“I think I’ll do that.” Sometimes, it’s as simple as that. One moment you’re enjoying a new series on t.v. you and your family have discovered, and the next you’re thinking you can pull it off yourself. My wife and I had greatly enjoyed the first season of Treehouse Masters, and with the start of Season 2 halfway over I just decided we needed one too. I say “just” because there wasn’t a huge amount of thought behind it, or hours and hours of planning. Perhaps if there were, I wouldn’t have started. I guess that’s best now. Sometimes you have to just go for it. Life is short they say, and I’m certainly not getting any younger. The problem is, my boys are growing up quickly. Too quickly. It was now or never. I started watching episodes differently. I still enjoyed them… but I wore out a remote control rewinding, pausing and going frame by frame to catch some of Pete Nelson’s secrets he glossed over in our hour-long times together. More research online yielded other helpful tidbits of information, and I watched hours upon hours of videos on framing, hanging windows, building headers and every other facet of construction I could find. After all, I had never done anything like this before. I built a workbench in my archery room once… and a doghouse with the help of a friend. I began last May. The Treehouse Attachment Bolt and accompanying floating bracket arrived in the mail. I placed my initial order with Menard’s and had them drop off the massive beams and supporting posts I would need at my house. I now know the store better than the employees do. I had a good friend help me lift the beams into place; he would later help erect my walls and handle my three-way wiring and hooking up my load center for me. Otherwise, it was just me – man-on-man with my vision … or man on treehouse. Sometimes I think the house was getting the best of me, but the vision remained. I lost out on a lot of deer-hunting time this past season. I had to get the house under roof. I had insulation in everything, including 10 inches of R-30 in the floor, and the whole structure was glued and screwed together. What wasn’t was joined by massive galvanized lag bolts. Many of the pieces I needed had to be special-made for what I wanted, either by local fabricating gurus or crafted out on the West coast and shipped in. A year later… A lot of sweat, just a little bit of blood and thankfully no tears, Phase I is complete. I would be less than remiss if I failed to mention the unwavering support of my wife, who never fails to completely and utterly back my zany ventures – whether it’s deciding that a former sportswriter can totally abandon that career field and embark upon the crazy world of corporate sales or if it’s to build a treehouse Pete Nelson would be proud to call one of his. It got real when these showed up: It begins: Being a bowhunter and knowing how to get up a tree proved invaluable. Not to mention my safety harness. Lifting 20 treated 2x12 floor joists 15’ up onto the beams made for a good workout that day… The boys helped me put the insulation in the floor… 10” of R30 since air is free to circulate beneath. After we got the subfloor glued and screwed on, we kept it tarped to keep the insulation from getting wet. I also hung a Black Ops Covert trail camera 20’ on up higher in the tree the TAB was in just in case any of the neighborhood kids wanted to snoop around to see what all the noise was about. Or their parents. I did have a picture texted to me while I was in Colorado elk hunting and I didn’t recognize the kids, so I quickly forwarded it to my wife back home. Turns out my boys were having a spend-the-night party and was showing their friends the platform. My youngest enjoys the height, and even climbed up for a higher perch many times on the job site. Walls are up now. While not necessarily enjoying them, well over two decades of bowhunting have at least made me comfortable with heights. It’s a good thing. My front trusswork going up to support my covered porch. Most people also run a verticle beam up from the middle to the ridge beam, but I’ve got a purpose in leaving it open… My father came over to help me lift the wall sheathing into place and hold it from the inside while I was on the outside screwing it all into place. I always dreamed about building a treehouse with my Dad; I just didn’t think I’d be doing it when he was 70. The loft is built now too, which would come in handy as we installed the ridge beam … I made a jig to help hold the ridge beam into place until we could get it level… I wish I could have used fill-flash to lighten up Dad’s face here; it’s one of my favorite pics of all-time of him with my boys. Getting the rafters installed and house wrap on seemed like such a big step at the time… I paid a couple buddies to come over and lift roof panels up to me. Working on a 12-12 pitch roof sucks, let me tell you … I tied a mountaineering rope above the roofline between two trees that went from corner to corner of the treehouse and clipped my carabiner to that, which allowed me to slide back and forth as I worked. The bottom of the subfloor is 14’ off the ground… 9’ walls, and 7’6” to the ridge beam… 30’ up at the top is a long way down when you’re sitting on a 45-degree slope. The siding is going on. I would have been hunting at this time… But sacrificing the majority of my hunting time this year paid off… She’s completely dried in now and able to withstand anything Mother Nature can throw at her. Christmas, 2014. Pete Nelson has a tradition of surprising his clients with a little gift he throws into his treehouse builds. Something that’s usually hand-made or of special meaning. On Christmas eve, one of our neighbors delivered this custom stained-glass window I had commissioned her to make for our treehouse. It was a total surprise to the family.
Spring is coming up fast … Much work to be done if I’m going to chase those turkeys! May 16, 2015. We have our Treehouse Blessing Celebration. My wife, who had a long career in events planning, has had this day scheduled to “unveil” the treehouse for months and months. Almost 200 people had RSVP’d… The all-day rain kept a lot of people away, but over 100 people still came through today. But there hasn’t been any pressure to get it ready by today… I will pull the ship’s ladder back out (which I finished at 9 a.m. this morning, lol) and cut a slot into the sides to serve as a hand rail and router out the edges, rounding them off for hand-holds as the boys climb up into the loft. The chess/checkers table was a HUGE hit with all the kids that stopped by today. There were times 20 kids were gathered around it. Gabe’s Rio jake he took in Kansas looks great on the wall… His Rio gobbler is in his room. The stained glass turned out great, accented by 900 lumens of LED lighting. The boys love the loft railing; it was made by a Montana company specializing in log homes. The loft floor… Still got a bit of trim work to do up here, and I didn’t get a chance to put the outlet covers on. Did I mention that it was a BIT of a push to get to this point today? The boys are getting new mattresses in a couple weeks and their old ones will go out here … Every electrical outlet contains two USB ports for charging smartphones and iPads so the boys can keep their electronics charged if needed. The only outlet that doesn’t is the one beside Matthew’s left hand, which is on a dedicated circuit that will eventually power a portable heating/air unit. We love our sign one of our friends made us, complete with erasable chalkboard paint. I’m leaving the writing for a while. Hopefully, next year it will say “Gone whitetail hunting” a whole lot more
Thanks for sharing Greg. Very cool......... This is on my bucket list of things to do with my boy for sure when we finally end up in a house we plan to stay in forever.
I enjoy watching Treehouse Masters too, and IF I ever decided to try to build my own...it certainly wouldn't look like yours. Only two words I can think of are beautiful & amazing. Thanks for sharing the photos..you did a superb job. Bill
That is very cool. Tree house turned out awesome and I bet you will have a hard time getting the boys out of there.
Glad you decided to share this here, too. Absolutely awesome. Hard to believe this was your first time building anything of this size. It looks amazing. Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
I'm sure it varies from municipality to municipality ... our city decided NOT to oversee issueing permits for treehouses of any types. They want nothing to do with them. The specific response the lady who would be responsible for them said was "We ain't getting into THAT!!" to her secretary over the phone when she called back about my request at city hall. She said it so snarkily and loudly that the receptionist sheepishly looked up after hanging up her phone and said, "Well, I guess you heard her." I later learned from a few other city employees the reasoning in our town is they don't want to get into requiring a permit for every little plywood structure a boy and his Dad may throw up on a Sunday afternoon -- or have to force someone to go seek a permit for a play structure they may purchase at their local Walmart or Sam's Club which may qualify as a "treehouse", because it's an aerial structure. But that's our town. I've watched every single episode of Treehouse Master's (surprised?) and I've seen Pete speak often of zoning laws and building permits. Ours just doesn't happen to require any. Now, having said that ... I built this WAY over any code I could find. I did take the time to look up our city's building codes and made sure I met or exceeded everything in print. The rafters are held down to the double top plates with a 10" lag bolt going from beneath up through the bird'smouth cut ... All my trusses have 12" lag bolts going through them down into the 6x6 posts, as well as back sideways to secure them to each other. The beams which support the whole structure are held in place on the 6x6 support posts opposite the tree with hex bolts so massive they were specially cut and threaded for this project in California and shipped in. That support I had made to allow the beams to rest on the posts while I screwed them in is made of 1/2" angle iron; the lag bolts in THAT are 1/2" galvenized... to give you an idea of how massive the hex bolts are that go through the beams up above it: Everyone thought it was overkill as I was ordering materials and commissioning fabrication jobs, but I'll tell you I didn't worry a bit yesterday when we held our "reveal" party and we had as many as 50 people at a time in it checking it out, playing in the loft, and standing on the covered deck. The wiring of course is all up to code, and I drove an 8' copper grounding rod into the ground and grounded the whole system. It'll probably never have that many people -- especially adults -- in it at once again unless it's used to host a birthday party or something. I can sleep securely when my boys are having a sleepover out there with a couple of their friends.
