Chicken Coop

It was time to tackle this awful green room this weekend.  Really the pictures don't do it justice.  It was radioactive green.

I primed the walls and I think we have decided on a color...test patches are up.  If they are good in they daylight, we'll get the walls done tomorrow.  Then we can paint all the trim and move back into this room and out of my sewing room.

But our big project this weekend was to get a concrete pad poured for the chicken coop.  Our new concrete mixer and bags of concrete ready to go:

The chicken coop spent 6 months in my parent's driveway while we were busy buying a house.  We moved the coop to the south end of our yard, then used the pickup to pull/push it to the north end closer to where it will stay.
We staked out an area the size of the coop, then dug it out and added gravel.

While Aaron finished putting the mixer together and building the forms, I raked up the leaves from the two big maples in our yard.

He tamped down the gravel.

Then it was go time.

Aaron would pour in the 80 pound bags of concrete while I added the water.  Then he would rake and smooth as we went.  He worked concrete construction to put himself through college, so he had lots of experience with this.

I, on the other hand, had no concrete experience.  It is messy business.  Sometimes the concrete would fly out of the mixer, at one point into both of my eyes.  I had to go inside to dig the rocks out of my eyes.  Safety glasses all the way after that.

22 bags, 1,760 pounds of concrete later we had a 5 x 8 pad.

Aaron leveled, smoothed and brushed it to make it look nice.  

We're hoping the rain holds off so it can cure tonight.  The next challenge will be getting the coop onto it without destroying the edges.  Getting closer to having my girls here!