DIY Life

The process:

• Dig the foundation below your frost line, and about a foot wider and longer than the finished work. Pour your footer with the "sakrete" at least 12" deep, or more, depending on the frost line. It doesn't have to be perfectly level -- you can let gravity take care of that. If you are going to add rebar to the block wall, now is the time to insert the steel about a foot into the concrete, after eyeballing about where the cavities of the block will end up. Let the footer cure for about 24 hours, unless you used the rapid-hardening type of "sakrete", in which case you're good to go in about four hours.

• Lay the first row of blocks over the pieces of rebar, with the ends of the blocks as close as possible, and check that the tops are level. If not, you can shim the bottom of the blocks with flat stone chips. Lay up the succeeding rows of block, making sure that you don't line up all the block joints on top of one another. (This will, of course, ultimately cause the wall to fail and subject you to muffled laughter from family and friends alike.) As you lay up the block, you may mortar the joints together, or pour the cavities with the rebar, or pour all the cavities. As opposed to other walls, you don't have to batter or set the walls back; they go straight up. Again, let the wall cure from four to 24 hours, depending on your choice of concrete.

• Now the fun begins. With the rock hammer, chip a bunch of rock to shape. For stacked stone, the usual configuration is akin (your word of the day -- look it up) to a small loaf of bread. If you want to veneer the rock, knock the stone into pieces about the size of a piece of paper (legal or otherwise, your choice). You'll break a lot of rock to get the shapes you want, but don't be discouraged. This work is labor-intensive, but you'll be surprised how quickly you get the knack of it; press ahead.

• With an inventory of prepared rock at hand, apply the mortar mixture to the wall and the stone and then stick it on the wall, with a slight twisting motion, to squish the two layers of mortar together; hold it for a few seconds. For stacked rock, set the succeeding row on top of the one below it, making sure you alternate the joints, for the sake of a good look. For veneer, you can use stone chips (not to worry, you'll have an ample supply) to use as spacers for later grouting (there's a pic in the gallery).

• Alternate colors, sizes, and shapes as you move up the wall. HINT: When you get about halfway up the wall, start thinking about the rock that will be in the top half and cut them so they they aren't all little tiny pieces just below the caprock level, leading some of the bystanders to ask " how come all the rock at the top is about the size of a little tiny piece?" Plan ahead.

• OK, getting to the finish line. Hammer your caprocks into shape and mortar them to the top of the wall; if you filled all the cavities, this will be a snap, as you have a very flat surface to work on. It's only a little more effort if you filled only the cavities with the rebar. Make sure the caps are stable and don't rock and roll -- at some point someone will sit or walk on the wall and you don't want them (the peeps or the caps) to fall off and break.

• Grouting. Using the grout bag or a small trowel or your finger push the grout into the joints (after removing the spacer chips, as necessary). Let it dry a few minutes then smooth it with a damp rag. Avoid getting grout on the face of the rock; it's hard to remove when dry, as you might imagine.

Clean up the mess and wait for the adulation (yet another word of the day) to begin. You will be the envy of the neighborhood, oh yeah!

(Thanks to the good folks at Stone Forest Materials in Kennesaw, GA for the use of their displays for several of my photos.)

Gallery: Mortared rock walls: a how-to

Time:

A wall 2' tall and 10' long (the scope of our discussion), from start to finish, will eat up a weekend. That said, if you can get help with the hard part of the job (which covers pretty much all of the job), that is to your benefit. The more, the merrier. There may be a trade-off, however, for the next time someone says "Honey, will you go look at curtains with me?" Think about it...

Tools:

• Shovels -- round-point and flat, for the excavation part of the work and mixing the concrete and mortar.

• A brick hammer -- to knock the stone into an acceptable shape.

• A 4' carpenter's level -- to keep the block wall horizontal.

• Mason's trowels -- for applying the mortar.

• Grout bag (optional) -- to get the grout into the joints; alternatively, you can use a small trowel, if the joints are large. For stacked stone, you should try to chip the rock neatly enough such that joints are not visible; no joints, no grout! What a deal.

• Wheelbarrow or just a piece of old plywood -- to mix the concrete and mortar.

• Brick ties -- generally used for brickwork, sometimes a mason will use these guys to stabilize the wall rock as it's put up.

Gallery: Mortared rock walls: a how-to

The materials:

• The rock, of course -- You should have some notion of the kind you want, but I recommend that you not actually buy it until you have either a very good idea of the scope of your project or the base of the wall already constructed. It's much easier to measure the base construction and then purchase the stone, so you don't have to sheepishly return to the rock yard and get six or seven additional square feet of material in order to finish the work -- not that I have ever had to do anything like that. Check with your stone supplier, but for stack stone material you can expect to pay about $250 a ton with coverage of approximately 35 square feet per ton. For veneer stone, you will pay approximately the same amount and get about double the square foot coverage. These prices reflect the stone available in the Atlanta, Georgia area and are not necessarily representative of your neck of the woods. The big determinants of the cost will be the freight from the quarry nearest you. Measure the project and add 10-12% extra; remember you will be chipping the rock away, so the waste is fairly significant. In any case, you will probably have to buy the rock by the pallet, so be prepared. Have it delivered; don't mess around hauling the stuff in 14 trips to your home. Don't forget to include the cap rock for the top of the wall.

• The cinder block sub-structure -- block comes in several dimensions, but a very popular size is 8" x 8" x 16". You'll need about 9 blocks for each 10 square feet of wall; get enough block for your work plus 10%, of course. Blocks generally cost about $2 each.

• Masonry cement -- Your vendor will have the necessary masonry supplies. You will be looking for Type N, generally used for above-grade projects; it will run $8-9 a bag. I like to mix the mortar, fine sand, and portland cement in a 1:2:1/4 ratio, by volume. (In some locations you can find a "mason's mix" of all the required ingredients.) Check with your vendor, but you can generally expect coverage of 30-40 block and 25-35 square feet of stone. You'll use this for laying up the block (unless you pour the cavities -- see below) and sticking the rock to the wall.

• Concrete for the footer-- the footer is the solid concrete base upon which you will erect the cinder block wall. Get enough bagged "sakrete" (pre-mixed cement, sand, and gravel) to build a foundation a foot wider and longer than your project and below the frost line of your area. You'll pay $3-7 a bag, depending on the size and type; coverage is noted on the bag.

• Reinforcing bar ("rebar") -- in combination with the poured cavities, to strengthen the wall. I recommend that you get enough rebar to put in every third block, with the bottom 12" of the bar in the footer and the length to be as tall as the wall. In addition to the rebar, especially for walls under 2' in height, you can fill all the cavities with concrete and you have, essentially, a poured concrete wall. The advantage here is that you don't have to mortar the blocks together (a big plus for a DIY project) so you save substantial labor time.

Gallery: Mortared rock walls: a how-to

For the sake of this article, I will limit the scope of the work to a free-standing wall about 2' tall and 10' long. Bigger walls than that, or those cutting into a slope, really require something more than DIY experience, and you might want to get a price from a contractor.

First off, safety. On the possibility that you'll be building a wall somewhere in the vicinity of the power or gas lines, make sure you get your utilities marked. My experience is that the power and natural gas guys generally put their lines down fairly deep, but not so with the telephone, cable, and water folks. In any case, if you cut any of the utility lines, you will have, at the minimum, angry family members or neighbors on your hands. If you cut off service to your entire area, you will then be in BTT (big time trouble). Don't take a chance; it only takes a phone call. For this project, you will need hand and eye protection and maybe some knee pads, unless you have very young knees.

The layup of the stone is pretty much confined to two principal dimensions. You can install the stone horizontally (stacked) or with the long axis vertically (veneer). Look again at the gallery to get some sense of the appearance; veneer has the advantage (for the same square footage) of requiring requires less material and less labor.

Gallery: Mortared rock walls: a how-to

At last, the fifth of the five articles I promised! I have previously written about walls of natural stone, engineered wall blocks, cultured stone, and pressure-treated timbers.

Mortared stone is technically not the most difficult, but it is the most labor intensive; essentially you're taking big rocks and making them into little ones. Done correctly, mortared stone is, in my mind, the nicest looking work you will ever see. I think that you'll agree when you see some of the gallery photos.

That said, take a gander at the gallery and we'll move on to the fun stuff.

Gallery: Mortared rock walls: a how-to

I live north of Atlanta, Georgia, an area currently under homeowner outdoor watering restrictions. Not much is allowed because of a lingering drought. In addition to trying to do my part to conserve water, I want to be able to water my plants, without waiting for Mother Nature to send the rain. I liked Dan Chilton's article on rain barrels, but I wanted to do something a bit different. I built my barrel in about two hours and it's now the repository for all my recycled water and rainfall, such as it is.

Peruse the gallery, follow the construction steps, and you can be the proud owner of your very own rain barrel and, might I say, the envy of your neighbors.

Gallery: Rain barrels made easy

Step seven: aluminum can shingles

Add some 1x4 boards or plywood under the roof to make a shelf area for storing treats and things; again, look at the gallery to get a close-up.

Now, just add shingles of some kind and it's almost done. Corrugated metal roofing looks best with this style of building, but any roofing material should work. I used experimental pressed beer can shingles for this project.

Step eight: add the perch

Finish up by adding a 2x2 perch inside the coop. A nest box is optional: the coop is so small that the chickens will pick a dark corner in which to lay eggs. Make sure all screw and nail points are cut off if they stick through the wood anywhere. Attach a pen or fenced area to protect the little birdies from predators like cats and foxes.

A few tips on chicken care from my own experience:

Chickens will live in an old dog house and dog pen. There is no need for a big investment of hundreds of dollars for a coop and supplies. As long as they have a protected dark area for nesting and roosting, they'll be fine. You may need to add a small perch to the dog house for roosting; the perch can be fancy or just a log.

Chickens don't need a rooster to lay eggs; just think of the hundreds of thousands packed into little wire cages in the egg factories.

Laying eggs is a light-sensitive operation; if you don't add artificial light to the coop in the winter when the days are short, they will stop laying for about two months. If you add a light to lengthen their day, add it in the morning. This keeps the chickens from injuring themselves in the dark if the light suddenly goes out in the evening.

Eggs will last up to three weeks at room temperature. With a small backyard flock of five or six birds, there's no rush to raid the nest several times a day (like some books state). But leaving the eggs too long in the nest can create egg-eater chickens; this is a habit that is hard to break, if you can break it at all.

Train your chickens to come to a call for treats; this helps immensely when trying to round them up into the pen. You've heard of the expression "herding cats"; well, it's the same for chickens. They go into the pen normally in the evening, but not any other time of day, when you need to put them away (like when they're digging up seedlings in your garden).

I use cheap bird seeds as a treat, along with a consistent call: "Chick-chick-chick." By the third or fourth time, they come running to that call.

I recommend further online reading, like this awesome forum/message board on chicken care called Backyard Chickens Message Board. Other good reading on coops and care can be found at The City Chicken, BackyardChickens.com, and FeatherSite - The Poultry Page.

Enjoy your chickies!

Step five: front wall and door

Make the front wall like the back one, and attach door braces to the outside to form a "Z." The peak of the front door is 35". Use a jigsaw or circular saw to cut out the door shape, then add another brace at the top of the door.

Don't forget to cut out the classic moon or star shape for the vent hole. Add the hinges and door knob; I used a nail and scrap wood as a pivot latch to hold the door shut.

Step six: install window and chicken door

Use a staple gun and some thin trim wood to attach fake window pane framing. You can have a look through the gallery to see a close-up. I used an old storm window, and mounted it to the inside of the coop by drilling holes through the aluminum frame and screwing it to the wood.

For the chicken door, cut pieces of 2x6 to make a hole 4.5"x7.5" (for bantam breeds). I didn't make an actual closing door here because my birds come and go as they please into the pen and yard.

Step three: build the roof

Attach 2x2s between the walls for support as shown above.

With screws, just attach 18" long to 24" long 2x6s at a 90 degree angle; make several of these sections, and stack them to the width of the building. Add 1x4 support boards across the underside to hold the roof sections together. Now, another supporting 2x2 is added on the inside corner.

Next, mock fit the roof on the two walls to figure out a good place to mount it. I recommend a longer roof overhang on the window side. Then make a "roof lid" for the storage area: add two hinges on the side with the least overhang. If the roof edge looks too new, rip some old wood with a circular saw and attach it to the edges.

Step four: build back wall

Cut 2x6 boards to make the back of the coop wall. Screw them into the base and into the support 2x2. You will need a bevel to copy the angles from the roof onto the boards; a bevel can be easily made with a screw and two pieces of scrap wood.

Step one: build the floor

Once you have a scrap lumber source, start with a base platform made from treated 2x4s. Screw or nail them together into a 20"x18" rectangle, and add a floor of plywood or MDF board. (Note: the coop is deeper than it is wide; the front of the building is 18" wide.)

Step two: attach side walls

Next, start adding the side walls by attaching 2x6s to the base with 3" screws. One wall is 36" high, and the window wall is 40" high.

Attach a support board, as shown in the pictures, to keep the boards together at the top of the walls; keep these boards 1/2" from the top for adding a shelf later. On the taller wall, leave a space for the window and the chicken door.

Making whimsical little buildings with functionality has always been fun for me; this little coop is one of my favorites so far. This chicken house uses weathered 2x6 lumber as the main material, but other lumber types like 1x6 can be used with some design modification.

It'll house about three to five bantam breed chickens (the miniature ones), although it can be scaled up for larger birds. A run or pen should be part of the finished coop, for bird security and space. My design inspiration came from a web picture of a lighted country outhouse at Raystown Primatives.com.

All salvaged materials were used, except for the door hinges and porcelain knob, which came from the hardware and hobby store. Weathered wood like this can be hard to come by, but construction companies and highway departments sometimes have old lumber from concrete forms that they throw away at the end of a project. Just ask around; wood from a demolished old porch works well too. You can even add age to newer wood by leaving it outside in contact with the dirt for several weeks, or by applying a rustic finishing technique to the wood.

For construction details, hit next below.

Gallery: Outhouse Coop