last blogger on the block: The Making of a Treehouse

Saturday, August 19, 2017

The Making of a Treehouse - Making Progress

We made a ton of progress on our treehouse this summer. The roof is on, the doors and shutters have been hung, and the whole thing is stained and painted! The last item on our checklist to add is the railing. The wood for the railing has been stained and now we just need a day when we're home and it's not raining to get it cut to size and installed. The sooner the better, as Brooklyn has already fallen off the platform and onto her face while playing some kind of "hunter and gatherer" game with Hudson and Kendall. I'm so happy, though, that they're actually playing on it!

Once the railing is up it will be time to add the bells and whistles - slide, zip line, rock wall, tightrope, etc. The kids have all sorts of ideas and we're just gonna go with them.

I would say the hardest part of the treehouse has been the roof! Mathematically speaking, it was hard cutting all the rafters to the right size, length, and then fitting them all together on the main beam. Then came cutting the tin and screwing it down onto the rafters and beams. We didn't factor in that part when we decided to make the treehouse as tall as we did. Ryan, who is afraid of heights anyway, was not so thrilled to stand on the highest rung on his ladder to screw everything down from the top. When we finally finished the roof - after working on it for several weekends - we were beyond stoked and relieved it all worked! Lets hope it survives the next hurricane that blows through town...

Poor Ryan on his ladder trying to get that tin roof screwed down...

With the roof on, we were ready to finish staining and painting...

Two more helpers just waiting to get those cool barn doors up and tested...

When the work was too hard or dangerous for the kids to help, they made use of their time by lining the pathway with our scraps of wood...

That's a good looking roof, right?!...

One door up and the kids were immediately fighting over who got to open and close it for the first time. Seriously guys? It's a door - none of you want to open or close any of them in the house when I ask you to!! =-) Luckily I caught this loving moment on film to calm my nerves!...