- High enough they could get a good view of the yard, and reach the climbable branches in the tree.
- Sturdy enough to last a long time. If it's hard to put up, it should be hard to knock down.
- Must not hurt the tree. Trees grow to usable size much slower than boys do.
- Some way of attaching a swing.
- Not too expensive. Would you rather spend $1000 on a tree house and $200 on Lego, or the other way around? I thought so.
Our mimosa tree wasn't sturdy enough to support a tree house, so it needed to be more of a 'tree platform' than a 'house held up by the tree'.I fired up Sketchup, and pretty quickly designed something treehouse-like. The only hard part was the cutouts for the ladder rungs; for some reason they had a tendancy to go away when I resized or edited other parts of the tree house.
We built a list of lumber and parts off the Sketchup model, and headed to the hardware store. Treated 4x4's for the base, since we know termites live in our area (nothing like taking down the pool at the end of the summer and finding a termite colony happily eating the crushed grass underneath). Kiln-dried lumber for the rest of it. Assorted strong-ties and galvanized bolts. Total cost: around $200.
Remember that really hot weekend last May, when it was like 100 in the shade? Guess which weekend I picked to build the tree house. 15 hours and 3 gallons of lemonade later, here's the (almost-) finished result.We put a rope swing on the 2x6 that sticks out from the left corner. To keep the swing from rocking the whole tree house up off the ground, we pounded pairs of 18" construction stakes (3/4" steel rods with a point on one end) through the 4x4 into the ground near each corner. They're angled out like an A, so they hold the tree house down to the ground.
Since then, my 8-year-old has added a hammock I got him for Christmas, and my wife discovered the tree house is a great place to do bird-watching.
I haven't all spent the money we saved on Lego, but now that I've discovered BrickLink that's looking more likely...
