Dec. 8, 2007 — A great start

In the year that saw the launch of Peacemaker Treehouses, one of the most fortunate coincidences for me was having a conversation about my business plans with Amy Bond. In early 2007, back when I was still a newspaper editor, I worked a lot with Amy on Web and video projects. Amy, the Web developer at the newspaper, had a real interest in treehouses. I later learned she and her husband, Ed, had promised their son Jack that he’d get his own treehouse. After things got serious for me with the treehouse business, Amy and Ed asked me to stop their house and see if there was anything I though I could do.

On a July afternoon in a steady downpour, my daughter and I visited the Bond’s Horseheads, New York, home. Out back was a gorgeous Norway maple, full of heavy trunks, long-reaching branches and a thick green canopy that almost kept the midsummer central New York downpour off my head. The main trunk breaks into three sections just a few feet off the ground, and then a few more large trunks just a few feet higher. The tree looked to be in great health, and the lot offered a wonderful view toward the south. It seemed the tree noticed this ready access to abundant sun – a rarity at times in this part of the state – and sent out several long, low branches to scoop up the earthbound rays. Bad news for the grass, good news for the tree and us. The long low branches were almost horizontal for more than 15 feet from the trunk at about 10 feet off the ground. Above that was a large void in the tree’s branch system, above which the upper canopy spread out – eating up all the sunshine and rain, and building an organic dome over the space below.

Although it meant using some ground posts to support part of any potential treehouse, Ed and I agreed the natural space created by the branch structure – almost 11 feet wide at the main trunks and extending well more than that to the south – was too perfect to pass up. If we were going to work with the tree on this, and that’s a requirement for all serious treehouse builders, this was the place it was willing to lend us. So we dried off, smiled at the possibilities, and said we’d talk

After well all agreed on a ship theme, Ed and Jack Bond found this pirate ship toy for design inspiration.

After a few conversations and e-mails, I was diving back from a trip to Long Island. Solo time in the car through the Catskills is great for thinking. I started asking myself (possibly aloud and with some animation, to the alarm of passing fellow motorists) what to do with this long triangular shape. Maybe it was a few days spent on an island, but the image of a ship became very clear in my mind. I contacted Ed and Amy and told them about the idea. They liked it, so I drew up some rough designs based on a few simple rectangles, and the triangular ship design was kicked around.

At this point, Jack came to the table. Eight years old and eager to help, Jack looked over the concepts with his parents and, to no one’s surprise, a ship it was. Not just a ship, a pirate ship. We all sat down in the Bond’s kitchen with some pencils and some markers one afternoon, and what emerged was Capt. Jack’s Pirate Ship in a Tree.

The Bonds, double-income professionals juggling a home, two kids and five careers (Amy is a Web developer and a karate instructor. Ed is an editor, college professor and screenwriter) had a few of their own needs to add to the process. They wanted to keep the cost of the project to a relative minimum for a professionally built treehouse, and they wanted to spread the work out over time in phases to make the project easy to build into their financial planning. We worked out a plan that met their needs and the treehouse project got under way.

August saw design work, and by September Ed and I were walking through a few local lumber and hardware stores scouting supplies. First up was the main beam mounted on two of the trunks parallel to their natural plane about 10 feet high and 10 feet apart. Next was a few grunt days of digging two footings for the small post-and-beam structure that runs parallel to the main beam about 10 feet from the tree. Digging a 12-inch-wide hole down to 48 inches is not an easy feet in rocky central New York. Just old-school sweat and blisters. Once the post bases were set, the posts rose up and a double 2×10 header was stretched across them and braced in.

Side beams for the treehouse attach to the main beam, then run over the post-and-header structure to form a point. So begins a pirate ship treehouse adventure.

The main beams supporting the pirate ship are double 16-foot 2×12s that run from the tree-carried beam, over the post-supported header, and together into a point. The height we set worked wonderfully, with the beams running just a few inches over the trees lower branches. The direction we set worked as well, with the branches turning upward and closing in around the ship’s bow. We nailed the space exactly. A great start.

The rest of the fall was spent working around the Bond’s demanding schedule and during the days I wasn’t in Oregon learning from Michael Garnier, developing my other project in Ithaca, or working on setting up the business. By Dec. 7, I’d put in about 12 days on site, four in the design studio and one in the shop prefabbing wooden curves for the rails and metal plates. When the first snow and ice dropped through the barren maple branches, we had a platform frame in place (a triangle with 70-degree angles at each base end), with floor joists and some side rail posts (tilted over at a 10-degree angle to give the hull some shape).

From here, we’d have to take what nature would give us in terms of days on site. Anyone who’s ever spent a winter in central New York – where lows tickle minus15 degrees without the wind chill and snow can pile on by the foot – knows nature should never be trifled with in these parts.