Research Pt 1: The General Stuff

As almost everyone does, I started researching on the internet.  But, as almost everyone figures out eventually, the internet only gets you so far.  After looking around, it seems people were referring to David Stiles as the go-to guy for tree house knowledge.  I looked into Amazon and found his book "Tree Housees You Can Actually Build". 

Of course, when buying from Amazon, you want to get that free shipping, which means a $25 minimum order, so I figured, what the hey, and bought another book, "Black and Decker's The Complete Guide Build Your Kids a Treehouse".

Of the two, I actually found the Black and Decker book to be the most useful in a practical sense and seemed to be very conservative from a structural standpoint.  However, David Stile's book seemed more traditional with all the trimmings of tree houses that you think of from childhood fantasies from long ago.  So take you pick, or choose something else, but these books were a good place to start for me.

What I learned from the many hours of perusing these book while sitting on the pot was there are fairly basic and universal tree house plans for the platform.  What you put on top of the platform can vary based on your fancy, but the platform is universal.  And it must be level, that is key.  The platform can straddle one tree, or span between two trees or be pinned between 3+ trees, but they all seem to be baaed on the premise of beams that are bolted to the tree(s), a box platform with floor joists sits on top of the beams, and then decking is placed on the floor joists so you essentially end up with a patio up in a tree.  Then whatever structure you build, if any, is placed on top of the platform.

Sounds simple, right?  After that, all the trimmings of stairs, rope ladders, windows, doors, escape hatches, fire poles, and so on start to creep in and make it all exciting to dream about.  All this will come into more detail later, but we can still research what is the most economical way to build this thing since there are very universal things that will eventually be used: Lumber, Hardware, Siding and Roof.  This will be the focus on the next few posts.