Our fourth chicken is now officially Phyllis Diller.   After posting the tale of the painting of our chicken house I received a comment from Junosmom.  It was an innocent comment.  She wrote, “Any plans for that coop? We're about to build another.”  I read that and thought to myself, “Ah...yeah!  Of course we have plans for the chicken coop.  We plan on putting our chickens in it!”  There was an underlying thought of, “Duh!”  What were we supposed to do, send the coop to her?  And then I shrugged and moved on.  Apparently, so did Junosmom.  She hasn’t been back since.

I was reading through some blog comments a couple of days ago and I stumbled upon Junosmom’s comment.  That’s when it hit me.  That’s when I realized I was a boob.  She didn’t want to know what we had planned for our chicken coop.  What she meant was that she was going to build another chicken coop, and did we have plans, i.e. designs (blueprints), for our chicken coop?  It is moments like this that I think I should demand a full tuition refund from my alma mater. 

Junosmom, the belated answer to your question is, “No, we do not have plans for our chicken coop.”  What we had was a pile of lumber from an eight foot long picnic table that I dismantled last year and stacked in my garage.  We used the long pieces to cut the frame of the coop and attached them together using left-over lag bolts from the loft project.  They were cut so that each side is 48” wide, the width of a piece of plywood.  Some of the pieces of the frame are longer than the others to accommodate this design.  If you’d really like a plan I can measure the coop and send you dimensions.  We cut into the walls a large door for cleaning, a small door for the birds to get in and out, and a door to access eggs.   Everything was sort of jury-rigged.  We looked at the coop and decided, “We need a shelf here.”  Then we cut one to fit.  If the pictures make our coop look like something you’d want for your chickens, I can assure you that it is only by pure dumb luck.  I am, after all, a city boy.  I never saw a chicken up close until one hatched on my kitchen counter a few weeks ago. 

I apologize for my misreading of your comment, as well as my failure to respond in a timely manner.   I’d love to have a witty comment to explain away my blunder, but the only thing that comes to mind is,