One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure.

Score!  In the vain of trying to make this Tree house practical, and therefore affordable, I have been trolling Craigslist and found the motherload of used treated lumber from a guy in Warrenville that is selling the remnants of a play yard that he deconstrusted.  The lumber is only 6 months old, so this is a good buy.

Oh, and I only paid $50.  Check out everything that I got. 

I am so excited!  I will still have to buy additional (new) lumber for stuff I don't have yet, but this sure helps the budget to get things used.

Research Pt 2: Huh, Huh, I got wood.

I guess the most basic place to start researching is the lumber.  It goes without saying that the majority of the lumber that we need to use should be rot resistant.  Of all the choices like Cedar, Hardwoods and composites,  pressure treated lumber is by far the cheapest and there gets my attention.  At first I was hesitant  to use treated lumber because I remembered all the stories about how treated lumber was actually treated with arsenic to keep away the injects and I sure as heck did not want to have the tree house that my kids play in be pre-poisoned.   Come to find out they have not been using arsenic since 2002, so we are good to go.

For the most part, there are not many drawbacks to pressure treated lumber, but there are a few points that need to be addressed:

1) Pressure treated wood is still not a great think to breath, so wear a mask when cutting and DO NOT burn it.

2) Treated lumber is treated with Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA), and that
means we can have corrosion issues.  More specifically, any metal in contact with the wood can become corroded quickly due to galvanic corrosion because of the Copper.  It will not do any good to have wood that didn't rot when all the nails, screws and bolts holding it all together falls apart.  So with that in mind, everything needs to be galvanized.  Everything.  No exceptions.  We will go in more detail when we discuss the hardware.

So we are going to use treated lumber.  As for sizing, this is what I figure we will use, although this is open to change once we get further into this:

2x10s will be used for the beams that are attached to the tree.  The beams are holding the whole thing up, so they need to be stout.

2x8s or 2x6s will be used for the box frame.  The box frame is the floor joists and header boards.  I guess the size we use will be determined how much the joists are going to be cantilevered over the beams ... so we will have to figure out what is the safest later.  I may use 2x6's for the roof joists too ... but I need to figure out if they need to be treated or not.

2x4s for sure will be used for any walls that are built.  Again, they may not need to be treated, but for sure the bottom sill boards on the walls will be treated.

4x4s will be used in the corners of the structurs to pin everything together and will be used to make the posts for railings.

1x6s will be the decking for the platform.  This for sure needs to be treated.

As I stated before, I want to keep this cheap.  I am looking for used lumber that people don't want, so Craigslist will be the best bet.  I actually already found a guy that wants to sell some, so cross your fingers that I can get some good stuff ...cheap.

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.

The Background

I am married into a a crazy bunch and I say that lovingly.  My in-laws own many acres of land just south of  La Crosse, WI and they have an A-frame house on the property that they affectionately call "The Hut".  It had been their refuge from the Chicagoland hustle and bustle for 20+ years and their original plan for it was a vacation get away they could call their own and bring their children.  Let me introduce the in-laws:  Karen and Doug.  Look out for the one on the right, he is a wily one.

Well, the children have grown up, but Karen and Doug still travel up there in the warmer months.  Now that they have grand kids, they are looking at The Hut as round two for the family vacation spot and have always allowed any of the family to go enjoy the seclusion.

They casually mentioned they would like a tree house built on the property.  There is a tree house already there, but it is old and decaying and probably not safe and they would like a newer one for the grand kiddies.  At first I didn't take it seriously, but the more I thought about it, the more I though it would be fun, so I started doing some research.  Then the dreaming began.  This could be COOL!  I did further research and was hooked.  Yup, this is something I want to do.

I talked to Doug and the budget is around $500, so I want to make this economical.  However, I also want it to be fun for the kids, but useful.  I am also thinking of it as a guesthouse to the hut.  That means it needs to be water proof, bug proof (VERY important) and have a bed or two.  It doesn't have to look pretty, but does need to be safe.  Everything else is open to interpretation. 

So.  With that is mind ... where do we go from here?

And so the adventure begins...

I have been tasked with building a tree house.  That may sound daunting to some people, but to design something and eventually build it is in my blood.  I guess it all started with my upbringing when all my cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, parents and grandparents would gather to build something.  This could be a garage, a carriage shed, a back porch, a house addition or some alteration to an existing building.  Whatever it was, we all enthusiastically gathered and raised some walls.

I have always wanted to design and build something of my own.  I have done small things to date:  A bed loft for my eldest daughter, a few home improvements ... but nothing of great substance.

Until now.