Treehouse!

I tried to build a treehouse when I was in about 3rd grade. It didn't turn out the way I imagined, but hey, I could sit in a tree, right? Our yard in western North Dakota had nothing but super tall cottonwood trees with no decent branches.

Since then, I have always wanted to build a decent treehouse. Even though I have lived in a few different places with trees and a decent sized yard, I have never had a really good tree to build a treehouse in. Until now! Here is my beautiful sugar maple tree:

Here's the downside, the one decent treehouse tree in our farmhouse yard is in the front yard, right smack dab in front of my very stately house. I needed to build a treehouse and I needed it to be unobtrusive. I spent some time in the summer reading treehouse books and googling. This was my first major building  project as an adult. 

I climbed up in the tree, took some measurements and pictures and then used this picture to help me draw up some basic plans.

I then cut green treated 2x6s to size and drilled holes in them to fit large lag screws. You want to attach to the tree in as few of places as possible. It is a living organism and it is best to leave the tree as much room to grow as possible. You can purchase specialty treehouse lag bolts for this purpose, but they are expensive. Instead, I drilled 2 holes an inch apart in the area that I wanted to be moveable and then connected them with a jigsaw. 

Basically, I used some boards and a level to measure how long the base boards were going to need to be. (Cut them long, you can always shorten them later.)

I used green treated 2x6s, cut to my measurements, to create a triangular base. 

One of the boards was not quite going to be able to attach where I needed it to so I added a 90 degree 2x6 to attach to the tree and attached the support beam to it.  I then added 3 joists across the base to create more support.

I used an old tarp to create a template for the floor. It wasn't very scientific. I just used a scissor and cut around the tree. 

I traced it onto a 4'x8' 1/2 inch green treated plywood. I ended up having to cut the tarp into 2 pieces to cover the whole platform.  I rough cut these pieces with a jigsaw and then trimmed them up more once they were attached to the platform. I then sanded it all down.

I created this simple ladder out of some scrap 2x4s in the garage and some little logs on the log pile that were about 3 inches in diameter. I attached them with some washer head power head screws.

The ladder wasn't quite long enough so I added these turning steps into the tree with some left over pieces of the 2x6 boards and shims as needed.

And there I had it. A platform in a tree, not very safe!

I was wanting to keep costs down and also have the treehouse not look tacky in front of my house. I decided to use large branches from the tree itself to make the side rails. 

  

Once they were in place, I bought some basic rope and wrapped it to make a web.

Voila! The finished project!