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This is a shot of the chicken coop door and frame. At this point we just have it laid out for sizing of the framing pieces. We made the door from a piece of 3/4" plywood and covered the front with a piece of our exterior sheeting for protection.  This also added some thickness for the eye bolt we installed to raise and lower the door.  We decided to make our door "remote controlled".  More on that later in this building series.

In this photo you can see the frame of the chicken entry door in place. This setup allows the door to slide up and down for opening and closing to allow the chickens exit and entry from the chicken coop.

Here you can see the start of the external access nest box setup. We used 2 x 4 construction for this part of the framing to keep it very sturdy as it must more or less self supporting once all is mounted into place.  Note the angle cut on the top of the 2 x 4's to provide the angled roof support of the nest boxes.

This is a close up view of the nest box framing. Notice that we extended the 2 x 4's past the wall of the inside of the coop.  The reason for this was because this also is going to be used as the support for the perch that runs across the entrance of the finished nest boxes which you will see later in these pages when we get to the inside of the chicken coop.

This photo shows the angled nest box roof supports now in place.  We want to make sure that the rain and snow can easily fall away from the coop from this roof.  We also wanted to be sure that the nest box area would be relatively weather proof from the elements when in use.

The floor of the next boxes is now in place.  We used interior grade OSB for this as it is not going to be exposed to any real weather and didn't need to waterproof.

Now we have the chicken coop nest box roof in place.

Now we have the hinged door in place. This door is hinged for easy access to the nest boxes from the outside of the coop.  This allows you to collect eggs without entering the chicken coop yard or the coop itself if you choose not too. We secure the door on the outside with medium sized hooks and eyes. (The grandkids were having a ball in the coop while we were working as you can see!)

The finished chicken coop outside access nest box with the access door in the open position. One tip to keep in mind if you do this is the height above ground when you are raising your coop on piers as we have done.  You don't want to your access to be above your line of sight or you can't see into the nest boxes to get the eggs from the outside without the assistance of a step to do so.  On to the trimming of our chicken coop!

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