Treehouse Day 2
After buying all of the lumber for the main deck late last week, today I began building my client’s treehouse.
Today was probably the most difficult day of the project – figuring out how to build the main deck box frame into/onto the branches so that the frame was level and square on all 4 sides. After a lot of temporary placement of 2x8x10’s into the tree, with temporary 2×4’s clamped to the 2×8’s to support them and repositioning of boards – and a fair amount of head scratching, I had a solid plan by lunch and completed the cutting of the narrow side boards and corner bracket mounting by the end of the afternoon.
The main deck of the treehouse is 10′ x 8′. It’s HUGE! I joked with my client (via text, because they’re are on vacation) that we should mount a basketball hoop up there because it will be big enough for them to play basketball! Or twister…
I am trying to build the treehouse so that it isn’t attached to the tree in any way (no nails, screws, or lag bolts going into the tree). The cantilevered corner with the least amount of support from the branches will have a 4×4 post bolted to the frame corner and meeting the ground on a concrete pad with a roofing standoff. For stability on the other 3 frame corners I plan to use vinyl coated cable (with turnbuckles) to support the treehouse “from above”, by looping the cables over crotches higher up in the tree, with the cables running through protective sleeves where they loop over the crotches to protect the tree. Where the main deck frame rests on the branches I will mount protective rubber to the underside of the frame members to protect the tree bark.
It’s a huge relief to have successfully completed this first, most difficult day of the project. Tomorrow I will start mounting the joists for the main deck.
