Here is a story of  how I built my treehouse…

Once upon a time, behind the seven mountains…

The Mountains my Treehouse is built  amongst 

The Idea…

I always loved to spend time on my own surrounded by nature and its sounds and having time for my little pleasures like reading, sipping tea, making chocolate or just being. After travelling and moving around for quite a few years the urge to have my very own hideaway got stronger. Also the amount of little heart warming souvenirs from my journeys started piling up. That’s when I began to think  more and more about creating some piece of heaven for myself for when I get back home every now and than.

Because I come from a place in the mountains which is covered with lots of forests it occured to me that the most natural structure to build there would be a treehouse. Up in the trees and made from them. Luckily the place I was raised in is surrounded by plenty of trees, so I had many to choose from. The plan was to make the treehouse liveable all year round even in the harsh winters we usually get here.

So I started to stock myself up with many amazing Treehouse Books so that I know what is out there already. I also went to visit few tree-top residencies hoping that after seeing them I will know exactly how to build my own treehouse. But no, I didn’t know until I began. Of course all the treehouses I have seen in the books and in real life helped me learn some useful techniques and ways of putting the structure up the trees but it mainly made me understand that every tree and every treehouse is different and you have to listen to what the tree or trees are trying to tell you…with their shape, the way they move in the wind and all sorts of other things.

After long time searching and researching I decided to build it on four sycamore maple trees overlooking a mountain stream. They’re not very old but create a nice group of trees that could easily hold a structure I had on my mind. I got some great help from my father who spends most of his time with trees, around the trees and up in the trees. He is a Mountain Guide, Rope Park Creator and Instructor and… a Native Forest Being.  His knowledge  helped me decide which trees to choose and to design and build the treehouse.

 The view from the Treehouse’s balcony

 

The making of the plaform…

We started building the platform by putting up the beams prepared for us by a local carpenter who later helped us with all sorts of things we could’t do ourselves. We decided to use a platform attachment method that my dad used when building his Rope Park. We attached them by enclosing two trees by two beams (one on each side of a tree) and drilling a couple of massive screws ( that can hold tonnes of weight) through the beams in order to hold them together. The screws can be adjusted slightly when trees grow. This allowed us not to use any nails or screws in the trees which we aimed for, as we didn’t want to hurt the trees. Therefore we have also chosen trees with not many branches on the level of the treehouse so that we wouldn’t have to cut any off.

 How the treehouse platform was built (with the help of  my kind friends, family and neighbours)

 

So for the four trees we have chosen, we used eight beams (8x12cm) for the basic platform and than another batch of eight beams (6x10cm) for the next floor we’ve decided to add  to create a separate space for a bedroom.

The Treehouse Platform (with no use of nails or screws in the trees)

 

 

 

Acorn coffee and book time in the Treehouse 

The roof and the walls structure…

Next we had to put up the walls and the roof’s skeleton. For that we used a little thinner beams (4x8cm). We wanted the walls to be thick enough to than put some insulation between the outer and the inner layer of them. The roof beams needed a bit more body(6×10) so that they could support tonnes of snow we get here in winter time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To cover the roof we used some eco plywood that than was covered with the leftover tar paper that our neighbour still had from when he was using it. I must admit this wasn’t my ideal thing to cover the roof with but since it’s got given and since it’s usually really wet and dump in certain seasons here I decided it was acceptable. Later on we will cover the underlayer of tar paper with some leftover shingles that should look a bit nicer, but also maybe one day in the future we will replace it with real wooden shingles or something as nice and bit more ‘green’.

Treehouse in the making

We did the roof first and left walls for later so that we can work inside even if it rains. And belive me – it was raining almost everyday for over two or maybe even three months. But we still carried  on working inside as there was plenty of little things like the floor in the bedroom upstairs, fitting the windows and doors into right places and so on…

Dinner Party in the Treehouse

We had some guests over the summer and had few dinner parties there with them and  some picnics  so even though the treehouse didn’t have the walls it had courtains and hammocks and other furnitures to make it cosy. And so it was.

Garden view of the Treehouse

 

 

The roof and no walls yet…

 

 

Treehouse view from the mountain stream valley

The windows

Next thing we did was fitting the windows and the doors. All of them were reclaimed from an old hotel in the small next door town that is a ski resort and we menaged to save one of the windows from a ski bar my parents used to run when I was small. Some of the window frames where not usable at all anymore  - they were all damaged as the guys who were taking them out didn’t think someone might ever want to use them again. So we asked our friendly local carpenter to help getting the frames into shape and he did a great job. Here are some photos of the windows and how we fitted them into the walls of the treehouse…

 

 

Treehouse windows 

 The walls…

From the begining of planning my treehouse I imagined it with nice wooden rough boards and nice features like the ones on the pictures below. And one day walking around the town next door we saw a pile of old and forgotten but still beautiful aspen boards that somebody had laying there for at least few years. We found out who they belonged to and the guy said we can have them for nearly nothing which was great. We still needed to put a lot of work to bring them back to good condition but it was worth it. We overlapped them on top of each other so that their nice and irregular shapes can be enjoyed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued…