Strawberry Bed

OK... With the wife and daughter in Bend for the weekend visiting Granny AND a very rainy weekend, I had to try and get something done. I knocked off a honey-do today and installed Jaq's strawberry bed sans strawberries. The lovely downspout you see pictured here is a result of attempting to get the drains as far away from my foundation as possible to keep the rain from flooding my basement. This corner, in particular, drains directly to the basement.


I need to seal the basement walls with UGL Drylok (& UGL Fastpatch for the big holes). Well.... that's another project. In 1923 they didn't fully form basement walls. This wall was constructed by digging a hole and building interior forms. The outside of the basement wall is formed by the wall of the hole, no forms. There are really no footings either and no footing drains build. This is very far from what is built today.

Pouring concrete in 1923 was a very labor intensive process. Using wheelbarrows from the mixer to the pour site and mixing in batches causes semi-circular seams in the vertical walls. Things are made worse when the cream separates from the aggregate causing porosity. Anyway, that's enough about my basement walls.

The Chicken Coop

Welcome to Projectorium. This is the space where I'm going to discuss my projects where I'm in the process of making our house a home. First up: The Chicken Coop.

Jacquelyn found chicken coop plans on the internet, she asked me to build her this coop. Here is the project.

Here, the floor frame and one of the wall frames. I found "found" some stain in the garage. Left over from the previous owner so I used it. Turned out to be a bit messy staining these parts prior to assembly like this. The stain did eventually dry but it took about four days....

Starting the assembly and adding in the 1"x1" hardware cloth. Stapling down with poultry staples. Word to the wise - if you think staining is messy before assembly, try staining after stapling in the hardware cloth.

The first chicken :)

The final product.

All in all I loved building this chicken coop. 4 days from when I started the chickens moved in but only had a tarp roof. I ordered the G7 roofing material from Ryerson Metal Building Products and that took about a week to come in. The lumber is mostly reclaimed or otherwise salvaged as is the hardware for the most part. The coop still needs a couple pieces of trim to finish it out completely. Future plans are to place in axle mounts so I can take the tires off of my hand truck and install then on the coop to move it. Making it a chicken tractor. I'm also going to re-size our garden beds this fall so that the coop can sit completely on top for winter over. They can graze and cleanout all of the left over bits and fertilize it for spring. There are a few more pictures of the coop on Broadbrains.