I’m excited to share with you all our custom-designed, DIY-built, whimsical, wonderful, and completely over the top Hobbit House Chicken Coop! Tolkien wrote that a Hobbit home means comfort, and that's what we're aiming to give our girls!
We went into this project with three goals:
- Build an urban chicken coop with an enclosed run for 3-6 egg layers that keeps the chickens happy, healthy and well protected from predators.
- Level up our woodworking skills and gain proficiency with all our tools, especially our saws and routers.
- Create something attractive and joyful that would enhance the look of our backyard for years to come.
Both my husband and I are designers by trade, but our construction experience is just of the "weekend warriors" variety. We hope to someday move out of the city and start a homestead. This project was intended to help us practice various skills to help us on that journey including dipping our toes into raising livestock, which neither of us have ever done before.
I’m in web design and he’s in interior design and architecture. We did LOTS of design exploration and planning before starting to build the project.
We started by figuring out how much space we had to build in. We have a standard-sized Chicago city lot with a very shady backyard. In 2020 I tried to put in a victory garden in the back corner but couldn’t get even the most shade tolerant veggies to grow. Luckily, chickens love shade! So, we decided to convert this area to a chicken coop. We figured we could dedicate an area of the yard that was about 16’ x 10’ (minus a bit in the upper left corner where the fence jogs).
BEFORE…
I dismantled the raised bed, reclaiming most of the wood from it and then I leveled out the dirt, added a predator apron and installed a small retaining wall around the coop site.
We figured out in broad strokes that we wanted to build a 5’x5’ coop attached to a 10’x10’ run. We did lots of experimenting and sketching to figure out how all of this would go together and what it would look like:
It started out pretty crazy, but we refined the design to what we felt was the right balance between buildable and attractive. We have a Tudor-style brick home which many in the neighborhood call The Storybook House, and we’re big fantasy fans. We felt like the Hobbit-themed house fit best with our aesthetic and the round doors would be a good woodworking challenge for us (and boy were they a challenge!)
Once we settled on the look and feel, I did a bunch of research and learned about construction methods for sheds and drew up some plans to help us think through the build and figure out a buy list for materials.
(Full plans available for download here.)
I even created a scale model to help me work through how everything would fit together complete with faux pearl beads for eggs and little scale cut outs of my husband and I.
And then before ordering my materials, I built a full-sized prototype just to check the scaling – especially since it needed to fit neatly under our tree which was hard to get exact measurements for.
There’s an old Eisenhower quote I love, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” So much changed when we went to actually start building, and by about the 5th weekend of building we were really no longer using any kind of building plan, but the PROCESS of sitting down and drawing everything out and building the little model, and the full sized prototype, really helped me get the vision solidified in my head, think through all the problems, etc. so that once we were actually building the coop and an issue came up, I was able to problem solve quickly while ensuring the solution didn’t cause a heap of issues down the line.
We bought all our materials and started the build in earnest in late September 2021 with the goal to get it done before winter. (Little did we know, we would get it done just before winter… the following year! LOL)
We started by laying in footers for the coop and getting them all level.
Then we created a 5x5 foot platform out of 2x4s, lined with hardware cloth.
Then we put on a layer of plywood and did a celebration dance with our pup Rocket!
Next, we began framing out the four walls.
We largely followed the method of shed construction shown by Michael Alm on his woodworking YouTube channel when he built a shed with a similar design. He’s a favorite of ours:
Eventually we got the full structure framed in.
From here, we added the plywood sheeting (this is where I finally made friends with the track saw!)
And then roof joists – we went with a fairly steeply-pitched roof to help with Chicago’s snowy winters and completely open joists at the front and back to ensure the coop has ample ventilation year-round.
We decided to install a clear panel roof to maximize light and heat in the coop during the winter (the maple tree should provide plenty of shade to keep the sun from baking the chickens in the summer, though we can always add shade panels later if it becomes a problem.)
At this point it was December 21, 2021 and the first big snow storm of the year was on it’s way, so we quickly wrapped it in Tyvek weather proof barrier and took a break on construction until the Spring. (I actually forgot to take a picture of it in the winter, this was taken in the spring after I’d cut the window holes in the Tyvek, but it was all just completely wrapped up tight for the winter.)
We started back up on construction in April, working first to build the two people-sized coop doors. We decided to buy 2 wood doors from Menards and modify them to have the rounded tops. This was a HUGE undertaking and required several months of additional work.
In hindsight, we probably should have saved this for a different project, but we did learn a ton about door and jam construction. And I got REALLY good with the circular router jig!
The first door took so long to complete we eventually decided that we would keep the second door simple and just cut it down short enough to fit under the sloped roof rather than maintaining the curved top for the door. This less fancy door is not super visible since it goes from the coop to the run so we were less concerned about the look of it. What took us 2 months on the first door we completed in 2 hours on the second door so, yeah, a bit uglier, but totally worth the time savings!
After priming and installing both doors….
…we invited some friends over to help us build the pergola that would serve as the roof and structure for the run. This was one of my favorite days of the whole build – it felt like an old-fashion barn raising!
Roofing the pergola around our existing fence, coop, and trees was not easy, but we got it done eventually in the same clear roofing panels. I got the final screws in by climbing the maple tree!
Then the work got really satisfying because I started putting the siding and trim on and making the coop look cute! I used NRP panels (Non-fiberglass Reinforced Panels) which are extremely durable, reasonably priced at less than $30/ 4x8 sheet, and paintable. You can cut them with a mat knife and install them with adhesive or screws. They are completely weatherproof as long as you properly seal the seams.
For most of the trim, I used scrap wood from my old raised beds and other projects. I got more practice in with the router and circle jig as well for the window and door trims. I pre-painted most of the trim as well for easier installation.
I went for a Tudor-style look to the trim with the bright blue doors for pop. Here's the left wall...
...and the right (the side that opens onto the run).
We used hardware cloth on the windows in the doors and installed a channel to put in Plexiglas to keep the coop warm in the window (the roof vents should provide plenty of ventilation).
In the front, I knew I wanted the egg doors to be integrated into the round hobbit door. Eventually I landed on this design that kind of hid the doors among the trim. I used some scrap 1x1 from some old cedar trellises I was no longer using.
Starting from the egg doors, I filled in the rest of the grid to hide them.
After painting it all blue, I added these cool half-circle handles I’d found on Etsy and used them as the “knob” of the hobbit door.
It came out pretty stinkin’ adorable, in my humble opinion!
From here, we added a vinyl sheet floor for easy cleaning, and plywood to the interior walls, insulating each wall with rigid foam insulation as we went.
The final steps included predator proofing all around the coop, a bit of finish work on the windows, and a decorative fence along the front, made out of scrap 2x4s, and of course, putting hardware cloth along the entire run.
And that’s it! There’s obviously a few things like roosting bars, food and water that we will install in the spring, but for now, we are in really good shape going into the winter months! Now we just need the chicks to get here! We’re aiming to have them in the house in an incubator in mid-March and transfer them into the coop as soon as the weather is warm enough for them!
Here's a video walk through reel...
If you are looking to build a quick and easy chicken coop, this is NOT a project you should take for inspiration. This design was completely over the top. We thought it would take like 2-3 month’s worth of working on the weekends. Instead it took 9 months and that doesn’t even count the 4 months we had to take off for our snowy Chicago winter. So all in all about 13 months from start to finish. And we still have to wait patiently for another 5 months until the chicks actually arrive.
Oh, if you are curious, here is the temporary shop we set up on our patio. We did this whole project out of this 8x8 foot pop-up tent!
(That Hitachi miter saw is a WORK HORSE! Love that thing!)
If you have questions about the process, please feel free to ask! This forum has been such an amazing resource for me as I’ve gone through this project and I am excited for the chance to give back!
Oh, and incase you missed the link above, here's a PDF of the plans I created at the beginning of the project – like I said, this isn’t exactly what we ended up building, but it’s pretty close.
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed following along with our build!
