Welcome back friends! For the 2020 Spring One Room Challenge I am taking on our guest bedroom and bringing it to its full potential by hiding it inside of a home office. Before I was able to really dive back into this project, though, I had wrap up the chicken coop for our brand new chicks! Stick with me as I build or refinish everything in the next few weeks. This week, I share all about the craziest distraction and coolest build I’ve ever tackled – my dream chicken coop! To catch up on where we’ve been already for the guest room, check out the links below:

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

Start of the Adventure

My husband has been ALL over the idea of getting chickens since we moved to a few acres after we got married. I, on the other hand? Not so much. I was under the impression they would be stinky eye-sores in our back yard not worth the eggs they lay. So, when this pandemic hit, I hesitantly agreed to getting chickens. It would be nice to have eggs even when stores are out, right? My one condition – they needed a cute coop.

The inspiration – credit to Heather Bullard!

I ultimately landed on this beauty as the inspiration. But I couldn’t wait for them to ship me the plans, so instead I decided to just go for it. Applying all of the rough and finish carpentry I’ve learned throughout the past two One Room Challenges, I looked at the picture and got to work.

For the 2019 Spring One Room Challenge, I built my daughter a really cool cabin bed. That was the first lesson I drew on to bring the four main walls to life. Using my fave – Kreg pocket holes – I constructed all four panels to be assembled by screwing them together.

From there we threw up the roof and framed out the run of the coop pulling on skills I had picked up with my dad through a few roofing projects on actual houses.

There were a few new tricks I picked up along this build. I taught myself how to make my own shaker style cabinet doors using only a pocket hole jig and built my very first hinged “human door”! I had built quite a few chicken doors by this point, so the first human one was a milestone.

From there it was time to close it up in the hardware mesh and add all of the little details. It was SO frustrating to be so close and still have so many details left to go. That last 5% ended up taking an entire week. It’s already 90-100 ° here in Texas, so we really were struggling to keep spirits high. Everyone’s beautiful One Room Challenge projects were progressing in my Instagram feed and it was so demoralizing on some days to feel so behind.

But then, guys… it started to come together. And it was G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S.

I swear I should have entered this coop as my dual One Room Challenge entry and done the reveal alongside my guest room – but I didn’t have that kind of time! With the chicks seemingly doubling in size each passing day, this project was weighing on me big time. I needed to focus here so that I could dedicate myself 100% to my ORC room again.

So, note to anyone (and self) – don’t get chicks for the first time three weeks before the start of the One Room Challenge. It will kill you! The lovely ladies are enjoying their newfound space, though. Also, I am beyond proud of this build – I have always built alongside plans. This time, though, I created this from scratch! I hope that, in time, I will be able to pull together a legitimate plan for you guys so you can replicate this if you are the handy type.

So now that the distractions are over and done with, this week I am going to be focusing on finishing up the built-in shelves to complete the look of that wall. Once that is wrapped up, I need to really pick a paint color and will probably be turning to my Instagram friends for help! Come join us!

The To Do List

Now, I can really focus in on my plan:

  • Replace the floors
  • Build the Murphy bed
  • Finish painting the Murphy bed
  • Build the built-in cabinets <- week 4
  • Paint the cabinets <- week 4
  • Decide on what color to paint the walls <- week 4
  • Paint the walls <- week 5
  • Replace the baseboards <- week 5
  • Add crown moulding <- week 5
  • Stalk FB Marketplace for cowhide rugs <- constant
  • Sell the existing dresser
  • Replace the dresser with something low and long
  • Find a painting for above the bed
  • Omg buy a mattress…
  • Buy bedding
  • Decorate
  • Take a million pictures
  • Reveal day!
Tweet
Pin
Share1
1 Shares