Playhouse Chicken Coop

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Are you in the market for a chicken coop but hate how the ones you buy from the store look and want to create something special? Well hopefully I can help share some of my ideas for how we created this magical chicken coop with a circular run!

GATHERING INSPO

Since we are now chicken parents I started gathering my inspo for our chicken coop! I wanted it to be an affordable DIY with gorgeous elements that can stand the test of time.

Immediately I found myself being drawn to climbing roses, playhouses made into coops, and circular runs!

WHAT WE USED

SUPPLIES:

Playhouse
2x4’s
Chicken Wire or Hardcloth
Chicken water cups
Washable nesting pads
Hardware latches
Wood screws

TOOLS:

Miter Saw
Nail gun
Staple gun
Staples
Hammer
Drill
Pliers
Ladder

FIND OR BUY PLAYHOUSE

I kept my eye out for months and finally was able to score this playhouse off of FB Marketplace for $60. It was wonky and needed to be made sturdy as well as enclosed which meant we had a bit of work to do.

Originally, I had planned to use this playhouse off of amazon that was a good pricepoint and DIY option as well!

ENCLOSE COOP

The first step was to make the floor which we used a piece of plywood for. We put 2x4’s running horizontally underneath the flooring and then inside the roof portion to make it secure.

We only purchased two pieces of 4’x8’ plywood and used the second piece to board up the end of the coop. We are going to add to it and make a storage cupboard soon to keep all the chicken food and supplies.

We needed a solution for a little door and as I started playing around with shapes and ideas this pointed arch shape popped in my head which I seriously love! You can get so creative and custom with however you want to make your coop!

Now it’s starting to take shape and look like a chicken coop!

You can see that the coop is off the ground which we chose to do for two reasons.

1. When I looked through all my inspo it seemed most had raised up their coops on cinder blocks, pavers, pebble rocks, or wood stilts.

2. It will protect from erosion, or flooding during rain and we really don’t want to do this all over again so we decided to be on the safe side!

I painted the whole interior white because the natural plywood mixed with the gray playhouse color wasn’t looking good so painting it all white just made it brighter, cleaner, and cohesive.

Our chicks have been in our kitchen since we don’t have a garage which was all fine and dandy until they figured out how to get out of their brooder! Needless to say we needed to get this coop painted and boarded up ASAP because it was like having a zoo inside.

Making the little chicken ladder was the easiest thing I’ve ever made and took 5 minutes so you can too!

The wood coming out from the left will be the laying boxes and will have two doors that open for making egg grabbing easy.

Here are some egg-laying accessories I’m looking into for when we get to that point!

We began the frame of our run and wanted it to be a good size since this area of our yard doesn’t quite get utilized, we have 8 chickens, and hope to maybe add a couple of runner ducks next year!

PAINTING THE COOP

I found paint on hand that is the same color as our house trim and decided to make that the coop exterior. The color is “Dolphin Blue”by Behr and is the perfect cottage blue! “Blue Heather” by Benjamin Moore is another blue you could choose that is very similar!

Here are my favorite painting supplies!

I decided to make it fun and further the magic of this design by painting around the door and along the angles of the roof! I think I might just keep adding on and make it come alive!

Here are the gold latches we used all around our coop along with some other ideas!

Here are some cute hinge ideas! We started with a more decorative gold hinge for this door but ended up changing to a black hinge and are mixing and matching gold and black.

I think the girls like their cottage!

THE HEXAGON RUN

We placed the coop in-between the pomegranate tree and pecan tree for there to be shade over the chickens. We used the trunk of the pecan tree as the center support for our circular run.

We used chicken wire instead of hardware cloth and are hoping we don’t have any issues with predators being able to get in. This is a very heated opinion between everyone and depending on your area you can determine what is best. The main predator we know we have is hawks which I think the tree and chicken wire will protect from. We used about 100ft of chicken wire and used a screwdriver to pull the edges of the chicken wire and make it tight.

After cutting all the lengths and angles for the roof supports, Dallin cut these blocks of extra 2x4 to drill underneath each piece of wood to create a collar-like effect around the tree to keep everything in place.

We tried to look into the pros and cons of drilling the wood into the tree and decided it could do a lot of harm to it and only put in one screw to support the collar in place.

PVC FEEDER & WATERER

When it came to picking and designing the chicken feeders I knew I wanted a solution that would allow us not to worry when going out of town. I did some research and found a way to make these large PVC feeders/waterers and we decided to make ours 5ft tall so they can hold as much food and water as possible.

We got four water cups to put two on each water pipe and made two feed pipes.