Chicks!!! Part 3: Coping with life as a crappy carpenter.

Carpentry is one of those things that doesn't come easily to me.  I spend more time than I should staring at a design question, grinding my mental gears.  In general, I will finally act with relative haste on the last plan I conjured, generally to curse myself later for not taking another approach.  I know that "square" and "level" are important foundations of good carpentry, but I rarely achieve those standards to my liking.  I just spent an entire Saturday out of square and not level.  The good news is, Emily and I are modifying a shed into a chicken coop and the only poop chickens give about level and square is the poop I will someday be scooping off of the floor.

I learned today that among her many talents, my bride isn't a half-bad carpentress.  She designed and (after a quick refresher on power tool use) cut out all the pieces for our nesting box.  Then we worked together and fastened all the chunks in place.  No, it isn't perfectly square, but considering she used warped recycled lumber she ferreted from several of the stashes around the homestead, it turned out pretty darn good!

The design and plans for this nesting box came from the book Keeping Chickens by Ashley English, part of the Homemade Living series of DIY guides put out by Lark Books.  The book, like its author, is simultaneously fantastic and maddening.  Fantastic because it is full of great information in an attractive package; maddening because the attention paid to an attractive package led to a book that can be difficult to navigate (Ashley English is maddening because she makes a living at being a total hipster, whereas the rest of us have to make a living and be hipsters in our free time).

My major woodworking accomplishment of the day... a functioning door so the chickens will be able to cruise in and out of the coop, and get shut in for the night, to keep them safe from marauding predators, both wild and domestic.  I also reinforced a dry-rotted floor, and installed a baffle to keep litter and bedding away from the door when we enter the coop.  Tomorrow, I will finish framing in the door, so it is solid, and we will whitewash the walls, install the nesting boxes and some roosts, and our chickens will have a poultry palace.  Now all they will need is a run... gotta get rid of that walnut tree!