Memorial Day Weekend 2011 — Dream to Reality

With apologies to any who find their way to this blog from time to time, I confess I have been a very poor correspondent in 2010 and 2011.

There were lots of surprises and discovered magic in this project. Come see for yourself.

On the upside, it’s been a very good time for construction at one of my signature projects in Ithaca, NY. January 2010 began with packed snow and ice on a bare platform, a stack of walls under a big blue tarp, and a lot of ideas about how they might one day fit in a truly incredible tree. December ended with a completed two-story treehouse carefully woven inside a dozen black willow trunks, a dozen or two feet in the air. By early May of this year, all the last details were finished and the keys to a wonderful two-story treehouse (yes, there were keys) were handed over to the young writers who now call it a second home.

As with any project involving a partner as complicated as a living tree, there were some surprises and reinventions along the way. Still, as all good treehouse projects do, this structure evolved with the tree and the owner’s inspirations into something better then we all imagined when the journey began.

I could dull your senses with a lot of words, but instead I invite you all to take a visual tour of this project, from start to finish, including more than 50 shots of the final product, by clicking on the Flickr previews at left or using this quick link here.

My thanks to you all for coming along for the ride, and to the wonderful young women who invited me in to their imagination so we could hatch this treehouse. My work continues with some consulting and a few projects heading into the design stage. As soon as they’re ready to be talked about, I’ll dust of the ol’ typing fingers and let you all know where we’re headed.

Of course, if you ever have any questions, need some tips or just want to share the magic you’re making, please feel free to drop a line.

Best,

John

December 2009 — Chilly site

While the winter months are typically spent on site visits and design work, every carpenter knows that all desk and no saw makes Jack a very bull boy.

Winter means site visits and design work, but there are a few days that clear up and allow for some time in the shop. Here, the posts and rails that will surround the Ithaca treehouse deck are being painted and dried.

Thanks to some good space heaters and a few chilly days before I head south the see a future client, I was able to get out in the shop and make a little sawdust last week. The project: cut, route, sand and paint the posts and top rails that will make up the deck rail for the Ithaca treehouse’s main platform. Once again I went with some douglas fir a local provider had in stock. Good strong wood, very dimensionally stable as it dries and it’s hard to beat the citrus smell when you cut it. Posts will be 4-by-4s that raise the rails to 42 inches above the deck. Rails are 2-by-6s with a nice three-eighths roundover on the edges to make it easy on the hands and pleasing to the eye. Both elements are blue – to match the trim on the house – and will hold a matching picket section of southern yellow pine stained to match the treehouse siding. The idea is to make the rail solid, and a seamless match for the mood and weight of the main structure.

For extra safety, I always use the new Simpson deck post supports. They’re pretty inexpensive, widely available, easy to install and add a great deal of strength to an attachment that is the line between wonderful views and tragic news. Add in some cast-iron structural washers I learned about while working with some timber-framing friends, and this treehouse will be ready to host a few dance parties come summer.

With a break in the December chill, we were able to squeeze in a site visit to double check some measurements. As the freeze returns, design work for the second platform -- to which the stair rise and from which the bridge departs -- will be completed. Come spring, this will be the walking-off point for the cable bridge to the main treehouse and deck.

Just an aside, to file under the don’t-try-this-at-home category: On one of the chilliest days of the week – wind in the 20 mph range and temps under 30 – I realized some critical measurements from the Ithaca project’s second tree didn’t get transcribed. After a few grumbles directed at my brother and sometime helper Rich, I grabbed my ladder and clipboard and headed out. Dusk in a late-fall Finger Lakes windstorm is a funky time to be in a tree, but the shifting trunks and the laser level did offer a great illustration of just how trees shed wind forces, and just how well those Garnier Limbs allow the platform to float. Lots of creaks and groans, and that little red dot shooting 25 feet from one tree to the other sure did dance, but 30 minutes later I had my last numbers and was headed back to the shop and a warm cup of tea. All’s well that ends well, right?

Well, at least this effort will end in a great cable bridge entry to what’s shaping up to be a marquee creation.

December 2009 — Holiday present

Good things will soon come in a coffee-table sized package.

Next spring, a new do-it-yourself treehouse design and construction book is due out from Globe Pequot Press. Put together by longtime author Lon Levin and my friend, fellow professional treehouse builder Dan Wright of Tree Top Builders, the book “Knack Treehouses” promises to give readers with a sense of adventure and some basic carpentry skills a great start toward building that haven in the trees.

Another thing the book will include – alongside Dan’s advice and treehouses from legends such as industry pioneer Michael Garnier – is Peacemaker Treehouses’ own pirate ship treehouse. Lon contacted me while doing some research back in the early part of the year, and asked permission to use some shots and descriptions from the Horseheads, N.Y., project. I was honored, and more than happy to supply him with whatever he needed. Word from the publisher came this week that work on the book is nearing a conclusion, and publication is expected sometime early next spring.

Michael, no doubt, is used to the recognition, but for me – a student of the masters working on a business model that relies on low volume and high quality – it’s a special thrill to help spread the word about the craft.

Thanks to Lon and Dan, and I’ll see you all at the bookstore.

October 2009 — Top notch

Under the revised schedule requested by our clients, the goal was to get all the first- and second-story walls framed, sided and trimmed before the leaves began to fall. That way, we can bundle up the parts for the winter, spend the odd warm winter day with some random platform prep work, and be ready to raise and gasp come the spring bloom.

The good news is, we finished strong and ahead of all deadlines. We even beat the first snow, which can come to the Finger Lakes region of New York stunningly early.

The 8-by-10-foot second story was preassembled in the shop for raising next spring. The southern yellow pine floor shows off its distinctive hues in the fall sunlight.

Work during recent visits to the site and the shop has concentrated on the second story floor and walls. The first floor is complete, and is already drawing visitors to the site who are coming to see what’s going up. Fit and finish looks good, so we hoped to carry that on to this last stage of the year.

Judging from the finished products, we’re on a bit of a roll.

The first step was the second floor itself. Only the sleeping loft area will have an upper floor, and the 8-by-10-foot room will cover a slightly smaller space on the first floor. We decided to go with the more rustic feel of exposed joists on the underside of the floor. On top of that we’ll add a 1-inch tongue-and-groove pine floor, with only one side beveled. From the top, the floor looks like a solid mass of smooth yellow pine, perfect for shuffling along in your slippers after a nice dream-filled nap. From the underside, the floor, or rather the ceiling, has exposed Douoglas fir 4-by-4 joists and perpendicular grooves that offer a wonderfully mellow warmth. Leaving the rafters exposed also adds another 3 1/2 inches for the eyes to see upward, which helps make a small space feel more generous.

The Douglas fir joists and the southern yellow pine floor boards make a nice fit, both in structure and to the eye.

Of course, as my brother Rich would say, this thing is going to need a lot of thought to lift into the tree. Thank heaven for a good block-and-tackle rig.

The upper walls themselves are similar to the lower walls, only shorter. All except for the two gable ends, which break out of our box-of-rectangles pattern and rise to the distinctive triangular peaks that visitors from the pond and bridge sides of the treehouse will see first.

Here, the design and material choices made all along the process really paid off. From the start, Katie and Colleen said they wanted to go with the “house in a tree” style of treehouse, as opposed to more eccentric designs that range from small Epcot-esque spheres in the air to pirate ships sailing among the branches. We do them all, of course, and there’s joy in every one. But this time, the budding writers wanted their own house in the trees, so we drew it up, scouted around for colors and textures they liked, and hoped it would look like it did in our imagination.

And it did.

With the upper floor walls complete -- including these two gables ends -- work on the Ithaca treehouse moves into the shop for the winter. Come spring, it's game time as all our work heads up into the tree.

Once the gable ends came together, with the deep rake overhang above and the long tail on one side to cover the front porch, everyone knew the months of planning and choices were going to come together just right. The oil-finished beveled siding carries just enough natural cedar orange and yellow to play pefectly off the deep blue trim, and there’s just enough of that to define all the shapes and angles. Corner trim, of course, won’t go on until the walls are raised and assembled — we need access to those corners to tie it all together — but the interplay of shapes and colors is clearly right on the money.

While the walls wait by the platform they’ll soon fill, the winter months will be filled with shop work for the Ithaca project. There are three doors (one of which is a double-door) and 11 windows of varying sizes to make. Porch posts, rails and infill also will be prepped, and the design for the small platform in the second tree — from which the bridge to the treehouse platform will begin — will be finalized. Once the ice thaws, the second platform and the rails will be put in place. Shortly after the first bloom on our willows, the walls will be raised and the treehouse assembled. Install those windows and doors, cap it off with a roof and string that cable bridge, and this project will be ready for occupancy and imagination.

Can’t wait until spring.

August 2009 — Size up

We’re making progress at the Ithaca treehouse site, ahead of our revised schedule for building and finishing the first- and second-story walls before the leaves change.

With a jump ahead of the building schedule, we decided to assemble the first-floor walls on the ground to test fit and finish. Soon, they'll be hoisted and assembled again atop the platform in the black willow at rear.

A tip of the cap here has to go to my brother, Rich, a lawyer and high school social studies teacher who decided to spend the summer in my area, volunteering as a part of my crew. The old boy (10 years my senior, the rules of fraternal misbehavior require that I note) has grown pretty adept at sinking spiral shank nails. He also provides more than a few moments of comic relief as I watch him try to think of a way to avoid getting on the other end of a heavy wall and hoisting it. All in all, though, he’s not a bad crew member, for a lawyer, and it was good to have a hand on a few sites this summer.

In Ithaca, getting ahead of schedule allowed us a luxury — we decided to piece together the first floor on the ground as a test of the work we’ve been doing. That also gave the future occupants, Colleen and Katie, a chance to get a sense for the space and to mull over interior finish details before the saws start spinning on those in the spring. Strapping those walls together also allows for some field measurements of the structure, which can inform any alterations in the second-floor plan that might be necessary.

Doing a test raising also is a great cause for smiles. Up until now, it’s all been drawings on paper, pixels on a screen or colorful parts stored in the garage. With this, the treehouse for the first time takes shape and shows off its three dimensions. It’s one thing to decide where the door will go, it’s another to walk through it. Feeling what was once just thought is always one of my favorite things about any project.

A view from the platform shows the clean lines and crisp corners of the structure's first floor.

The good news: In spite of some over analysis by Rich, all the pieces went together like they were meant to — and they were, so it all makes sense. Corners were even, square and tight. Trim lined up perfectly. Heights were what we had imagined and sightlines look great. The universal consensus was we’re headed in the right direction, and this is going to be one great place to dream among the branches.

We’ll leave the first floor assembled for a few weeks. My clamps can take a little rain, and the time will allow its future inhabitants a chance to get a feel for the space, and let me know what they might want once we move to the interior.

For me and Peacemaker Treehouses volunteer extraordinaire Rich, it’s on to the second floor, building the floor for the sleeping loft itself and the walls that will close it in — and cap this wonderful treehoouse.

June 2009 — Sun and siding

With most of the family off site for some much needed summer escape, it was a good time to string up the yellow “contruction site: caution” tape and roll a few saws out near my favorite willow tree. In spite of the Finger Lakes Region’s reputation for finicky and damp early summers, June this year was wonderful.

With the modified construction schedule now in place, the primary focus of this season’s work will be pre-assembling all the walls that make up the Ithaca treehouse.

That, of course, can present a few challenges.

With summer sunshine keeping spirits high and minds sharp, the first-floor walls start taking on their half-inch plywood skin.

Framing, siding and trimming walls at any site will burn a few calories and strain a speed square or two — but doing all that on walls as separate pieces with enough precision that you can assemble the parts while you and they hang from ropes in a tree, now that’s throwing the gauntlet down for a builder. Pulling this stage off, and with some style, is one of the things that makes treehouse construction such a blast.

Precise design work is the foundation of the effort, and then lots of field checking and needed modifications as a very careful building process begins. With the two processes integrated — which is, after all, the heart of the design/build approach — it’s amazing how well the flexibility inherent in this system lets it all work.

After careful planning and framing, a system emerges -- combine the plywood-skinned walls (upper left) with the prepainted trim (top center) and precoated bevel siding (upper right), and finished walls start to make the leap from notion to reality.

The frames for all of the first-floor walls, 10 in all, were built last fall in the shop and carted to the site for storage. This year, all those walls will need a plywood skin, a must to build the needed shear strength into the structure, then each gets a water barrier attached before prepainted siding and trim are applied. The trick here is always windows, doors and corners; making sure all the measurement and the execution of them works so it all lines up down the road when final assembly rolls around.

Once the first-floor walls are ready for prime time, the second-story floor will be built (which doubles as the first-floor ceiling) and the four main second-story walls will be constructed, skinned up and finished. Since the second floor only covers a portion of the treehouse, there’s less work and material in that step of the project. Still, since the main gable ends are part of the second floor, it won’t be until they’re staring back at us that it will feel like we’ve actually built a house.

So off we go.

April 2009 — Dawn is a feeling

With the arrival of spring, came the return to work on the Ithaca treehouse site. After a winter spent traveling the woods and mountains of New York’s north country, it was good to see buds on the willow and my friends in the rolling hills of the Finger Lakes region.

With the return of warm air and sunshine to Central New York, the willow tree and work on the Ithaca treehouse gets going once more.

At the family’s request, we altered the original construction timetable to push completion back to spring 2010. Like a lot of folks, the family at the Ithaca site needed to shift its attention to other demands for a while, and we were happy to work with them and rework the schedule for one of my favorite projects.

Still, in between time on a few other projects this year for confidential clients, I plan to get back to Ithaca and push this effort forward. With some careful planning, we should have all the walls done and ready to raise by season’s end. This way, once the winter breaks in March 2010, we won’t be far away from ol’ block-and-tackle time.

Of course, the only danger is the extra time will give me some room to come up with a few new ideas for this project. I’ve been thinking at least one skylight, and maybe solar power …

March 18, 2009 — Inspection reunion

Well, little darling, it was a long, cold winter in the Northeast. Record cold. Record snow. Broken record

But spring is here at last. The sap is running, the goldfinches are starting to turn gold and my Newfoundland has rediscovered that ponds are for swimming. There are few joys that equal the rush of spring.

As part of the support package that comes along with all Peacemaker treehouses, I took a ride to see an old friend today — the Bond’s pirate ship treehouse — to give it a thorough once-over during its annual inspection.

With the leaves off during the mid-March annual inspection, the Bond's pirate ship treehouse can be seen from stem to stern. In a few weeks, it will all but dissappear in the maple tree's fresh canopy.

Old treehouse project partner Ed Bond met me in the driveway and led me around to the back of his house, telling me tales of taking video when the treehouse was snow-covered and how his son Jack has cemented plans for a slide to be attached outside the emergency exit he asked me to add at the end of the project last summer.

The conversation stalled, however, when we turned the corner and hit the yard. Our host tree, a 50-70 year old Norway maple, has a large and dense crown. It’s part of what made the pirate ship treehouse experience so wonderful — from the deck 10 feet up in the canopy it’s hard to see the horizon, so it’s easy to get lost in the motion of the leaves and imagine yourself at sea. Since most of the construction took place last year after the leaves had burst out and enclosed the site, the late-winter visitor is treated to views never before seen.

Viewed as a whole from across the yard off the bow, a sight only possible after the snow melts and before the spring bloom, the Serpent Slayer seems for the first time as intimidating as its name.

The whole treehouse is visible now, from stem to stern, offering a brand new perspective on Jack Bond’s “Serpent Slayer.” The most intriguing vantage point is about 50 yards off the bow, where a full head-on view of the tree-borne pirate ship triggers outright intimidation. We modeled the Serpent Slayer on the lines and dimensions of real and model pirate ships, part of an effort to include enough authenticity to make an 8-year-old proud, but this was the first time we realized that menacing prepare-to-be-boarded feel had come through in translation as well.

Neat stuff, and a treat that will become an annual rite. Sometime between the snowmelt and the spring bloom, neighbors and passers-by will do more than a few doubletakes in this corner of New York’s Southern Tier.

As for the inspection itself, it’s an annual Peacemaker Treehouses ritual. With notebook and camera in hand, I go over the entire project from top to bottom. All connections, materials, supports, finishes, every odd detail is given the once-over — from the bolts that anchor the main ledger to the tree to the flexible collar that lets one trunk pass through the roof without a drop falling on the pirates inside

The Serpent Slayer passed its first winter with hardly a scratch. Measurements showed no change in height at base or bow. Tree connections look strong, with the tree showing no evidence of rot or sap loss and plenty of evidence that the healthy trunks are beginning to develop reaction wood — a natural step that will further strengthen the treehouse support. Moving parts still move with ease, painted and stained finishes look clean and bright. Aside from a good sweeping, and a repair to one solar light that seemed to have caught the business end of some falling ice, this ship is ready to sail into its first full season.

It was good to see Ed and the Serpent Slayer again. I’ll be back later this year to help Ed install that slide Jack has been demanding, then I’ll see them all every March hence as we all — Ed, Jack, the Serpent Slayer and me — age with grace and add some new stories to tell.

Oct. 21 – Moving along

With the weather getting a little frightful as autumn settles in over central New York, work has moved into the shop. Right now, it’s all about walls.

No matter the weather, wall construction moves forward in the shop. Eleven walls for the Ithaca treehouse will be assembled on the ground, then raised in a single day to offer a first glimpse of the treehouse to come.

Perhaps after only the design and construction of a custom treehouse platform, it is the walls that separate the treehouse from other structures for the builder. Although advances in Garnier Limbs have eased some of the trade’s early obsession with weight, treehouse builders are still always mindful of the mass they’re asking the host to handle. Where sound design allows, the structure is lightened. Most treehouses are far smaller than conventional ground structures, and only the rare treehouse sports plumbing and HVAC systems, a kitchen range or a bathtub. That means materials and construction can alter to save weight, while keeping more than adequate strength for the purposes at hand.

While the past decade or so of professional treehouse construction experience has shown weight is not nearly the bogeyman once feared, the same time has made clear that shear and uplift forces – those wind-induced lateral shoves and surprising pickups – are definitely something to be respected. On the ground, one and two story houses generally benefit from their position. Stronger winds tend to be above the ground, where small changes in surface height and dense foliage can’t slow things down. Just think about how many times you hear the wind in the treetops, but feel only a light breeze on your face. Also, with a house sealed to a continuous foundation, there’s no place for the wind to sneak under and try to lift a structure’s metaphoric dress.

With painted trim drying under an autumn sun, future treehouse keepers Colleen and Katie enjoy lunch at pondside.

Put your house 10, 15 or more feet in the air, with it’s slip exposed, and those rules change.

Well designed and built treehouses take this into consideration. Builders, engineers and arborists work together to make sure the foundation and the tree can handle any brief shifts that can come when the wind pushes things around. Although it was typically skipped when the modern treehouse construction movement began in the 1990s, most professional builders now incorporate a plywood sub-layer beneath whatever exterior surface the treehouse will have. Plywood adds a little weight, but it brings with it a wonderful multi-directional strength that reinforces walls and helps them handle even severe shear. Builder and engineer also work to make top rails, blocking, corner posts, and special strapping combine so all those shear and uplift forces are collected neatly and sent back down to that carefully constructed foundation. Good design even takes the roofline into consideration, offering a low edge and gentle rise to the side that sees the biggest blasts of weather. Like the tree itself, treehouses are designed to be light enough to shed stress, but strong enough to resist any force that wants to toss it out of the way

Few things tickle the heart of a builder more than the sight and scent of newly delivered materials. Here, southern yellow pine trim and beveled siding, as well as Douglas fir studs, stand ready to become part of the walls and part of the dream.

Standard 2×4 studs are used in most treehouse walls – bigger than the 2x2s or 2x3s you’ll see in most treehouses built a decade ago – but special attention is paid to the corners and how blocking helps tie them together to work as a unit. In most places, heavy screws are used to attach members rather than standard nails, and those joints are often reinforced with special connecters designed for hurricane and earthquake zones. It’s a little more expensive, but it helps make sure no connections come undone after years of gently rocking in the treetops. That plywood skin will lock it all together, and help the walls remain stiff even though treehouses typically have more windows per foot than most ground houses; after all, you didn’t build in a tree just to be shut out from the view.

All of that trade experience is reflected in the walls. It’s a set of details few would notice, and no one will see once treehouse is finished, but everyone will appreciate for years to come.
And it’s all coming together now in Ithaca.
Once the walls are assembled, and as much siding and trim as possible is attached, the pieces will be raised to the platform and tied together. To most observers, it will look like we built a treehouse in a day. But you and I know, there’s a lot of thought and hard work that go into making things look this easy.

Oct. 3, 2008 — Setting sail

It’s good to see an old friend doing well.

That’s how it felt last Friday, when I stopped by the Bond home in Horseheads, N.Y. for the “Christening” of their pirate ship in a tree. With upstate classic fare — cold beer, wings and sheet pizza — on hand, family and friends of the Bonds gathered to officially kick off the era of The Serpent Slayer. After a few energetic swings of a water balloon on a rope, Capt. Jack finally sent his ship off into the blue.

It is, of course, always good for a designer and builder to see a crowd of people with wide eyes and big smiles. It’s just an added bonus that the Bonds were so much fun to work with, and now it’s clear the fun belongs to them. Go luck to all, and happy sailing.