I thought scavenging bits of wood and pallets for the build would be arduous and more hassle than it was worth-wouldn't it be a better use of time to just work, earn cash and buy the wood, apparently NO!
The rewards of chatting to people about your idea are massive, it's a great conversation starter and most people are very curious and excited (some sneer but it's not for everyone). Some blokes at a timber place wouldn't give us stuff unless we promised to bring them pictures of the project. We traded £5 worth of tea and coffee stuff for their staff room - for well over £100 worth of timber, scrap wood and ply which was destined for burning
Heno is the master of pallet foraging
I however seem to have a knack for chatting to older couples who are getting extensions done and have skips full of joy to share.
timber yard donation
Heno's trailer carefully packed
First load of free wood (mostly the fruit of Heno's skip diving) stacked up on site for the first day.
If you have any scraps of wood, ply or longer timber to donate please message us, don't worry - chipped ends can be trimmed, nails can be pulled out, cement scraped off and drillholes plugged up or filled.
Taking a bit more inspiration from Mr Weston's book we decided to build a wood burner like his 'Bertha'. So a few weekends ago, Greg and I set out to find an oil barrel for the purpose. One that we could have for free naturally!
15 Minutes later having visited one garage, he had just the thing. It's amazing how people react if we get the chance to explain what we're doing. Most people seem to get it completely and help us in every way they can, maybe there's a bit of everyone that wishes they were doing something like this so it fires their imagination? I don't know, either way it makes scavenging easier when folks are receptive to the idea! The barrel we got was old and blue, so we christened it 'Old Blue', which seems like a male name so he's a him.
So we got Old Blue home and proceeded to cut his lid off:
Once this was done we needed to burn him out a bit to clear out any remaining oil or chemicals to make him safe for eventual indoor use.
We had a small fire just to clear him out.
Then I cut the door and bottom opening out, and immediately realised I'd cut them the wrong way round! D'oh! As the bottom of the barrel eventually becomes the top of the stove, my mind had not factored that in and I guess I was just a bit grinder happy. Never mind, nothing that can't be fixed with a welder. I'll simply cut out the surround of the smaller hole and weld it in to the bigger hole, thus swapping the two size holes around. It'll be good welding practice for me anyway.
Whoops!
So I then decided to have a proper burn in him to get rid of as much paint as possible to help with welding and also to make repainting him with spray on stove paint easier. Our friend Andy helped with this as got Old Blue VERY hot indeed!
Old Blue warming up nicely!
He kept us warm well into the night too.
Now I need to get my welder out and finish him off, progress will be blogged as it occurs.......
Well here it is folks, our blog about our treehouse. We are three couples, Greg and Jane, James and Hannah C and James and Sarah H. This all started after Greg read 'The Treehouse Diaries' by Nick Weston, feeling inspired he gathered together the rest of us to build what all grown men (and some women!) dream about, an adult sized treehouse to stay in. So we got together, found a lovely tree in one corner of James C's parents' garden and decided to build it!
This weekend saw the first of many building weekends. Having visited site on previous occasions to recce trees and other key features, our tree had been chosen, our design roughed out (Greg even made a model of it!), calculations done and timber ordered. The timber for the floor structure is the only timber we intend to buy, the rest we hope to recycle and scavenge from various sources. The timber was paid for (£333.46!) and delivered to site on Friday, there was no going back now!
Day One
First job was to get everything to site, happily we had use of a 4x4 to tow my trailer to within a few feet of site so that all the scavenged wood I brought could be shifted in one go, I'd hate think how long this would've taken by hand as the nearest road access to site is a bout 300 yards away. Which in the grand scheme of things isn't far, except when you have a hundred or so of pieces of wood to move by hand! This is the carefully packed trailer:
and this is what it looks like unpacked:
Believe or not this whole pile of wood cost us just a couple of boxes of tea bags, it's worth making friends with local timber yards, it's amazing what they throw out!
We then set about setting up the site with a shelter to keep the tools dry, clearing the various shrubs and small trees that would pose a danger or were just in the way and finally carrying all the structural timber onto site. These were much to big for the trailer so had to be lugged the old fashioned way.
And we're ready to go!
Saturday was a short day due to some of us having to travel quite some distance, so we concentrated on getting the first 'sleeper' bolted to the tree. This is the datum point that everything else will come from, it sets the floor height, the angle from the tree, everything. Getting it right was worth taking some time over.
Here we are cutting it from the length of 8"x3" timber that we'd bought.
We'll make another of these at some point to go on the other side of the tree to support the balcony rails. It's bolted to the tree using M10x200mm coach screws and 50mm square washers (3mm thick!). We gave the tree a little 'shave' first to ensure as flat a surface to bolt to as possible without damaging the cambium layer of the tree, then drilled and bolted it up.
It was in place by end of play Saturday which set us up well to crack on Sunday morning.
Day Two
Which we did despite the continuing rain, and when I say rain, I mean RAIN! It poured it down on and off (mostly on) all day Saturday and Sunday. Work was slow and a bit more hazardous than was comfortable at times due to the amount of mud that got churned up, but we pressed on. By there end of Sunday we had the main 'rails' up on the sleeper and a supporting leg underneath them. This was no mean feat as as quickly as we could dig holes for decent footings for the posts, they would fill with rain. Lots of hardcore later and we managed to secure the foot of the first post. The first structural element of the whole design was now standing up all on its own.
Building the 'rails':
Rails resting on the sleeper, awaiting their first supporting leg:
Rails are now horizontal! Held up by their first leg (and a bit of rope). Leg just visible on for right of pic:
James C is very pleased :-)
Side view
Day Three
Monday brought glorious and very welcome sunshine with it. Spirits were lifted and we were set for another day on the build. It definitely seemed like we'd found a rhythm in the team by this point, jobs were getting ticked off left, right and centre and progress was swift under blue skies. The first joists went on top of the rails at either end and in the centre. Once the end plates were secured to them we had our perimeter set out and the full scale of what we were building became apparent. It was BIG! 15'9"x16'1" to be exact. On paper this seemed reasonable for the accommodation required, when it was set out in real planks of wood up in the trees 10' off the ground, it looked massive! Still, better that than too small, it does potentially have to sleep 6 adults, plus we have 2 children between the 3 couples.
By the time we really had to call it a day we had all the joists on, all the 'noggins' between them (noggins help to prevent twisting of the timbers as they dry out). We also had the second leg under the rails and a stilt in too. The stilt is extra long so that it will reach and support the roof once it's on. These supports combined with fixing the joists to any passing trees meant that already the floor structure is feeling very firm. We still have 5 more stilts to add in too, one in each remaining corner and one half-way along each side. I'm not worried about this thing falling down!
So that's where we are until the next build weekend when hopefully we'll start on the roof and flooring. Watch this space folks.
