Time to catch-up on the treehouse
project. I left off with the roof completed, with the next major job being
the climbing wall on the back. But first, a look at how it appeared before doing
that:

Here’s a closeup of the top, so you can better see the roof in place:

We’ve since had a heavy rain, and I’m happy to say, nothing got through that
roof!

See how in the first picture, there’s a short wall around the entire
treehouse? I realized that to put my climbing wall up, that short wall had to
come off the back. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to drill holes easily for the
climbing holds to be bolted to.

It was a minor pain, but I got through it easily enough since I’d screwed
everything in, rather than using nails. Here I am at the end, having removed the
last board:

That’s my youngest in front, holding the one puppy that I agreed we could keep, both in the hanging chair I put up in the corner. And yes, that’s a Yahoo T-shirt I’m
wearing. Don’t worry — I’ve had Google, Ask and Microsoft shirts on during
other parts of the construction.

Getting the two big pieces of marine plywood up wasn’t easy, but after
involving literally everyone at home, they were in place:

If you look closely, on both the right and the left, as well as in the
middle, there are 2×8 beams running vertically. These provided the support for
the wall.

I was worried that the plywood would leave splinters in little hands, then I
remembered I had a ton of floor varnish left from
redoing floors a few years
ago. I put two coats of that on, and it worked really well. The walls aren’t
slippery, yet there aren’t any splinters.

Next, time to put up the holds.
Search Diary: Searching
For Climbing Holds over at Search Engine Land covers how I find the holds.
Now it was time to try putting them in place:

They work pretty well! You can climb right up to the top:

Next, I need to run a rope or something across the top, so you can pull
yourself over more easily. Plus, the second wall needs to be done. But I was
pretty happy with it!

And yes, I finally got a pulley installed:

What’s going on with the treehouse
project? An amazing number of people asked me
about that when I was out at
Search Engine Strategies in San Jose last month.
Well, before I left for that trip, I spend two frantic days finishing my roof.
I’m just behind blogging about it. So let me catch up, and then I’ll do another
post about how things are going with the climbing wall portion.

First, I have to interrupt the construction tale with two pictures from my
oldest son, who likes taking photos. Below, he’s taken a shot of his brother
from upstairs, through the hatch:

He also shot one of me, doing actual construction. Well, posing on a ladder:

I’m up on that ladder finishing the roof, and man, it was hard. Where I left
off from last time:

You might recall I decided to put all the slats close together, then roll the
tarpaper (AKA, roofing felt) across. Well, that paper is heavy. It’s also not
fun to work with being all, hmm, tarry. Plus, someone shoved a tree in the
middle of where my roof was going. Plus left some branches in the way.

Eventually, I got all the slats cut to the right lengths to work around the
tree, fit together and so on. Look at how nice and clean it looks underneath:

With the tarpaper covering the top, no rain’s getting in, nope. Of course,
there are no walls, no windows, but those are details.

Of course, I had a problem. I needed to tack all that tarpaper down. Finally,
I use for my staple gun. As an aside, being paranoid, I stapled the hell out of
that roof, to ensure the wind wouldn’t somehow get underneath and rip the paper
up. So if anyone comes near it with a magnet, I’m done for.

But to staple, I had to get on the roof. And that meant I’d need to get down.
And getting down, well, I thought why not build a trapdoor in the ceiling. That
way when I need roof access as I will every say five to 10 years, I can get up
there.

I spent way too much time on that trapdoor I’ll never use, and I could have
just sort of lifted myself up and over instead, I suppose. But I suck with the
plan, learning along the way that you can actually put hinges on three different
ways until you get them to work right.

Here’s my hole:

I made a cover that fit across the top and overlapped. You can see part of it
here:

You can also see how I’m overlapping the paper. Eventually (it was really
dark when I was done), the roof was finished. Here’s the trapdoor, covered:

Can’t even tell it’s there! That long horizontal strip? That’s covering the
hinged part. More of the roof:

Look in the bottom right corner. See the paper working down from the tree? I
spent forever working it out so that any rain running down the tree would flow
onto the paper. A closer look:

Don’t worry — I did cover that little gap to the right, eventually. Yep, no
rain’s getting through this roof. Just gotta build some walls and windows.

More work on the treehouse project
today. I’ve been dreading doing the roof of the tree house. But finally, its time
had come today.

The main challenge was those four corner posts. They all end at different
heights, since they were buried at slightly different depths. I did a lot of
laying board across pairs of them to work out which were the highest and lowest.
From that, I figured out which way to have the roof slope.

I decided to go for a flat, tilted roof rather than the nice sloping one on
the original plans. I figured
it would be easier to build. But now I needed to make two corner posts slightly
higher. In the end, I cut two 2x4s to the right length for each, screwed them
together and then screwed them further into the posts. Being paranoid, I will
then surround these with wood above and below the join for further security. You
can see the start of this in one of the photos below:

Eventually, I had all the posts to the right height. Then working with my
power saw, I cut each to a nice neat diagonal, so the 2×4 framing pieces lay
nicely on them. Well, I hacked brutally with the power saw until the board were
level enough.

Finally, I had everything screwed into place:

And a closer look (sorry it’s blurry — my camera’s doing this more and more,
so I think something’s up with it):

Now see the thin cross pieces? I thought I’d roll the tarpaper (excuse me,
the roofing felt — when I tried to order tarpaper, they had no idea what I was
talking about) across several of these. Turns out, it droops. So then I worried
water would collect. I had some thicker pieces, so I thought I’d tighten the
gaps. And then I thought — you know, I should totally seal the top with wood,
then put down the felt over that.

Sigh. More wood will be needed — and I won’t likely get it before I leave on
my trip. Plus, now I worry that extra wood means I should do yet more cross
bracing of the roof.

Still, I’m pressing onward. In addition, I’ve decided to get more creative.
It’s hard to see, but I’ve allowed the branches on one half of the tree house to
stay within it. I’ve decided I’m going to make the side without be all roofed
in, then build two little doors leading to the open other side of the top. Trust
me — it’s going to be fun. In addition, my oldest son especially loves to do
those rock climbing walls, when we come across one. I’ve got some heavy wood
left, so I’m going to make a wall allowing you to climb from the ground up to
the second floor. And then I’m going to worry constantly about him or others
falling off of it. And then I’m going to tell myself not to worry.

Building the tree house has continued! Though not today. There was too much
work going on for me to sneak out for a brilliant sunny day that was beckoning
me to do construction. And rain the day before. But over the weekend, lots and
lots of work!

Most of Day 7 was spent doing the walls:

In my mind, I pictured two brothers shoving each other or their friends
against the walls, causing them to burst open and spill precious child cargo all
over the ground. So I wanted them strong. But I also wanted big windows. And, I
wanted the beams to be on the outside rather than the inside, even though I’d
get more support that way. So I added some long beams in between top and bottom,
plus secured several short beams.

It all seemed pretty sturdy, when I was done. The next day, I moved on to try
doing the walls. You’re supposed to overlap the board. I found this a pain — a
pain to measure, to do on my own, plus look:

You got those gaps on the side. I later realized you’re supposed to put a
board running down along the gaps. But heck, I just decided to put the boards
against each other.

That means there are small horizontal gaps where maybe rain might get
through. But I might also seal those in other ways from the inside. Or not. It’s
a treehouse, after all. Mainly, shifting to the boards flat against each other
meant progress was rapid.

Sunday — Day 9 of work — it was time to do steps. I wanted to do these
beautifully crafted steps. Steps, as it turns out, are hard.

In the end, I cut two board and screwed them both together at one end, the
bolted the other ends to the tree. I then put some scrap decking on top:

Not pretty, but they work. Here’s another view, as I’m so happy with them:

I even cut the bottom one a bit to mesh against the tree. In my mind, I have
it that I’ll make even better steps to replace these temporary ones. In reality,
I’ll probably never get back to them

Now that I could climb up, it was time to get the roof frame going. That took
tons of time, though not as much as for the first floor. I’m better with the
jigsaw and doing diagonals now. Once the deck does down, you don’t realize how
much foundation work has been done. So here’s a shot of some of that:

There was great excitement of being able to climb up. Don’t worry. Most of
the time, I had some big board to provide better security than having the kids
wander around those great big holes.

By the end of the day, people were coming over. I had most of the top deck
down but not enough for guests. So it was strictly only for first floor use.
Here’s the dog, getting away from her puppies:

And the real test — tons of kids in the tree house, and no collapse:

Tomorrow, if the sun’s out, I’m likely to decide search news will carry on
without me and get my roof finished.

And the building a tree house
project continues! Today, it was time to get the second floor frame up. With
that in place, I’d have everything I needed to move along with the first floor
walls.

Putting up the frame meant lifting six heavy 2×8 pieces of wood over my head,
plus making sure they were level. For that, I needed help, so I drafted my wife
into the project again.

Making life easier was the fact that the four support poles were in place,
meaning that once I got the first beam leveled off and bolted in, the others
would quickly follow, working off the angles of the first. The hard thing was
that I could no longer stand on the ground. Instead, I had to balance on the
edge of the first floor and juggle my hammer, drill, cordless screwdriver,
bolts, level and so on. So my boys were drafted in to help hand things to me, as
well!

I soon realized I wasn’t going to be able to drill my pilot holes then wrench
the screws in quickly enough without the tiredness of holding up the boards
causing us to slip and lose the level. Then it struck me. Nails! I got some of
those big thick nails I bought and then never used, when I decided screws were
more secure and easier to remove when I made mistakes. I got the board up,
level, then drove a nail under it on my side to keep in place. I moved to my
wife’s side, drove another nail and voila — board temporarily in place. Now I
could drill holes and drive the big bolts at my leisure.

Finally, the entire frame was in place:

Sorry for the blurry picture, but you get the idea. When it’s done, adults (at least those of my short stature) will be able to
walk around on the first floor without too much bumping of their heads. The
second floor will be shorter, which is fine. It really should be a kids zone up
there.

Here’s a closer look:

Despite the construction, the tree house already got lots of use, from Hot
Wheels being raced to much stacking of wood remnants. The trap doors were
especially popular, requiring me to quickly add some makeshift handles:

The boys really want hinges added, so you can pop up and have both doors
swing open. Yep, eventually — but first, how about some walls?

The first challenge is that I don’t have near enough wood for the walls. I
sort of guessed and guessed completely wrong. But I already need to order more
decking, so I cut what I had to start figuring out how I’d frame stuff, plus
which sides would have windows and how I was going to make the door work.

In the end, I decided to use 2x4s all around as a base for a frame, then I’m
going to have vertical supports come up halfway on two sides which will open to
windows. The back wall will be completely closed. As for the door, my book had
no instructions on how to make that frame solid. Could I figure it out on my
own? Yes!

I put down one 2×4 and screwed it to the floor. Then I screwed another on top
of that. Then I ran a third 2×4 up vertically. At the bottom, I screwed it in to
the base I’d built. At the top, I screwed through one of the second floor beams
into it. And that’s it — a solid door frame! It’s also going to have a wall
that comes halfway up, opening to a window.

Here’s where I left off:

You can see the door frame, then way in the back, I even tried putting up
some of the wall temporarily to see how it will work. You’re supposed to overlap
the boards, but I found that hard – especially after my big halogen work light
died when I decided to go a bit longer tonight and I was left with only the LED
light in my cordless screwdriver. I might skip the overlapping. We’ll see.

Next up — finishing the wall framing for the first floor!

The construction continues! When I left off, I’d decided it made sense to build a little porch for the tree house but worried it needed more support. Indeed. When I pulled at the cross beam I’d hastily put up, it came off at the bottom quickly.

Time to do it right! Last Sunday, marked my fourth day on the project, with the porch my starting point. I needed more 4×4 posts to serve as support, but I had no more. That’s OK — my book said to screw two 2x4s together, and darn if that didn’t work great! Then remember the saga of digging holes for my main posts? I didn’t need to go as deep, plus I’d discovered the miracle of the pickaxe. I quickly had 1 foot deep holes dug out. I set up the top crossbeams, snugged the poles underneath, poured that fast acting Postcrete and they were solid in 10 minutes:

Naturally, I added diagonal cross braces. This time, I also had a circular saw recently purchased. Finally, I could cut the edges off the ends of the wood to fit easily. Oops. I discovered it cut through so easily because I’d marked the beam to go in flat — shallow — IE, so that it was only 2″ deep horizontally. That meant it was a heck of a lot harder to put the screws in on the ends. And when I cut the other beam the proper way, I discovered the circular saw didn’t cut deeper than my jigsaw — and it was a lot harder to handle.

Of course, there’s probably some way for me to properly angle the circular saw to cut the way I want. But now I’m sort of used to the funkiness of the jigsaw. I can get that wood fitting in fairly well — and did! I finished the cross bracing on the porch, plus on the remainder of the frame, then knocked off for the night.

Today, I played hooky. I worked a bit, but with it finally being sunny, I decided to do more construction and get the decking down:

Originally, I tried to get exactly the right gaps between each plank of the decking. But you know, wood isn’t cut perfectly. And, well, turns out my frame might not be completely straight — or at least one of the cross beams in the middle isn’t. No matter. In the end, I kind of winged it with putting down the boards and spacing them out visually.

See the ladder above? Now picture that replaced with a ramp of decking to come, that the boys can pull up in case of attack. Now imagine they are secure but want to make a stealthy escape. That’s what the emergency exit is for:

They can slip through that hole and jump down the three or four feet easily to get out from underneath the treehouse. Right now, I cobbled together two little lids. Originally, it was one single lid with two 2x4s linking the decking pieces. Turns out, that’s really heavy! In fact, it makes me think that ramp I eventually will build is going to be heavy. But I’ll cross that bridge (heh) when I come to it.

As a solution, I put some other decking remnants down the middle and removed the 2x4s. I thought when I was done, I’d still have all four decking pieces hooked together. But in a happy accident, the two remnants only covered two boards each. IE, when I picked up the door, it was in two smaller pieces. That’s fine — even lighter!

Here’s the deck with one of the doors in place:

And both down, sealed up tight:

I’m going to staple some rope to the doors, so the boys can pull them off. I might make a better one later, but I mainly wanted something they could have fun playing with tomorrow. And that’s the first floor done, except for the gap in the middle right. I’m out of decking! I’ll order more, but in a few days after I get the walls up and realize how much more wood I’m short.

Before the walls go up, I have to get the second floor framing up. That means four 2x8s bolted to the 4×4 poles, lifting them up over my head. Even with help, I’m not looking forward to it. But at least with the 4x4s in place, I don’t have to do all the measuring out again. I’m semi-hopeful it will go quickly. We’ll see!

Wow — I’m getting email asking what’s up with the treehouse! Cool, that’ll keep me motivated. So it’s been raining in Britain. Sure, it always rains — but it’s really raining a lot. You know, floods all around. Fortunately, we seemed to be one of the few parts of the country with rain but no flooding. With the rain, there hasn’t been much construction. But I did have time on Sunday to do the flooring. Plus, I lowered the entire floor.

What a pain! But look, I climbed up and realized that if I made the first floor about 5 1/2 feet tall, the second floor would be only like 4 feet high. So I dropped the first floor frame by one foot. Wasn’t that bad — was I ever thankful I used screws, though.

That done, I put down some of the decking for a feel of how it would go:

See how the decking sticks out over the edge. I got a great idea. Rather than cut all that, why not let the floor extend and form sort of a balcony? Then I could have a ramp up to it from the ground. Yeah!

Before getting all creative like that, I had to finish the cross bracing. My book was all about the diagonals. It wanted diagonal bits of wood under the floor — and no gaps more than 16″ apart or, or, or….

I don’t know. And 16″ wasn’t going to happen. I figured 20″ max gap at some points would be fine.

Next up, just cut the ends of the wood to a nice diagonal line. Problem is, the wood’s like 4″ thick and my jigsaw blade is only 2″ long. Hmm. So I cut the wood and then flip it over to do the other side. Then I discover that jigsaws, at least the way I use them, don’t cut that level.

Resisting the urge to go out and buy a table saw or whatever (maybe this weekend), I get some rough cuts that actually work. Eventually, I have a pretty nice underfloor frame:

Well, at least on one side of the treehouse. But that’s fine. It meant I could put the deck down loosely, so the boys could climb up and play (and they did!).

I was a bit worried that they might walk on the part of the wood that sticks out at the end, causing it to flip up, since the boards aren’t screwed down. I thought all this as I stood on the deck all laid out, walking around and admiring my handy work. I walked right past the edge, in fact — and suddenly started to sink. It was like being in a movie. I very slowly dropped, turned to see what was going on and realized the part of the deck I standing on was rising up behind me. The entire village probably heard me yell an expletive as I jumped off quickly to save myself. Fortunately, the boards didn’t clobber me.

The day was well done when I took this last photo, so I used Photo Elements to do a very rough lightening:

I have constructed some support for the porch/balcony part, but I’m not happy with it. I’ll probably cut some small poles and put the into holes with concrete. But the picture should give you and idea of what’s to come (with luck). You’ll walk up the ramp, step on to the porch, and then go through a door into the treehouse. And there will be a cable allowing the ramp to be raised.

One nice thing about the ramp is that the dog can come in, too. See, and no one even told me to think about the dog. Still doesn’t mean I love it, though.

The great tree house building project continued on today. When I left off, there was the challenge of digging holes deep enough for my four supporting poles. I dug in, pun intended, this morning to make a serious dent in the ground.

In the end, I utilized a small, obscure tool I forgot we had — a pickaxe. Roots chopped, that corkscrew machine thing I’d rented helped me get down to around two feet for each hole. Good enough. I finished the frame, remembered to put those big poles INSIDE the frame and went to lunch:

After lunch (and after sneaking of to do some work even though I’m supposed to be vacating, heh), it was time to sink those poles properly and attach them to the frame. That wasn’t too complicated, and I got everything all bolted together:

Later I poured in the “Postcrete” that’s supposed to be an add water and get instant concrete solution. We’ll see in the morning. Of course, there’s no work going on tomorrow. With finally a clear day predicted here for England, we’re off to Legoland.

I’m on vacation this week, which meant staying at home but trying not to do much work. Instead, my big project is to construct a long-promised tree house with my boys, for my boys.

I’ve always wanted to build a tree house. Years and years ago at the Los Angeles Times, I even wrote an article about people who did them. The only problem is my general ineptness at building things. But a perfectly built treehouse is not required. What’s required is to have fun building the thing with my boys (rather than, you know, telling them to stand back and be bored watching me try to do it).

To get me started, I was given a great book for Father’s Day: Tree Houses You Can Actually Build. Well, I think it’s a great book. So far, it’s got me going and seems to have plenty of good advice. But the construction has only started!

After surveying the garden (that’s British for “yard” rather than being that little plot of ground within the backyard where you grow flowers or vegetables, the right tree was found. Here it is:

Maybe it’s a beech; I don’t know. My wife’s domain is the garden, so I’ll ask her and update later. All I know is that it’s a tree that looked good enough for the tree house. And the tree house? My book has plans for a “One Tree” tree house (as opposed to building across two trees, three and so on). This plan seemed simple, so I decided to go for it:

When I’m done, I’m sure happy children will frolic exactly as shown in this illustration. Heh. We’ll see.

Of course, I’ve already complicated things by altering the plan. It’s a big tree, with lots of room. Why not make this a two story tree house? Why not might be because I’ve never built anything like this, but shush! Who’s not up for a challenge?

Here’s my plan:

You’ll see at the bottom that there are four supporting poles that run to the tree, but then there are four poles going straight down. The original plans use the tree for support. But me, I’m paranoid. I figure posts going down will be safer. Plus, foolish me, I figured sinking poles into the ground would be easier than doing strange diagonal cuts. Silly, silly me.

Effectively, I’m building a club house around a tree. So why bother with the tree at all? Shush! Part of it is attached to the tree for support, plus it’s around the tree, so it feels treehouseish.

Next, it was time for wood. The cross beams for the original plans said to use 2×6 boards and not to make them longer than 7 feet. But that seemed not to give enough floor space for the tree house I wanted. Then a page in the book talked about using 2×8 beams for spans of 8 feet. So I figured I’d use those. That added some complications I’ll get to later. Have I mentioned never having done this before?

I worked out what I needed for the framing, the floor and so on. Then I called the local wood place, where I discovered that oddly, everything is done in metric. Oddly? Look, Britain like the US is one of the few places left that tends to use gallons, inches (this is why we learn multiplication to our 12s, right?) and goodness, stones for weight (I’m at 11 stone 13 pounds, by the way — 5 pounds to go!).

Fortunately, the guy on the phone was pretty good and knowing what a 2×4 translated into metric (that’s 47x100mm). We went through everything, then he gave me the price, and I tried not to fall out of my chair. Wood. Expensive. Who knew? Apparently (according to Michelle, who is recovering from Sphinn building), hurricanes and tsunamis have caused the price of wood to shoot up. So now I feel guilty for using it at all!

With the wood ordered, it was tree surgery time while we waited. Some of those lower branches had to go. Fortunately, I had help:

That done, happy times as the wood arrived. Here’s it gets lifted over our wall by crane:

Um, maybe I ordered too much! I also realized that the plans call for two 2×6 beams to be nailed to the tree, with two more above that, like this:

But I went for 2×8 beams, remember? So if I cross these puppies, I’m getting pretty high into the tree already!

My thought is that I probably will only use two cross-beams attached to the tree, rather than four. That’s because I’ve got these four massive poles to also support it. Right? Right? I mean they’re like 13 feet tall and when attached to the floor should make having four cross beams unnecessary.

Next up, to actually start construction. Do you realize it’s hard to know the mid-point of a tree that has a trunk that bends? And isn’t the same size all around? I put the beam up initially, then took it down to try and shift it over in a way that made me feel the tree house will be largely centered around the tree, when done.

The good news is that three nails were all it took to get it initially in place and fairly secure enough to think about getting the next beam up:

That’s when it was time for a trip to the tool store, as required when doing any construction project!

See, I didn’t have a level big enough to stretch across from the next beam to the first, to make sure they were level. And the book is very, very clear and insistent that the floor needs to be level. I’m fairly paranoid about it, now. So I went to the store, also thinking getting some galvanized nails that won’t rust will be good. I resisted the urge to get a laser level because (1) I’ve never used one and (2) frankly, an ordinary level seemed just fine. As for the nails, like what’s the issue with Focus (that’s like a Home Depot here, only less so) not carrying 5″ galvanized nails. Well, maybe they won’t rust before the wood rots. I also got some thick bolts to screw the board to the tree properly. No, even I am not lame enough to think those three nails (they were fairly short) would do it.

Back home, it was time to put that other board up, making sure it was exactly even lengthwise with the first one and also level with it. Making it level was easy. Just put the level across the two, shout a lot about “bring your side up” to my wife who was enlisted to help, and you’re level. And once hammered in, you find one board is sticking out like two inches longer than the other.

Yank off the tree, some marking with pencil, guessing at mid-points and eventually it was up. Later on, I found the book talked about things like using strings to mark diagonals and stuff to know if they’re lengthwise equal. Shush, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Plus, who has time for stringing diagonals when that board is heavy, you’re trying to hammer it with one hand and your boys are feeling pretty bored (“can we hammer yet?” — and yes, later they finally did get to hammer)

Both boards in place, I could finally measure out where the corners of the floor frame will be (that’s tomorrow’s job), so that I could dig holes for them.

Did I say dig? Oh, no digging. See, it’s a big tree, and old one too, and it has roots everywhere. That requires machinery. Such as this petrol-powered earth auger I rented from Brandon:

Nice. I mean look, there’s a pole exactly like I want to sink deep in the hole this thing made.

Now the guy at the shop told my wife (who kindly picked it up) that it has trouble with roots. My vision of starting it and quickly drilling two or three foot holes soon disappeared. I’m down maybe a foot, and it’s WORK using one of these. Once, it spun me completely around (sorry, no video available).

What I really need is this bigger hydraulic one, but I doubt that will fit in the car. Instead, tomorrow, I’m going to try what I’ve got a bit more. I figure two feet deep should be enough.

Of course, I’m rethinking the entire four pole idea. For fun, I tried putting one in to the deepest hole I’d made. Lifting it in on my own made me feel I was in some Scottish caber tossing contest. I also found that it was hitting some of the branches I assumed would be well above the roof of my planned construction.

Hmm. These poles are heavy, and if they aren’t in deep enough, they’ll pop right out of those holes under their own weight. But then again, once they’re attached to the floor frame, they won’t be moving about. And the weight of the tree house itself should help keep the poles secure. Right? Right?

I’ll try for two feet deep and see how it goes. I can always cut the poles off at the first floor, then use separate pieces as part of the first floors frame. Right? Right?

Here’s where the day left off:

Wish me luck. More construction follows tomorrow!