Further away than ever...

Have you ever got part way through a job and wished you'd never started?

We call it the 'Wednesday feeling' around here. Years ago we were replacing our kitchen, and had taken a week off work to do the job. The old kitchen was ripped out and walls prepared and plumbing and electrics laid down. We'd also decided to replace the tile floor with the then-vogueish laminate flooring. Chipping up the tiles was no problem, but the floor surface beneath was too uneven to lay the laminate on directly. There then followed two days of relentless chipping away at the worst of the bulges to even off the floor, using a hammer and cold chisel.

By the second day of this (Wednesday) despair had begun to creep in that we would never get this kitchen done. My wife refused to get up, all our other help had departed, it was just me bashing away at the same square foot of floor for hour after hour. We were exactly half-way between the old kitchen and the new kitchen, and a bleddy long way from either.

Well, we're here again. Both you and my other reader will remember how we decided to reverse the layout of the hutch-coop by simply (yeah, right) swapping the two gable ends around. This appeared to be going okay, us using the opportunity to re-paint the inaccessible sides of the hutch while it was demounted. Problem was, we would not leave alone. As that day's rain began to fall, I realised that the untreated base of the hutch was now exposed to the elements. In order to protect it I lifted it up and leant it against the wall under the shelter of the creeper growing across it. Mistake! We discovered that two of the four cross struts were rotten, and worse still the dry sand and slab base on which it stood was now very disturbed. I poked around a bit and discovered a vast network of tunnels beneath the base.

Our two rabbits - despite being afforded particularly well-appointed accommodation - much prefered the simpler life and excavated themselves a burrow underneath it all. If we ever have rabbits again I may well skip the wendy house hutch thing altogether and just dump a pile of earth in their pen and let 'em dig out their own house...

Anyway all this waffle is by way of leading up to today's update. The site now looks like this:

No, the pictures aren't out of order, that really is the view as I write this latest episode. We have gone backwards somewhat. Basically I have now created the world's biggest cat litter tray. With extensive soakaway. Our two cats demonstrated this almost within minutes of it being exposed.

Hmm, I get the feeling it's a Wednesday again, and somewhere somewhen I am pounding away hour after hour at a square foot of floor.....

We will prevail. We must, as I have a garage full of hutch sides, roof panels and fence panels revelling in three weekend's worth of painting. They're either going out the back as a coop, or out the front with a big 'For Sale' sign on 'em.

If I write no more postings then it's the latter. Feel free to make me an offer!!!

A Coop in the making

Well, it won't house rabbits anymore, not unless they can work a sliding door. Or learn to lay eggs.

I woke one morning to find my father-in-law already at work. He had been secretly commisioned to build a nesting box to fit the existing hutch-soon-to-be-coop. (He had built the original hutch, so obviously knew what he was doing). He had brought the next box up with him, along with some other bits of wood for which he had plans for and a comprehensive toolkit. He clearly didn't trust that I had the tools required, or at least that I could lay my hands on them the same day they were called for...

Anyway at some ungodly pre-breakfast-coffee hour, he began loosening the panelling on the side of the Hutch-coop, and offered up the box to its eventual final position. He seemed intent on holding and fixing the construction himself, but I thought 'well he's just turned 80, he needs to start taking it easy' so I went out and helped him. He had it all worked out, so we carefully prised off 3 lengths of panelling, creating a gap in the side of the coop. Next the box was affixed to the side. In fact this happened so quickly I didn't get to take a picture before the box was on.

Next, one of the prised-off bits was trimmed down to slide back in above the box to draught-proof the coop. Of course being a tight (precise?) fit it needed to be hammered home. I hope the neighbours weren't expecting a Sunday morning lie-in, had they have looked they would have seen three generations of one family tapping home a bit of wood with a claw hammer, with the intensity, concentration and anxiety of three bomb disposal experts defusing a particularly tricky device.

Job done and final bits of wood on to seal against draughts and a natty lid affixed, as demonstrated below by egg-collector in training.

Then he set about, converting the small rabbit door on the other end, which was covered by a bog-standard cat-flap, into a pop-hole, complete with sliding cover and pull-string. Er, take my word for the pull-string mechanism, the camera man was too slow again...

It all looks rather good, and so far hasn't cost us much. We still have to finish painting the fence its new colour scheme, and I have to replace a rotten post and fix some gravel boards.  Got to admit this weather is not helping the project much (even as I write this I hear more rain falling outside) but we will crack on and get it done.

One thing that had been bugging me was the area surrounding the coop, where the chooks (see I'm getting into the lingo already!) would swarm/peck/scratch whilst we were out. I worried that the fence wouldn't be sufficient protection - neither keeping them in nor foxes out. So hunting around the web I came across this site and posted a query on the forum. Straightaway the answer came back. To paraphrase Chief Brody, 'You're gonna need a bigger fence'.

So halfway into the build we have a design issue. We need really to have some sort of enclosure for the chooks to run around in safely during the day, probably roofed over as a brick shed overlooks what will be their home, which to my mind seems an ideal launchpad or access route for an inquisitive fox.

"We could build something that links to the pop-hole, but it would be an odd shape, and the ground slopes a bit. It will look really naff", I said to the wife as we discussed it.
"What about the other side next to the wall, it would look better against that", she replied.
"We'd have to think of getting them from the coop to the run, and back again everyday. That would be a bit of hassle" I said, then thinking out loud "its a shame the nest box isn't the other end...."

She looked at me. "We could swap it around, couldn't we? Take each end off and move it to the other side. So the nest box is this end and the pop-hole the other..."
"That would mean taking the roof off, taking the front off, taking the pop-hole side off, taking the nest box side off and moving it to the other end, then putting sides, front and roof all back together"
"Yes? And..?"
"I may as well fit some guttering to the far side to catch rain water, whilst the roof is off."

She smiled at me. "You're really getting into this, aren't you?"

A scheme is hatched

It could all end badly. They may be a complete waste of space, just scratch and squawk and poo around all day eating us out of house and home. They may regard my attempt at gardening – a fragile and faintly disappointing endeavour at the best of times – with contempt and trample all over it, ripping the place up.  Or we may wake one morning to find them gone, nothing but a few traces of blood and the odd dismembered body part to remind us of them. It could all be a disaster. I’m forbidden to even think of eating them.

I'm talking, of course, about chickens, not teenagers. We are embarking on an experiment to keep some garden friendly chickens - if such a thing exists - in what will turn out to be a small garden. Actually a very small garden. Incredibly small. A small garden that is already something of a mecca for wild birds due to a conscientious feeding regime. A small garden that is a playground for several cats - two of which we own. A small garden that already hosts regular footy kick-abouts starring an exuberant seven year old with a tasty left foot. And now we intend to introduce some chickens. I ask you, what could possibly go wrong?

So preparations are under way even as I write. Breeders are being sourced, breeds researched, hen-keeping courses being checked out. Favoured birds at the moment are chooks called - possibly - Fizzles, or Banamans or Slickies. I'll let you know when I know. In the meantime we need to sort them out somewhere to live.

Here is the hen-house-to-be.

Observant readers may note its rather open aspect and generous ventilation – but it's undergoing a renovation at the moment. It used to house our rabbits (now sadly departed) – but apparently no self respecting chicken wants to live in an ex-rabbit hutch,  no matter how well appointed – so modifications are underway. It's also in-between colour schemes, hence its slightly queasy look – its moving from the blue colour scheme you can see hinted on the fence posts to one based around that shade of ‘whatever-it-is’ you can see on the house. (‘Warm clay’? ’Hazy sunshine’? ‘Baby sick’? – I don’t know, I just paint what I’m told.)

We are doing our homework. The hutch-now-soon-to-be-coop will of course require some additional features,  a nesting box on the side, some roosting perches and a few other things I haven’t got around to thinking about yet; probably a nice veranda and a couple of window boxes. I suspect the path that led from the rabbits’ front gate up the rabbits’ front garden to the rabbits’ front door (no, I'm not kidding) may be a fairly unique feature for a chicken coop. Probably a temporary one as well.

We'll see how it all turns out. Will we get a steady supply of eggs, or will a neighbouring fox have a take-away blow-out to remember? The adventure begins.....