Coop Palace Progress, Let There Be Light!

Boy do I love my husband.

I’m reporting to you live from my Coop Palace where hubby is currently up in the rafters wiring five new lights. He’s no electrician but he is a go-getter when it comes to DIY projects. In his own words, “Either it’s going to work or I’ll get electrocuted.” Touché, young grasshopper. Touché.

So here I sit, handing him tools, staples, and wire nuts when he needs them and admiring his hard work. Over the past couple weeks he has framed in the roost area, built a beautiful door mostly out of recycled wood, and finished two hatch boxes. Of course these things didn’t come without a few miscalculations and more than a handful of swear words. We even dodged a trip to the ER. (I’ll save that story for last). I will say compared to previous mishaps, hubby handled himself with such grace and poise this time around! (If you can imagine what that looked like…)

It all started with the door. In a perfect world, the door should have fit nicely into the door frame, but of course this old *rather cute* barn is living on a slant and nothing is level. We carried this whopper of a door over to the coop and put it in its place… *Shoot.* The door wouldn’t close. Hubby tried muscling it a few times… nope. Wasn’t fitting. A few hard hits with the sledge hammer to the door frame and still no luck. I ain’t a builder but I know when something ain’t fittin’…

So to solve the door problem, we are going to go straight hillbilly-builder on ya’ll and shave off some wood with a planer to make it fit. Problem solved.

Next comes the hatch boxes. Aren’t they the best hatch boxes you ever did see?! I love them, and they are exactly how I asked hubby to build them. I love when he brings my ideas to life!

Anyways, the darn hatch boxes… Hubby got all excited to build, build, build and he didn’t take into account how they would fit into the wall. He had to take down the frame and wall he put up on one side of the coop and reframe it to accommodate my hatch boxes. A pain in the butt, but I’d say he handled himself with class. Crisis averted on my end of things. Whew.

HOWEVER. This was also the portion of the project where I dodged a bullet (or should I say NAIL… TWICE).

Let me preface this by saying hubby is fearless. He gets his power tools fired up and there will be saw blades flying, staples flinging, nails shooting and zero shits given. He works quickly and he gets into a groove. Sometimes he asks me to help him by holding things while he saws, or staples, or nails and I quickly jump in so I don’t ruin his mojo. And today that meant my hand was almost nailed to my chicken coop not once, but twice.

If you’re picturing a hammer and a nail, you are sadly mistaken. I was almost nailed to my coop with a framing nailer. In my opinion you should be required an 8 hour framing-nailer safety course and be licensed to use one of these things. They are powerful and shed no mercy on whatever body part may be in its way should it accidentally be aimed inappropriately. Knowing as little as I do about framing-nailers, I knew enough to tell hubby had missed his marked when I felt the nail graze my hand…

I let out a high-pitched squeal, as I had every right to do, and his eyes got as big as softballs. I shook it off and trusted hubby to hit his mark the second time around. I bravely held the 2×4 in place again….

WHAT THE HECK, KYLE?! I felt another scrape and heard the nail hit the ceiling as he missed his mark a second time.

I quit my wifely 2×4 holding duties after that attempt. He proceeded to hold the 2×4 himself and shot off a third nail which stuck him in the side of his hand far enough to draw blood. He’s tough, though. He laughed about it and continued on…

My Coop Palace is just a few odds and ends shy of being finished and I can’t help but smile… everything about it is more perfect than I could have ever imagined! Hubby doesn’t half-ass anything, and that’s another thing I admire about him.

And now I can proudly say hubby is a self-proclaimed electrician! My coop has 5 new working lights! (Nobody was electrocuted).

I’ll end this post with what hubby just said, because it sums up his hard work perfectly. “Today was a good day.”