Shopping at Home Depot to Build a Chicken Coop

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.

Now that we’ve decided to begin our first spring project of building a chicken coop my husband and I sat down to hash out our ideas on how to build one. We looked on Pinterest of course and gathered some amazing ideas, but since we were on a budget and needed to have our coop completely enclosed that definitely played a big part of how we would build our coop area!

Since my husband was building that actual coop he was in charge of the final details and list of supplies that we needed. Because we received our gift card to cover supplies a little late we knew we needed to make a trip to Home Depot ASAP. But for me, shopping experience is everything when I’m unfamiliar in a store!

We have a deadline to finish by the end of May which sounds like a lot of time but when you factor in our random cold weather, rainy weather, end of the school year, our town Dutch Tulip Time events, company coming in for two weekends, and taking our 8th grade students out of state for their end-of-year field trip – that really put us on a time crunch! Not to mention that our chicks are currently in our laundry room so they can stay safe and warm and they are beginning to fly out of their container!

So my husband wrote down an exact list of what I needed to get as well as the price of each item I was purchasing, and the day we received our gift card to cover supplies I headed to the store. He did a lot of online research and even stopped in the store to check prices before we were ready to shop.

Now remember I live an hour away in the middle of nowhere so I did NOT want to forget anything!

And wouldn’t you know it – the day I decided to go to Home Depot was one of the worst rainy days the Midwest has seen for a LONG time! I’m talking sinkholes, roads being washed away, and plenty of flooding. But I was on a mission and I was determined to get my chicks coop started!

I will admit, when we lived in Florida our Home Depot had less than stellar customer service so I was terrified of buying such a large amount of lumber by myself. Not to mention that I had to have some of the pieces cut which made me even more anxious! My husband assured me I would be fine and I knew how eager he was to get started so I didn’t argue!

When I first walked in the door I was immediately greeted by a very smiley friendly employee. It immediately made me feel better and calmed some of my anxiousness about buying so much lumber by myself! In fact he saw that I had brought a shopping list with me, took it and spent 5 minutes explaining where I could find everything in the store and asked if I needed additional help. I was very impressed with him!

It was far better than a generic “hello” as you walk in the door! Feeling a little more determined I grabbed my list and started looking for the deck screws my husband wanted.

Except that he didn’t prepare me for the very LONG aisle of screws!! I easily spotted the deck screws though so it wasn’t too bad. I grabbed the hinges we needed for the coop door and the cage door and headed off to the lumber area.

I had a hard time finding what I needed and let me tell you that plywood is H.E.A.V.Y. so I broke down and went looking for help. This is where Doug, an A+ Home Depot employee made my day SO much better!

He was over the top awesome. He took my list from me and helped me find everything. He even waited with me while I called my husband to double check a few items. He pulled out wood that was beveled or marred so that he could sift down further in the pile and get me a good sturdy piece.

Same thing with all of the 2×4’s and other posts that I needed. It felt like he spent a good 20 minutes digging through piles of wood finding good pieces for me which I really appreciated. Most of the wood I needed was for support beams and I couldn’t afford to pick up wood that would break or bevel on me.

I was afraid the poor guy was going to get stuck back there!!

He also cut all of my plywood for me. Again I handed him the diagram that my husband drew for me and said “Here I need this”! He must have felt very sorry for me LOL!

Not only did he load my wood onto the cart, cut my wood and make sure I had everything off of my list. He pushed my cart around the entire store AND took it up to the cash register for me!

This guy was a pro and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. He was an astounding employee and I was so impressed with how much time out of his day he dedicated to helping me!

Yep – it even gets better than that! Not only did Doug just blow me away by being an awesome employee but he actually stood at the register waiting for me to buy everything so that he could push my cart outside for me AND load everything into my car. I felt like I had my own personal project chauffeur!

I know not all employees are quite so helpful but I was so thankful Doug was working that day because he really helped me have an amazing experience shopping at Home Depot. A week later we ended up going to a different Home Depot to pick up some supplies for a few more projects that we added on (some garage shelving and a dog house) and again everyone was incredibly friendly.

I LOVE the door greeters who actually ask to help, not just say hello. It did take a while for us to find help to get our wood cut but it was definitely a more positive atmosphere than I remember being in at Home Depot.

I used my e-gift card to pay for my supplies and everything in my initial trip totaled $248.58. With out second trip the next week added in it was a total of under $260. We are utilizing a few items that we had laying around our shed but I will share with you all the specifics to building materials in my next post on this project.

My husband is a project junky. All I have to do to make him happy is bring him home a trunk full of wood! Not kidding! He started on the coop the same night I brought the materials home even though it was rainy and in the low 30’s outside! And he talked me into starting 2 additional projects the next weekend!  

Behind him on the right you can see a shelving system he built when we moved in last year and he’s currently building another one that should be finished by the weekend.

 I’m SO excited about our chicken coop going in! We are building the coop and the enclosed cage big enough for 13 chicks. In the future, we can also expand the cage out further or turn the end of it into a chicken run if we need more room.

Keep an eye out in the next two weeks for my next post where I share with you exactly what building materials we purchased, our finished chicken coop (complete with chickens!), and a few of the obstacles that we had to overcome in the process.

It’s home improvement time, and The Home Depot has everything you need to get ready for for Spring. No matter what projects you want to tackle, they have great values on all you need. They’re ready to help you with renovation ideas and expert advice, too.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.

Share with your friends!