We Built a Chicken Coop from Scratch for $200 (the big reveal!)

Let’s throw it back real quick to 2019 when I won a really cool giveaway hosted by a seed swap I took part in. I had won some amazing chicken hatching eggs from Jordan over at Sky Girl Farms, which was like, a dream come true. She breeds straight up dragons, her chickens are so beautiful and healthy and lay eggs in such unique shades.

At that point, I asked if I could hold off on cashing in on my prize since Nick and I knew we were going to move back to Washington State from Colorado. She happily obliged again and again every time something would come up where I felt I couldn’t take on 12 new lives!

So speed up a bit to earlier to this year. We are actively searching for our next home (to include a couple acres of land) and even though we are still living in the basement of my mother-in-law’s home, I felt pulled to hatch those eggs. And to sweeten the deal, a friend of mine offered to brood and raise them for me in her setup until we finally got our place! SWEET, right?! Bring on the eggs!

But alas, even the best laid plans (or in this case, eggs?) can swiftly change.

In a very understandable shift of events, my friend was not able to care for them for me like we had planned due to some other things on her plate. The eggs at this point were already in the incubator, so I had to come up with a plan for the chicks, and fast!!

Long story short: my mother in law is amazing. Her words when I came upstairs to tell her my worries? “…I think I might like having chickens…” and then proceeded to start planning on where we could put them in her backyard! Not even a hesitation!

I am fully aware of the stigma of “mother in laws” but I gotta say, I’ve never experienced it. I love having a mother in law. And not just because she agrees to house all of my crazy animals, husband included. 😉

But you’re here to see the coop and hear all about how I managed to throw it together on a strict budget and lack of tools! So lets get to the nitty gritty details!

Planning, planning and then more planning…

Right behind the patio in the backyard, there is an area in the lawn that lends itself well to a coop. Two large trees provide shade and shelter, one side aligned with the neighbor’s fence (which cuts down on the amount of building work needed!), and the patio roof was positioned perfectly to extend out to become a coop roof.

I spent about 4 consecutive hours moving pavers and bricks and rocks and dirt and demolishing a dog house that we decided not to use for a hen house…

…only to completely ditch the plans and go a different direction. Ha!

At the end of the day I looked up at the corner of the garden, at the beds that were taken over by raspberry roots, and protected on two sides by the garage, and thought “DUH! We’re not using this space as a garden right now because of the roots. Nothing is growing because it gets too hot against the siding. It’s already ‘fenced in’ on two sides. It moves them away from the neighbor’s house a bit.”

After that ah-ha moment, I got to work.

Hen House = Free

A friend of mine picked up these ratty old free dog houses a couple years ago for me to turn into a chicken house. Thanks Victoria! This saved us a huge cost of lumber and labor. I chose the one in the best shape (and with a removable roof), demolished the other one, and added a few chicken-y touches.

We decided to make the coop match my mother-in-law’s 100 year old craftsman style house. Luckily for us, she still had leftover paint and shingles. The only thing we had to buy for the house was a handful of roofing nails.

For the inside, instead of laying linoleum flooring like I’ve done with every other coop, I decided to go with a bit of a life hack: rubber door mats! Two mats fit perfectly on the sub floor, then shavings could go right on top. Then when it’s time to clean, I can just peel it up and dump it all outside. So easy, and cheap! Each floor mat cost less than $10 at Walmart.

Using scrap lumber, I installed a simple horizontal roosting bar for the group. They are still very young and won’t be laying for months, so they do not need a nesting box yet. So now we’re at a total of about $20 and we have ourselves a livable chicken house!

Someday in the future I might come back and lime wash the inside of the house. But that’s another plan for another day.

Framing the Coop

Now that the hen house was finalized, my focus shifted to the outside area.

The plans really wrote themselves. Since this was a garden area, it already had a sunken wooden border all the way around. Perfect for a chicken coop – extra predator protection and digging prevention.

I think one of the biggest hurdles of this whole project was the fact that 90% of our tools were packed in a box somewhere.

Oops. That was happens when you are living out of boxes for the better part of a year.

Two of my absolute favorite tools in my toolbox are my Kreg Jig and my impact driver. Both of these tools made my last coop build so much easier and sturdier. The kreg jig allows you to make pocket holes in your 2x4s for framing, making really solid connections. The impact driver just makes the job so much faster: it’s much more powerful than my Ryobi drill.

Even without those tools, we made it work. We had a Ryobi toolkit that included an electric drill, reciprocating saw, and circular saw.

Framing it by myself, with no additional supports or clamps or anything was tricky, to say the least. It involved a lot of unique screw angles and balance, but if I can do it by myself, so can you!!

My mother in law had a few different materials in her shed that we used for fencing the coop. The main material is hardware cloth, and honestly, that’s what makes a chicken coop secure. Chicken wire, although named for the tenants of the coop, is NOT good at keeping predators out. It is only good at keeping chickens IN! The biggest predator threat here in this well established neighborhood are our own dogs, so we used the hardware cloth on the bottom half of the coop, wrapping it under the bottom board and burying it to prevent anything from digging or pushing in.

Since we were working with limited supplies, we decided to not use hardware cloth on the top half, but instead, a type of garden mesh fencing. I’m not 100% certain what its name really is, but you can see it in the photos above and below. It’s a flexible, yet strong (coated wire) material that’ll prevent the birds from flying out.

As for the top of the coop, our original idea was to frame it out and cover it with hardware cloth. But, as I puttered along, I realised we’d be short on hardware cloth and would have to buy yet another roll of it to finish the top. This stuff is not cheap! So instead, I decided to use a strong bird netting that I was gifted from Dalen Products. Most other bird netting isn’t strong enough for me to trust it on top of the coop, but after test-stapling a section and it held up…I was sold.

Plus, it will be easy enough to replace later down the road if we find it doesn’t fit our needs.

The biggest costs of this project went into the forces that held it together: L brackets, deck screws, roofing nails, and one spool of hardware cloth. We also factored in the hinges and door latches, carabiners, and even the decorative hook you see above that holds the hummingbird feeder. Everything else was scraped together with the help of neighbors, friends, and a whole lot of elbow grease.

The garden bed you see in front of the coop was all utilizing materials we already had on hand as well – rebar mesh from the raised beds we tore down (the rebar was in place to keep the dogs out, you can read more by clicking HERE!), landscaping rocks from around the yard, grass clippings as mulch from my sister, and roses that I relocated from another part of the yard.

I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty proud of this scrappy little project and how it came together. If I can throw something like this together, I know that you can too!

Have you ever built an entire project based on materials you already had on hand? Tell me about it below!

Thanks for growing with me,