut that rounded edge because of this video right here. Right. So the hinge that you see there is screwed into the main frame of the coop and then the other side is screwed into the nesting box lid and it’s not only through the lid but also a little wooden strip that I put in there just to give the screws a little bit more bite so I didn’t have to use like a quarter inch screw which would have held onto too much long. And then in this next clip you’ll see this is the material I use for my nesting box roof. It’s not really meant to be used as shingles per se but it has an adhesive back on it which is nice and it cost maybe eighteen bucks and I was surprised how much singles cost so it actually ended up being cheaper to do it this way than the other. And you’ll see in some of the pictures of the section. I did staple it up the top just to make sure it didn’t come just disconnected and I used some of construction adhesive in other parts. And then this little mechanism. I created just to grab the lid when I go to get the eggs. Clean it clean up the coup. Which keeps it open.
Step 9: Creating the door
All right so in this video. I am drawing a line right down the middle of the two by four that’s behind it. So that’s going to assure that the seam of the door is sitting on on a plate on a piece of wood so that there is no draft going through there. And then I want to do the same here I think I spaced and maybe two inches or so. Maybe two and a half but then I just double check my measurements there. So those two pictures are obviously just the hardware I put on or if you look at your screen there is a two by four piece a bigger one hanging on to the back of the door. I’m zooming in on it now. I put that there just so that the hinges had a little bit more bite. And then I did the same thing for this other one here. On the other side of that is that metal lap so that just give the screws a little bit more to go into and what I could have done here is create more of a rectangle two by four frame on the store to give it a little bit more stability but it’s not that big of a door. My only concern maybe is that over time. This might start to warp and in which case I’ll might have to. Screw a two by four frame onto their. Me and my Squinty sun face. All right so that how it works.
Step 10 : The chicken door
All right I won’t talk too much here I’ll just let you watch for a second. And I’ll try to include a picture of the way this rope set up is where I put all the other pictures of this build what I did here is I knoched out a two by four to create the track for this door. There’s probably an easier way. I just it’s not maybe quite as a statically nice. You could put a strip piece of wood in there like an additional separate piece of wood to space it out for the doors make sure it’s a little bit wider than the door.
Step 11: The chicken ramp
All right. This is almost the last step here. I didn’t have a two by two piece of wood to create the side structure for this chicken ramp. So I used my circular saw guide here. To rip down two pieces of wood that are similar in size to the two by two. And then I cut my T one eleven strips that kind of decorative looking plywood and then I just actually screw these little strips on to give the chicken little bit more grip. I just screw them on over top of this the decorative spacing that’s on there that makes sense. All right. So just like I’ve been doing at other points here. I put that piece of wood up just to get the angle of my cut. And then what you’re going to see me do in the next video is I put my circular saw at that same angle. Make sure you don’t screw through. Cut through any screw that wouldn’t be good so I backed out couple of screws before I made this. So I’m making the cut at the same angle and. Actually I ended up just screwing up to the side of the coop them.
Step 12: Miscellaneous features
All right. This is the last. To have finally. This is a little when I took the plywood out from the vent there I kept it and then over the winter and when I can put it back in then I just use those little the same little clamps as before. I’m going to spend them and then keep that in place. All right so what I’m zooming in on here is the fact that the end of the two by three pieces about a half an inch short of the edge of the four by four post the green one. And that was done intentionally because of what you’ll see in the next video here. Any time now. All right. So the half inch gap. You’re going to put a piece of plywood in there which is going to separate your nesting box from your main coop section so frequently you’ll have your You’re betting a little bit deeper in the nesting box than in the in the coop and when you remove that plywood piece you’ll be able to sweep the bedding from the nesting boxes into the main coop section and then out the door and that should make this even easier to clean then the original coop that I made for myself. All right. As you can read here we are done. If you’ve any questions feel free to send them along and I’ll do my best to answer them. Good luck with your coop build. Will see it.
End of Video Transcript