Timberwyck Farm

I love tucked away spaces. For as long as I can remember, I liked to nestle myself between the mattress and the sideboard on my bed. I also had a certain fondness for the top bunk on our bunkbeds growing up. Something about being out of sight and hunkered down with nothing to do.

So of course, when we adopted two older kids in 2011, how can your mind not turn to treehouses? While the idea began as just a fun project to do with the kids, it became clear quickly that carving out spaces just for the kids was important. Places that they help create around our home.

Of course, treehouses are not structures to be trifled with. It's one thing to build a clubhouse on solid ground and another entirely to suspend it eight feet off the ground in living trees. Consulting numerous books, we came up with a nice three-tree design to take advantage of a wicked stand of oak in the small woods on our property.

Our basic designs rests on using 2x6 dimensional pine lumber and 1/4 inch in diameter, 6 inch long bronze-ceramic deck lag screws. While I wasn't sure what would be best in the way of fasteners, I'm crazy about the deck lag screws. They are super strong, but still narrow enough that you can easily get three in the end of one 2x6 without having to pack them too close together and risk killing part of the tree.

After taking a few measurements, we were off to the races. The first platform was designed to be only about 6 feet off the ground on the house-side of the site, while the woods-side was actually more like 8 to 9 feet because of the grade of the ground. This was actually great, as it meant that the house-side was quite secure feeling, though you still got a nice vista of the forest canopy from the opposite side of the platform.