Chickens, Chores and Staining Tip

   This past "weekend" sure was a hectic one.  On Wednesday Melissa and I spent the morning running down the best price on stain for the deck.  She pressure-washed it on Tuesday in preparation for the long, sunny forecast that dictated outdoor house maintenance be done.  We spent Wednesday afternoon with our son "Luke" and his girlfriend staining the railings of the deck and the 2 staircases leading up to it.  It took the four of us 5 hours to complete it with paint brushes.  Wednesday evening a friend asked if anyone wanted one of her chickens that refuses to stay in the fence and keeps digging up her garden.  Melissa has been after me for a couple of years to get chickens, and since I wouldn't have to raise it from a peep, I relented, as long as she gave us two so the hen would have a friend.
   On Thursday morning I had scheduled a contractor to install gutters on our house so bright and early Luke and I were out putting silicon in the nail holes of the aluminum fascia where they had pulled through and tacking it down before they arrived at 9:45.  In the meantime, Melissa started building a small chicken fence inside our large dog fence.  She went out to our friend's around noon and got the chickens.
   When the contractors were finishing up around 2:30 with the gutters we were talking about the things I had to do that afternoon, which included staining the deck floor and the steps on the stairways. He passed on a tip that we found very useful: instead of using a brush for staining, use one of those rectangular paint edging pads that you can put a broom handle in.  We happened to have one and gave it a try.  Melissa stained the entire deck floor in an hour and a half, the same amount of time it took me to brush-stain one of the 2 sets of steps..  The last time she did it with a brush and it took her all day.  She did the other set of steps in about 30 minutes.
   At 5pm we started working on a chicken coop for our new "flock".  We found some left-over pressure-treated 2x2 square railing spindles to use for the frame. Then we found some tongue and groove cedar plank cut-offs left over from my brother's camp we had planned to use for a dog house that we used on the two sides.  We had a sheet and three quarters of 3/16" interior plywood that we used for the floor, front, back and roof.  I keep a supply of deck screws and roofing nails on hand and we had shingles that were left-over from building our house.  By 9pm we put the chicken coop in the fence and then put the last piece of fence up and locked the chickens in their new coop for the night.
   On Friday morning we got the roll of wildlife netting that we had left over from fencing the garden and and covered the entire enclosure to keep Miss Houdini in.  SHE'S NOT GETTING IN MY GARDEN!  We've been getting 2 eggs a day ever since.  - Thank you, Sharon!