We built the chicken coop from scratch, so in some ways it feels like a cop-out to buy a pre-fab shed instead of building one from scratch too. Too bad, because I like our new shed a lot.

The setup and assembly were pretty involved. Us being us, we stretched it out for monnnthhhhsssss. First, the thing required a level base to sit on, and with our mild temperatures and minimal rainfall we probably could have just gone with hard-packed dirt underneath, but what’s the fun in that? Since we’re considering eventually re-doing our back patio with paver stones, we figured this would be a good place to practice. 🙂 So first “we” (and by that I mean mostly Dave, with help from Dakota) dug out a few inches of dirt:

The internet says that for a proper patio we’re supposed to lay a bunch of gravel first, but again with the warm climate and the fact that we’re using the cheapest paver stones possible and no one will even really see if things start to buckle, we decided to just vaguely tamp and level the dirt, then add a few inches of sand.

I really like how the base ended up. We have a few takeaways for the future especially with how to do the edges correctly, but overall it was educational and ultimately satisfying.

The actually assembling of the shed was pretty intense… I’d say it took a total of 8 hours with two people working on it, and that estimate doesn’t include breaks. The instructions were a little cryptic in places, but we were able to avoid any major mistakes (that I know of). I didn’t get any progress shots, so here’s the finished shed:

And here it is from the other side:

It’s over on the “utility” side of our yard, so it doesn’t have to look pretty, but overall I think it’s fairly spiffy-looking. Or maybe I just think that because of how much room it’s freeing up in the garage. I plan to let the chickens roam freely on that side, and hopefully they can keep the weeds at bay. Otherwise we just need to even out the dirt piles we made from shoveling out the base, and then we’re pretty much all set over there.