Playhouse Bed

"It should be about this big ..."

The voice of my six year old son was dragged away as he walked off a space in our backyard the size of a dirigible hangar.

"... And this great ..."

He stressed at the beginning of the tallest tree in the neighborhood, but was the Sears Tower Bellaire Avenue, he would have chosen instead.

"... And it should be red ..."

My two years, interrupted, "and yellow ..."

"... With a windmill on top and a rope ladder and a slide and swing, and ... can you build today?"

"Well," I said, and began to explain that before we could even start building his tree house new plans should be developed, cost estimates have been calculated, and we did not even not chosen a location yet. There was a tree house big enough so that we may need a structural engineer. Can I build it myself or do I need to get competitive bids from contractors? I was just getting to the part on applications for building permits when he broke in:

"Dad," he said, "you can do, you're an Arky-tek.

(Slight pause as I strangled by rising lump of pride in my throat - how could I say no to that?)

"Very well. Give me my credit card, the son, we leave the wood."

Like many architectural projects, it began with a clash of dreams and reality. As the "director" of a project, I am often challenged to unravel the possible from the impossible and at the same time create something beautiful, useful, and durable. And if my client is open to and willing to explore alternative options to control the cost, then we have a real chance to close the project budget.

But the budget castlefort ", as my children now come to call it, was only $ 300. And even that has begun to look like a distant dream when we arrived at the wood. Ouch For a minute I thought the prices were in yen.

I just need utility-grade wood, not the straightest, smoothest advice on earth not perfect specimens without node lovingly hand carved from trees that had lived a long and happy life and end account, fell slowly in thick layers of pine straw - just plain old 2 x 4.

Finally, I shot the worst of the Research Councils of the bunch and talked to the store manager in a big discount. We were back on the budget.

I knew early on that the biggest problem we encountered in the implementation and design of our tree house was the lack of trees, or under trees that could support a house in tree. But there is always an alternative in the background, hidden behind the pile of luggage in my brain keeps trying to tell me what a tree house should look. The solution was very simple when I realized it was not so much that the tree house should be mounted in a tree, it has mainly been in place. And so we have built on stilts in a simplified version of the coastal construction, where the piles are driven into the sand to keep the floor deck. With my six years, supervision, I put four 4 x 4 in post-holes and fill them with concrete.

The rest of the project had many elements of a "real" house, carpentry, siding, roofing, painting, even in indoor / outdoor carpeting. I hesitated at the request of my son for Others.