Today's project: demolition

As some of you know, getting rid of the chicken coop annex has been on the to-do list since last fall. The chickens haven't been using it and it turned out to be a bit of pain for us to use too.  We like it better having one coop for all the chickens.
It was interesting to see how the chicken society developed with two coops. Who ended up in which coop? Was there a "cool" group in one or the "outcasts" in one?  And then when it got cold more chickens moving to the coop with the heat lamp versus the sweater heater. Interesting.

Anyway, here's the annex, in all its glory. We always meant to paint it and put on an actual roof, which of course we never did get around to. Today, being an absolutely balmy 15 degrees (warm enough to snow!) we decided to tackle the demolition.

Here's a view from inside the run. Jeremy is shoveling the snow off the roof before we get started. There used to be roofing paper on the roof parts, but time, weather, and various birds pretty much destroyed it.

Starting to see the original brooder now. This whole annex was built from our brooder, which we built for our first batch of chicks in 2009. Jeremy built the walls up, added some shims, put in some rigid insulation, sheathing on the outside, voila! Chicken coop! Here though, all the exterior sheathing and insulation has been removed.

Here's the outside now. Next to go is the roof...

Timmmmbeeerrrrrr! =)

After the roof was off it was a simple matter of 1...

2...

3... done!

I cleaned up the scraps while Jeremy moved that brooder box back into the house, and it was as if there had never been an annex out there! Well... I guess you might wonder why there is a door sticking off the side of the coop.

Obviously we need to do something about that gaping hole before we can let the chickens out. Luckily (??) we're supposed to be down to -20 the next couple days so we won't be letting the chickens out anyway.  Hopefully that's enough time to paint some wood to make the new fence we've been planning. Jeremy's plan is to move that gate over to the far right and then make a small covered area where the door is now.  That will help keep some area of the run right outside their door dry and snow free. Pics when we get to that...eventually.

Now we're just thawing out inside and biding our time.  We've decided to foster a dog - see if having a dog works for us - and our foster dog will be ready for pick-up tonight at 9:30.  Yikes!  Hopefully this won't become a dog blog. =)