Treehouse Saga

I don't have enough to do on the weekends... yeah right! AND...my dad and I have been promising the kids a treehouse for as long as I can remember.

Soooo the project began on 11/19 with the beams. It will be a hybrid treehouse/playset for the kids with swings, slides, climbing ramp, ladder.. maybe even a trap door.. Cool thing about a treehouse is that you have to custom build it.. no two are the same. Kind of like relationships between people.

This is a lot of fun. A lot of work.. but that is okay.

Pictures of the SAGA-- click here

Update:11/28 -- Thanks to help from a friend, and from Tracee... I have finished the floor of the tree house and all of the swing sets... We now have 4 swings, a disc swing and a ring/climbing bar.. VERY COOL... I'll add some updated pics to the website when I get a few minutes. I have spent a lot of time working in the last few days...Even working by yourself can be therapeutic. I feel better when I can accomplish something and then see the tangible results. I am not like that all the time, but sometimes it does help to be able to say "I did that"

Update: 12/12 -- Thanks to John K, Dad, John M, and Ernie.. The walls are up, though I am not current on the pictures yet.. Cold and wet outside.. but building is fun.. just a lot of work..

Update: 12/24 -- Mom and Dad came up for Christmas and Dad and I worked most of Thurs and Friday... Despite my compressor failure, the snail's pace of amateur builders, and tons of mistakes, the final product is coming along quite nicely. Walls are all up, and hopefully, the trim will be complete by the time we quit today. Next steps: slide assembly, trap door build, roof framing, roofing, (need help on that...

Update: 12/26 -- We went out to breakfast this morning to the River City Diner.. and then back to the "grind".. Dad and I began building the slide.. the theme here is bolts, bolts, bolts, bolts, and then more bolts thrown in with a few lag screws.. I am talking a lot of bolts.. for real. Slide is now done, and I custom built the platform and supports. The slide base is about 6 inches higher than I would like, but when I put in all of the mulch that will fix that. Last night, I build a model of the oblong shape to play around with different roof designs... Note to self.. next time having at least two parallel walls would have been a LOT EASIER for roofing... I am proud of this thing now... It is officially kid safe, and everyone seems to love it.. I'll put the roof frame on this week sometime, or now.. depends on what we decide to do...