Red letter day here!!!!  Finally, after a year and a half, the housing is nearly finished for our chickens!!!!!!!  (Please pardon my happy dance!)

The front door is being attached as we speak!!!  Still painting and stuff like that to do, so pics of it will be a while in posting, but we are nearly there.  Hope to get the girls in tomorrow to spend their first night.

Oh, my, what a process this has been.  Again, so many thanks to everyone who contributed good ideas, things which aren't going to work here exactly but led to something else, and all the encouragement.

Oh, my.  Sure wish I didn't have a meeting this evening.  I just want to sit and look at it!

The girls and the guinea had their first outing today, and are FINALLY in their house!!!!  Still have much detail work to do, and they need to acclimate to the new digs, so they are still in their crates.  They seem extremely happy to be where they are.  Do they understand that this is their space somehow???

Oooh!  What a great idea – and it would smell sooooo goooood!  

Here's a preliminary pic of our almost finished chicken house!!!  There is now also white trim on that side and I have replaced the little flower garden in front of it.  The inside is not finished out yet either, but will post pics of it all when it is finished.  It only took a year and a half, but we are finally there!

There is hardware cloth over the window, so you aren't really seeing things!  Keep in mind also that the chickens have only half of the space.  They have 10x10, with the back half being for the lawn mower, the Mule, etc.  There is also a back door from the other side into the dog pen to the left of the screen.  There is a single light fixture in the center and one electric outlet in case we ever decide to incubate, or add some wall sconces for mood lighting or something…  

Keep in mind that the roof structure and supporting poles were already there, with electrical service, so it is not quite as over the top as it appears at first glance.  Then again, we are well into retirement and don't bend over and such nearly as well as we used to!  So, we needed to have stuff up off the ground so we could get to it.  The roosts, nesting boxes and all will be at least waist high just for our convenience.  For the next couple of days, the flock still has their familiar dog crates with plywood laid on top for roosting, practice jumping/flying, etc.

Please note: anyone attempting to move fowl kiddies in dog crates be very careful doing so.  We nearly had a mishap during the excitement with one getting a foot stuck during transit, and another after opening the doors to the crates.  I have secured pieces of scrap lumber beneath to door openings of the crates to keep them from getting a foot stuck between the wires there.   It is sort of a ramp kinda thing now with 2x4 chunks on either side of the opening.

This may not be the best place for it, but simply must share this with everyone.  We finally got a roost put together yesterday, but not it's final supporting structure.  So, we placed the roost on top of the larger dog crate on top of a couple of boards for support.  It just worked out that the roost was in front of the window.  So, we pulled up a couple of lounge chairs to watch their adjustment to the roost.

Had a good laugh sitting there watching the chickens jostling about through the open window.  Then had another laugh picturing how silly we must look sitting there staring at the window!

So today we got the shelf finished upon which now sits the roost.  Got one of the dog crates broken down, which changes everything in their space.  So, it was another adventure tonight for them to find the roost.

At first they didn't seem to care where it was, and lay down in a pile in the middle in the pine shavings.  Went out a bit ago and they were all on the top roost, the guinea in the middle with 3 girls on each side!  I nearly cried…