House Made

For my mother, who only wants to see her grand-chickens. But first she must admire my handiwork.

In our fair city of Oakland, homeowners are allowed to own up to four hens (no roosters!) as long as the chickens’ enclosure is twenty feet from any residence. Here’s my fabulous Garden Coop. It’s about 6′ x 10′, and please note the salvaged tree guard as welcome mat.

This was my first foray into building any sort of structure, and it was nice to practice on something that could go slowly and didn’t have to be fit for humans. The design was really easy to follow, and Merideth ended up being jealous of the chickens as it went up. There may have been some attempted bargaining to make the structure her new office. I only made a few modifications to the design, the main one being that our door swings out instead of in. I was a little concerned about one sweet dog who has been known to push doors open with her dome head.

Here’s inside the coop with their sleeping perch. (The larger structure with the sand bottom is called a run, and the little house where the chickens sleep and lay eggs is the coop.)

Another shot inside the coop. This shows the egg door so that we can reach into the coop without going into the run to collect eggs.

Alright. I know why you’re really here. Here are the babies. From left to right, Violet, Doralee, and Judy. (Named for the women of “9 to 5.”) They’re about ten weeks now and their voices are just starting to change from peeps to clucks. They’ll start laying two to eight weeks from now. Happily, they don’t object TOO much to being held and loved a little as long as the holder is not the dog.

A close-up of chicken eyes (Violet and Judy). If they weren’t the dumbest animals ever, one would think they’re plotting something. Merideth jokes that the three of them together have half the smarts of the cat. And our cat’s not that bright. Sweet, though.

As all animals are in our home, the chickens are mutts. They’re a cross-breed called “Red Star” or “Red Sex-Link” because the females and males have distinctive coloring when hatched which makes it easier to separate and sell them with a certainty your little hen won’t grow into a rooster. Here’s a picture of Violet when they arrived three weeks ago. I can’t believe how much they’ve grown in just that short time.

But enough about them. Here’s one more shot of the run with the new berm that was created by digging out their run. It’s possible this whole project was a ruse so that I could have another bed to plant.

Beth here.

Over the break between Christmas and New Year’s, Merideth and I put in the picture rail in both bedrooms. I also took the opportunity to paint the rooms. The picture rails went up in no time at all. And normally, painting is a task that takes one or two days. For me, it took five for each room. (In my defense, there could be almost no taping because the plaster is so wonky on the edges where it meets the old trim, many of the lines have to be creatively applied. In not-so-much my defense, I tend to be overly weird about having perfect lines.)

Just by looking at the walls, we could see that there used to be picture rails there, so it was easy to figure out where to put them. This is the master bedroom. We found that the picture rail doesn’t make the room look bigger or smaller, as previously hoped-for and feared, but it does make the room look righter. We decided not to use the picture rail as it was strictly intended (y’know, to hang pictures), but I do like the architectural feature it adds to both rooms.

This is the guest room. While painting, I considered putting on purposeful gloppy drips on the new picture rail in order to make them match the rest of the room, but just couldn’t make myself do it. I guess everyone will just have to know by the lack of caked-up paint that the picture rails are not the originals.