Stairs are DONE!!!!

Woo Hoo!  I put the second coat of polyurethane on today.  It took me five hours for each coat.  I will be officially done with the stairs after I take the painters tape off and tighten the shoes back down.  So here are the stairs in all their glory.  Be glad you didn't have to do the work.

As soon as I got the last of the coat on the stairs I went out to the chicken coop to add my little outside enclosure for the baby chicks.  I got the frame work up and ready for chicken wire.  I ran out of time to get it covered before it got dark.  I just dug through the scrap wood pile to find stuff to use.  Annmarie came out to inspect (talk to me) my work and she noticed a dead chicken under the coop.   The cats had moved a rock skirting the coop and they were dragging my baby chickens they killed under the coop to snack on.  The chickens were under the coop too far to reach.  So I just rocked it over and left it.  When I went inside it was starting to smell in the storage room (dead chickens underneath coop).  So something to look forward to for the next three weeks.  So on Wednesday I will get the enclosure covered up.  I am getting a solid 18 eggs a day now, from about 29 chickens.  After the babies are bigger I will lock up the hens a couple at a time and start thinning out the ones that are not laying.  I only have 11 babies out of the original 24 I started with this Summer.

Above is my new enclosure for the babies.  The section farthest from the window is were the babies are kept inside the coop.  So my door will go in that four foot section of the wall.  You can see the top rails at the top of the picture.  I used an old screen door that was kicking around the farmhouse that I kept (just in case I would need it) for a door into the yard.  I think I will even plant some more grass in here (now if I can just get the chickens to leave it alone).  I just need to hook up the sprinkler system(attach it to an outside hose)  I added to the coop two years ago.  I am going to put a wire roof over the top of the baby enclosure.  NO MORE dead babies.  Fort Knox for the babies.  You can see the rocks I have piled up at the base of the chicken coop.

Here are the lucky survivors checking out their new abode (they don't know it yet).  Eleven babies (did I say that already?  11 out of 24)  I had a Turken (chicken with no feathers on its neck, or naked neck chicken) but it got eaten.  All my other odd random 79 cent chickens survived.  I tried to feather sex the cheap chickens when I picked them up.  We will know in another 3 months if I got it right or not.  The black and white mottled chickens are silver laced wyandotte pullets (baby hens).  The white crested chicken is a Polish.  Three of the multiple color chickens are supposed to be Araucaunas (probably just easter egger chickens).  The little tan chicken is a banty brahma and the Big chicken next to the banty is a surprise.  I don't what it is.

I am gonna sleep well tonight, starting to yawn and crash, later.