You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2009.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
