Treehouse – Day 15 to the saddest day…

Hi treehouse fans!  Here’s my long overdue blog post update to get you caught up with the treehouse project.  When I last posted on August 17th I told you how the treehouse mom had told me that she felt I had left a piece of my heart in their backyard. I had simply stopped by on my lunch break to blow the sawdust off the treehouse with my leaf blower before the forecast rain came in, I was not expecting to run into her and have her express such a beautiful sentiment. What a great day that was! 

This post will get you caught up on other work I have completed on the treehouse since that day, up to my last day there which was this past Wednesday morning.  I stopped by to spend about 3 hours finishing some final details on the treehouse.  This makes last Wednesday the saddest day because, as of right now, I don’t know when I’ll be returning to the treehouse.  Which makes me sad…

There are some further projects that we intend to complete on the treehouse, which I will outline at the end of this post, but those projects likely won’t be completed until later this fall.

I’ll begin with Friday the 19th.  My focus this day was to simply do some cleanup and then do the lumber and hardware shopping for the treehouse ladders. There were multiple bags of hardware that had been collecting over the weeks which needed a serious sorting through.  At no charge to my client, I sorted through and got everything organized and then turned my attention to figuring out the exact lumber and hardware items we needed for building the ladders the following week.  I then went off to the home center, shopped for what we needed, and delivered the materials to the treehouse.

I then spent Monday the 22nd and Tuesday the 23rd building the main ladder and the loft ladder for the treehouse.  Monday the 22nd was a momentous day at the treehouse because, with the main ladder built, it was finally accessible to the kids.  Up until then I had been accessing the treehouse using a large stepladder, but this was not ideal for the kids, especially for the 4 year old, who was not comfortable going up and especially coming down the stepladder.  Climbing mountains is hard, but coming down from the mountain is actually the most dangerous part of climbing mountains…  Having the main ladder built finally made it much easier for the kids to get up into and out of the treehouse.  If you’d like more details on how I built the ladders you can read my descriptions in the videos I’ve included to below.

On Wednesday the 24th and Thursday the 25th I worked to build the four doors for the two treehouse entrances.  When I started the project I hadn’t considered building doors for the entrances, but I came to realize that it would make the treehouse safer if there were doors that the kids could close behind them when they are up there. The doors were fun to build and add an extra touch of detail to the treehouse.  I included exterior latch pulls on both sets of doors so that the doors can be easily unlatched from outside if someone is coming up the ladders and the doors are closed and latched.  I found some brass sleeves at the home center which I used for the latch pull holes in the doors.  The sleeves will keep the latch pull cables from rubbing against the wood of the doors, and they add an extra elegant touch to the doors.

On Friday the 26th I spent 90 minutes at the treehouse mounting the railings on the main ladder and the main ladder entrance into the treehouse.  By having the ladders built, the doors installed, and the railings installed the treehouse is now 100% accessible and safe.  But the best thing about this day is that this Friday was “Flamingo Friday” in the neighborhood!  On Flamingo Friday, if a neighbor has pink flamingos in their front yard, that means neighbors are welcome to visit.  I had been told about Flamingo Friday and that my treehouse clients had put the word out through their block club e-mail group that the treehouse would be ready for visitors.  There was no way I was going to miss this event – I joked that if I had been scheduled to get married that evening, I would have rescheduled the wedding.  I got to spend several hours watching 15 or so neighborhood kids climb all over the treehouse while their parents showered me with compliments about how great of a job I had done building the treehouse.

The first kids to visit were actually young teenagers, and they were all so courteous, appreciative and had some very nice things to say to me about what I had built.  But I think my favorite child visitor was the three-year old boy who kept going up into the treehouse, climbing around, coming back down out of the treehouse, and then turning around and going right back up into the treehouse.  He couldn’t get enough of it.  When, at one point, he came back down again and his dad grabbed him and told him they had to go home, he was in his dad’s arms wailing and crying and screaming, objecting to the fact that he had to leave. I had a parent tell me that this was the best compliment I received all night, with that boy protesting the fact that he couldn’t stay at the fabulous treehouse.  He, and his sister, decided that the treehouse is actually a “pirate ship”.  LOL… 

I wish I could share the video I took of them up in the treehouse talking like pirates, but I didn’t think to ask the parents for permission to share the video.  I took some pictures of the kids, which I am including in this post, but there were so many kids and parents that I never kept track of which kids were with which parents and asked for permission to use the photographs I took on my website.  Which is why you’ll see the kids faces blocked out with ’s – I would never put a picture of a child’s face on the Internet without the parents’ permission.

Flamingo Friday was such a fun event, and this was certainly the best week yet at the treehouse.

Because it’s taken me a few weeks to get back to blogging about the treehouse, I am sure there are stories that I’m forgetting to tell you. But there is this one story which I will share:  One day as I was up working in treehouse, the 7 year old son was walking though the yard and yelled up to me “Ken, I think you’re doing a great job building the treehouse considering you’ve never built a treehouse before!  My Dad could never do this.”   Now please understand, the treehouse dad is actually the chair of the English department at a local college and also a successful novelist.  He has written several young adult novels, one of which was actually made into a movie.  So I came down out of the treehouse and said to the 7 year old “You know, that’s very nice of you to say, but I don’t think that I could ever write a novel like your dad can”.   Then, with his mom standing there, I went on to explain to him one of my “Kenisms”.  “You know”, I said, “If everyone was a dentist who would fix the dentist’s toilet when it breaks?  And if everyone was a plumber, who would fix the plumber’s teeth when they break?  We all have our skills, no one can be good at everything, and the world wouldn’t work very well if everyone was only good at the same thing.”  The treehouse Mom chuckled…

If I think of any other stories to tell that I’ve forgotten I will come back and add them to this blog post.  Maybe someday, with the treehouse dads help, I will write a book about this fabulous project!  It has involved so many great stories, with many more to come…

Last week, on the day I returned to finish some final details, I brought two gifts to the treehouse:  You’ll recall that the 7 year old gifted me a drawing he made of the treehouse.  Last weekend I had the drawing scanned and a copy made and laminated, and I framed the laminated copy and brought it for us to hang up in the treehouse.  I had the 7 year old show me where he wanted it hung, and I mounted it to inside wall of the treehouse in his preferred location.  I also gifted them a “forever pumpkin” which they can carve and put an LED tealight inside of.  I am told that my pumpkin gift has now inspired the idea of having a haunted treehouse party this Halloween!  And that I’m invited!!  I’m thinking I might wear a carpenters costume to the party…

The other projects we intend to complete this fall include 1) finding and mounting a cargo net for the treehouse entrance under the loft, 2) adding a bucket on a pulley and swing arm so the kids can easily get snacks, board games, (and for the adults – wine bottles and wine glasses), etc up into the treehouse, 3) adding a roof over the loft and 4) adding support to the east end of the treehouse by using vinyl coated cables mounted to and to support the two loft corners by going up and over crotches up in the tree.  The cabling support would be best added when the loft roof is being built.  To date I have yet to put one nail, screw, or lag bolt into the tree – this was my goal from the beginning.

I am just so grateful that I was asked to complete this treehouse project.  It’s been one of the funnest things I have ever done in my life, and it’s my sincere hope that this isn’t the only treehouse I’m ever asked to build…

How can I help you with your house in a tree?