Next thing I did was put plywood over the supports to make the floor. It was really hard because I had to cut all the pieces the right shape with only a little handsaw.
You can imagine how long it took me. And at that time I was 12 years old. Since I ran out of wood I was only able to make one wall.
That's when one of my friends told me about this junkyard with stacks of 2x4s. I knew I needed to get that wood.
The next morning my friend and I went off to get the wood. It seemed pretty simple. All we had to do was go to this junkyard that was about 5 minutes away, load up the wood, and come back.
Well, it isn't that easy when you're on your bike pulling a half broken go-cart that keeps going to the right.
The early morning sun was very hot and we were both very tired. When we got to our destination we loaded up about twelve 2x4s onto the go-cart and we headed back.
The weight of all the wood made it 2 times harder. We finally got home and we were pooped. We had enough adventures for the day.
The next day I worked on the walls and made a little look-out which wasn't very sturdy but did the job. After that, I was done for the summer.
When the next summer came around I was ready for action. I wasn't sure what to add but I knew I needed more wood. My dad and I went looking around for wood but found nothing. After driving
around we went to Revy to check out the wood they had there. My dad asked one of the workers there if they had any scrap wood for my treehouse but the guy said they had nothing. Just as I was about to get disappointed, a woman told us that her father was tearing down his fence and
he would be more than happy to give me his wood. We followed the woman to her father's place and he helped us load up the wood in our van. I was very happy with all this wood and my dad and I built a small roof for my treehouse.
It wasn't the best roof but it did the job. Since I always like adding new things to my treehouse I soon figured out a way to build a second floor. At first, I wasn't sure if it would work but I thought about it and decided to start building. This is a drawing of how it looked.
First, I had to take down the roof that my dad and I built. After that I built the platform. Next, I added small walls, about two to three feet high, just high enough to prevent you from falling (from the second floor it's a long way down. It's about 12 or 13 feet high.) I invited my friend to come and see my new floor and he suggested that I make it bit bigger. The result
looked like this.
Shortly after I finished it, I added a ladder. It was around this time in July of 2001 that I also built the "basement" of my treehouse. I called it this because it was under the the main floor but it was really small. I only left it for 2 months since I never used it and I needed the wood
for the rest of my treehouse. The next big project was to add a roof to the second floor. It seemed like an easy task but it wasn't! It was only my friend, who was 9 years old, and I, who had to pull this huge piece of ply wood that was 6 feet by 4 feet into my treehouse. My friend almost
fell while trying to pull it in but we managed. After that I just pulled it up to the second floor onto the beams I had placed earlier. During this time I also fixed up the balcony and added higher walls to it. After that I had pretty much finished for the summer.
Finaly when spring came I was eager to start building again. I had already thought of an idea for my treehouse. The plan was to close in the second floor. The walls would have screened in windows with a cover. When my birthday came around I new exactly what I wanted. On my birthday my dad and I drove straight to
Home Depot. There I got 4 pieces of plywood which were 4 feet by 8 feet, a couple 2 x 4s, a 2 x 6, hinges, and lots of nails. All this cost more than what my parents were going to give me for my birthday so I had to pitch in around 40$. Now that I had my wood, all I needed to do was measure...a lot. First, I needed to replace some of the rotten supports
if I was going to add more weight to the second floor. Here is a picture of the supports I was going to replace.
As I worked on the supports, I moved the beam that supported one of the corners so that it transfered the weight to the tree and not the first floor. When I finished the supports I built the walls and kept the same roof as before.
After adding the walls I put a trap door and made a little hatch on the roof so you can look out. I did all of this during the spring break and was probably one of my biggest additions to the treehouse. Here is an image of how the second floor looked when it was done.
During the rest of the spring and summer I added a couple of things to the second floor. Some of the things I did were, paint the walls, add baseboards, caulk all the little cracks and holes, add knobs to the window covers and the trap door, and add left over linoleum to the floor. In mid-July, I needed wood for some other project so I ended up using one of the walls on my first floor.
It was when I took off the wall that I noticed how much space I wasn't using in my trees. I couldn't just ignore the valuable extra space so I ended up making the first floor bigger. At first I was a bit hesitant about extending my floor since it crossed a bit over the neighbors yard. Then I figured that it was only crossing a bit over their driveway so it didn't matter.
Here is an image of what I added to the first floor.
After I was done, I moved the door over to the new section which gave me extra space. In the new section I built a couch made of wood with arm rests to face a bench on the other side I had there earlier. Also I built a small lookout where the door used to be. It was also around this time that I built a small platform in front of the door with a small step leading to the entrance.
After I finished everything I got bored and needed to build something. So I thought of putting a roof over my balcony and screen it in. I had gotten the idea because the year before my parents had gotten a screened-in porch built on the house. I really wanted to fix up my balcony because what I had was really small and needed some work. Here's how it looked before I fixed it.
In this image it doesn't show the trees. The balcony faces east which is the opposite direction of the entrance.
I only had $40 for the wood so my parents helped me pay for it. First thing I did was take apart the old balcony and install the new supports. It seems pretty easy installing new supports but when you're 10 feet high, and you're holding a nail, a hammer, and a 2x6 and on top of that while you're trying to hang to the tree, it's not easy at all! With all the practice I had from building the rest of the treehouse I was able to do it well.
Unfortunately, these two annoying kids came along to play in my treehouse while I was building so it made it kind of stressful. It also didn't help that they stunk up the treehouse. Even with these two kids bugging me I was able to add the floor, the walls, and the roof. Since I cut the roof too small it caused a bunch of problems but I was able to fix it. During this time I also cut a hole through the second floor so I could connect it to the balcony. I kept the piece I cut out and made a door where the hole was.
Here is an image showing how the balcony is connected to the first floor and the second floor. The image shows the south side of the treehouse.
As you can see it's pretty complex. The next thing I did was staple on the screen. To make the balcony more interesting I made a rope ladder that was attached to floor. All we had to do was take the cover off the hole in the floor and we could go down the ladder. Also we can pull up the ladder when an intruder comes. When that was done I made a doorway on the north side leading to a small lookout. Here's an image of how it looked when it was done. This image shows the south and east side of the balcony.
One night, I left all my tools in my treehouse and I had accidently left the rope ladder down. The next morning when I went in my treehouse all my tools were gone and I figured that someone came up by the rope ladder and stole everything. I was very upset and as a result I put locks on all the doors. About a week after adding the locks I got the tools back. After I put the locks though I felt better knowing that nobody could go inside except for me.
When fall came close, for some reason there were tons of wasps buzzing around my treehouse. I kept getting wasps in my balcony so I decided to fill in all the cracks. I decided to use this very sticky foam that you get in a spray can. My dad warned me about how sticky this stuff was but I wanted to try it myself. At first it seemed pretty simple and fun but when the stuff got all over the walls and floor it wasn't so fun. I tried to fill in this big
hole so I used my hand to put on the foam. That was a big mistake. I thought I could just wash it off with soap but after 5 minutes of scraping nothing came off. The only way I could take it off was by ripping my skin off with the foam. Ironically, the brand name of the foam was "Great Stuff". Finally, after two weeks the foam slowly fell off when I scratched it. After that incident I would never use that stuff again! Although the foam helped keep out the bugs rain managed to leak in.
Since the floor got all muddy and dirty I decided to cover it with this cardboard-like board. To this day I'm still not done but I'm in no hurry because I know next summer I can continue working on my treehouse. One of the last things I did was build a new bench on the first floor. It's a lot better than what I had there before.
My last project of the year was to build a balcony with small walls and no roof. I built the balcony on the north side of the treehouse on the level of the second floor. I built a door on the second floor to connect it to the balcony. Here's an image of how it looks. This image shows the north side of the treehouse.
At his point, this is how the treehouse looks. The image shows the south and the west side and if you're wondering why the roof is blue, it's because I added a tarp so that the roof doesn't leak.
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