Playhouse Fortress Chicken Coop Conversion

I never had a cozy playhouse as a child nor do I have kids so I could have got them one. I have, though, always thought they are such practical and attractive structures begging for a reno for a nice flock of chickens. When I saw this playhouse posted in an online chicken group I reached out to Marsha, the owner, asking if she’d be interested in participating in my cool coop design series. She jumped on board and asked if I could wait till the reno was finished so she could document the entire process from start to finish.

In the interim we chatted a bit online. Marsha was really great about forwarding posts of interesting coops she’d found in online groups, urging me to contact the owners to see if they’d be part of this series as well. It turns out her intuition was spot on, as several have signed up to do just that.

Along the way we found out we have similar dogs: mine have all been Standard Poodles, while her beast, Finn, is a Standard Poodle x Great Pyrenees. I, then, sent her a list of questions to make it easier to write something about her build and it wasn’t until I received Marsha’s answers did I realize that she is an American, born and raised in Canada and had family ties very close to where I live now. That prompted another online chat to reminisce about places that we both know.

I’m really happy to present this project: what started as a free playhouse and then turned into a funky coop for Marsha’s first flock, involving the participation of her ex-partner, a neighbour, her kids and of course, Finn. What I also found interesting was the coop is now situated between the neighbours’ and her own house and will be a flock owned and taken care of cooperatively between them. What a great way to bring folks together to share both the work and the pleasure of keeping chickens.

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We live in Redondo Beach, California with neighbours’ houses a few feet away on all sides. I am Canadian-American. I’m an American through my mom, born abroad and grew up in British Columbia. My grandparents spent the second half of their lives in Canada. My grandfather served as a code breaker in the navy in WW2 and was a huge patriot. He definitely had an influence on me. I came to southern California for college and I just knew I was made to live here and surf!

My boy/girl twins, who I raise solo and homeschool are in grade 3 and this is our first time to finally get chickens, as much for me as for the. We used to visit my French/Scottish grandparents on my father’s side on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, in the summers and on winter breaks. I have wonderful memories, visiting my grandma’s two-acre hobby farm. Collecting the warm eggs in the morning from their six red hens was definitely a highlight. Chickens are the gateway to homesteading and my dream is to have goats. 

We have six ladies now, as four of the pullets turned out to be cockerels. Two are 18-month-old Silver Laced Wyandottes and the rest are from my friend’s mixed flock, 3 and 8 months old. Her current rooster, Sweet Sugar, is the father to all the babies, so we expect great temperaments and so far they are super tame. We went with a variety of mixes to get a range of coloured eggs. I’m so excited about coloured eggs!  She will replace the four roosters with hens in the spring. We can comfortably house 12 birds. I want to stagger their ages so we have steady eggs once they all start producing.

Who did the work?

This was my first coop build. It is a modified (CedarWorks) kids’ playhouse. About 7 years ago, when I first moved to this rental property, I built a 10’ x 14’ shed because we didn’t have a garage here for storage, and I’m so thankful for it. My twins’ dad did the “free labour” and since he doesn’t help financially I talked him into doing this project for the kids. 

I did a lot of the painting. I screwed the hardware cloth to the inside of the windows and did the Plexiglas on the windows. I cut the door for the automatic coop door. I also did all the research for specs. I guess I was the visionary and foreman of this project, which took six weeks to complete. 

The kids’ dad quit the project at one point, and our neighbour, Steve, stepped in and picked up the slack, then the kids’ dad decided to come back and finish. Steve has taken an interest in the chickens too.

The run is directly between our house and one of our neighbour’s houses. It’s actually on their property and when we got new neighbours renting, I presented the idea. All these years the strip of land was sitting wasted. We also have the same landlord, so I actually have had access to it all this time but the previous tenants were not good neighbours. Our new neighbours are Turkish immigrants who love America. They don’t speak much English, so we communicate through WhatsApp. We are sharing the flock and sharing the eggs. It’s their land, my build and then we split the cost of birds, feed, supplements, first aid etc. Win-win for everyone, I think. 

Plans

Wow! “How to build a coop” books. YouTube videos. Asking questions on the backyard chicken Facebook groups. We also have a local expert, Bill, at the Lomita Feed Store who looked at my pictures and made a few suggestions along the way.

Dimensions of coop and run

Coop: 6’x 6’ which we raised off the ground 2’ to provide shade and extra real estate. 

Run area: 10’ x 25’

Fences were already in place, 6’ high and we raised one fence to 8’ on the side with the bad neighbours.

Budget

The CedarWorks playhouse was free from a school; we just had to disassemble and move the pieces to my house. 

Labour: free (my kids’ dad, our neighbour Steve and myself) 

Materials: wood, hardware, hardware cloth, bendable Plexiglas, sealant (for tiny cracks in roof), paint, automatic door: $1100

Extra supplies, metal trashcans and chicken stuff: $400

Feed: Start up bags feed, seeds to sprout, black soldier fly larvae, first aid etc $360

4 Hens: $200

6 Pullets: $150

(Now that four turned out to be boys I’ll get some replacement pullets in the spring as we can’t keep roosters in town). We split the cost with the neighbours we are sharing the flock with. 

Features

• Enforced floor 4”x4” to raise it off the ground, stacked on cinder blocks, enforced with steel rods and cement. 
• Run-Chicken automatic coop door, model T50, takes 2 AA batteries that last six months to a year. Made in Slovenia, not China, $137. 
• Roosts: we debated between 2″ x 2” or 2”x4” with rounded edges. I chose to compromise. 2”x3” with surgically rounded edges till smooth as satin. I’ll be shocked if any of our ladies get bumblefoot! 

• Peep hole in the fence so our dog, who has serious FOMO (fear of missing out), can look in the run whenever he wants. We also discovered that it makes a great spot for us to toss leftovers to them, as it’s directly outside my kitchen door. The birds zoom over to the “window” if they hear anything. Two curious hens have squeezed through the hole, which is a very tight squeeze. Our whole backyard is fenced so it is a cute, but not unsafe feature.

• Instead of pine shavings or other bedding like hemp (which I researched) I decided on coarse sand (joint sand and silver sand #12) to act as a litter box in the coop. It works. We are using a $1 litter scoop and it’s so easy to maintain. If on a bigger scale I would buy a flat metal shovel with holes ($100). I do wear a re-breather mask for this. The sand has a bit of silica dust, but very minimal. Their poop dries so fast. We are saving the droppings for our garden later (six months to sit before we can use it). 
• We’re trying out a few nesting box ideas. We like the wall mounted one, which is mounted lower than the roosting bars. We bought washable, anti-roll nesting inserts instead of shavings (not ones they will ingest) and put in some cotton rags around the sides (trying it out, we got our first two eggs before the days got shorter).
• Fake eggs to encourage the girls and show them a safe spot to lay. I am enjoying just the concept of a nice blue egg in their boxes to remind me that in the spring we will get some colourful eggs.
•  Deer netting above the run to keep out aerial predators. 
• We painted the roof blue which is probably the safest place to be if an EMP hits here. There’s nothing normal about those Maui fires. 

Plans For The Future

I’m reevaluating my first estimate of having just six ladies. I’m pretty sure we can comfortably house twelve. If we get a broody hen I already have a hatchery I can call for a few specialty fertilized eggs for her to hatch and raise. 

Living in SoCal, we had offers to rent it out, with or without the chickens, as an Airbnb. It’s a possibility! 

We can’t have roosters and just donated the four to “adopt a cock” rescue in Wilmington, California. At three months to the day they started crowing. We were still giving them the benefit of the doubt, up to the last second.

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My appreciation goes out to Marsha Kleiv for sharing her story and photos, used with permission.