I’ve always wanted to do it, but my feeble handyman skills and other priorities always got in the way. Was it open-sided, or enclosed and weatherproofed? How high was it? Got pics?
Growing up, quite a few of my friends had treehouses. Most built by their dads.
Some were pretty cool - walls and a roof with a room and a ladder rope.
Others were basic plank “landings” as you climbed the tree. The simple ones were often the most fun - got to throw stuff off, and jump from one landing to the next.
We thought they were fun back in the day.
Of course, today there are probably lawsuits if your neighbor kid falls out, or parents will make their kids wear helmets and have a rock climbing guide hold the rope as they climb.
The best though was the neighbor girls whose grandfather built them a playhouse - wow - it had two floors, dutch doors, windows with window boxes that had real flowers, hiding places built into the floor, running water (from the backyard hose hook up) and was painted really nice. Even the guys in the neighborhood were jealous and it was a great place to hang out in the rain (which probably made all the parents quite happy as well, to get us out of the house even in bad weather.) It was really solidly built - heavy wood construction and sturdy railings on the 3rd floor roof overlook. That was one hell of a carpenter/grandpa who built that.
We built underground forts.
Dig a big hole in the ground way out in the woods somewhere. Throw some lumber and plywood across it. Then throw all the dug up dirt back on top of that. Given that none of us had PE liscenses and this was basically in sand, its a miracle non of us got buried alive. But at least they were cool in the heat of the summer (and fairly warm in the winter for that matter).
We built our own tree houses. They were always multistory. the best one was in an ancient weeping willow. The highest platforms were about 30 feet up. We restricted access to the high platforms by spacing the ladder pieces too far apart for smaller children to climb.
My father nailed a few planks to a large tree in the backyard, both as landings and as steps to climb the tree. I think it was a Chinese pistache tree. This was pretty simple, but it was more than most of the kids in the neighborhood had, and it was very popular.
We also had a mimosa in the backyard which had several very low forks in it. I spent a lot of time lounging against a branch in that tree, just daydreaming. It’s a miracle it lived, because my friends and I were forever digging in the dirt underneath it, making dams and other improbable structures.
The old backyard had a bit of a slope to it, and my father used this to make a rope and pulley contraption that we used to hang onto and glide down from the tree to a clothesline T stand. He laid down two long pieces of wood (probably 2x6s) parallel to each other, and we’d put our red wagon on them at the top of the slope, and ride down the slope, and do it over again. He made a simple square sandbox with seats, and we spent a lot of time in it. He used to be quite a capable carpenter, and until quite recently was involved in a woodworker’s guild. I didn’t realize how very valuable these skills were until I was a parent myself, and trying to find toys that were sturdy, fairly cheap, and which would engage a child.
Here is the one that I build in our backyard. No roof, but I’m in CA and we don’t get rain between May and October. It’s pretty fun - my boys like it. You can’t tell from the picture but about 100 feet up the slope from there we have a target set-up. The boys like to take their air rifles up there and target shoot.
I’d like to talk about the treehouse I built in my parents wooded yard in Southern Michigan back in 1976-77. I am afraid though my description would sound like bs… so I won’t… but just wanted to say this is a great idea for a thread.
I highly recommend a book: Treehouses, The Art and Craft of Living Out on a Limb… by Peter Nelson.
I have a copy right here - it’s inspiring, great pictures of various creative treehouses - including a step-by-step build of a colossal treehouse built in a huge fir tree on an island in British Colombia.
Oh and Ol’Gaffer, unfortunately your link requires a facebook account. (I hope you fix it, would love to see what you built)
Try this one the lone cashew.
Thanks! Was trying to figure out what kind of tree, has a flat top like an apple tree might, from this distance, hard to tell but trunk bark looks wrong for an apple, also the leaves are on the small side and appear too numerous.
Plus, you noted how dry it is there where this was built.
It’s a Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii).
I built this treehouse in 2004 for the Kerrkids. And there are the Kerrkids in it!
It took the better part of a summer. It has an outdoor deck and a small enclosed room, windows and a skylight. It was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had building something. Still gets used. The boy on the left is now 17; it turned into the party hangout for a couple years, but he’s done with it. Time to clean it up for the other boy, who is now 9.
C’mon-humor us. As threadstarter I reserve the right to perform the smackdown on anyone who doesn’t believe you.
Great tree house, Joe Kerrman. As a person who is interested in trees, would like to know what kind of trees were used by those who post treehouse pics.
Ol’Gaffer
Thanks for that, you even provided the scientific name.
As a tree care specialist, I know the trees of our region well (Meeshegan) but am out of water when visiting elsewhere. My parents live in the South. When visiting, I have no idea what many of the trees are. I have never ventured West, have not even heard of a blue oak.
John DiFool
No problem, sir. I’ll write up a description a little later, thanks for the encouragement. 
My dad built a simple platform treehouse for us at one point. My brother used it a lot more than I did. We did spend a lot of time in trees-sans-houses as kids.
He also built us an awesome playhouse which was extremely crude but we loved it to bits. It had windows and a door that closed, and a table that folded down from the wall.
Technically it was my brother’s but I got to play in it too. Then it got taken over by bees and we weren’t so impressed anymore.
Hooray for parents with carpentry skills!
Neven built one - but I had one as a kid (actually it was my sister’s, but I used it)
It was triangular using 3 tree trunks, about 10 feet up.
No roof, but my sister did use a big tarp and camped in it at least once.
Brian
I learned a fair bit of my preliminary carpentry skills building treehouses with a couple of childhood friends. In short, you got it right or you fell. No pics, way too long ago but they were stable and able.
Now someone here, one if not more, has taken it to another level altogether. Who’s the doper, Philster? Someone has in their adult life built extradorinary edifices and posted pics in a thread. A little help?
I began building my colossal tree creation when I was in the 8th grade , selected a double stemmed basswood tree - not the best for a treehouse - but basswood is easy to nail and the tree trunks were almost 2.5 ft in dia - plenty big enough.
I had to get permission from my Dad, since the twin trees were in close proximity to my parents house.
About 25ft in the air, twin beams (they were only 2 x 4s but a general shortage of funds also meant a shortage of usable wood) were erected and a primitive floor frame was constructed. A riding lawn mower was used to draw 4 x 8 sheets of plywood up and over using the framework as a makeshift pully system.
There was much friction, the lawnmower kept spinning out, but finally the sheets were in place and the 6 x 8 ft floor was completed.
While building, a friend donated several boxes containing small panes of glass approx notebook sized. I decided to make a glass roof by lining the panes of glass on rails made of 2 x 2’s, use caulk to adhere them in place. It turned out there was not enough glass panes to do the whole roof so decided half a glass roof would be better than no glass roof.
Someone donated some shag carpeting and this was 1976 so the carpet looked like something you’d see on the Brady Bunch, a very gaudy multi-shaded blue.
The make-shift fort was supplied with electricity using the parents outdoor power outlet - two extension cords were used for this and soon the treehouse had its very own phonograph and cassette player. An old 19" Zenith black-and-white was soon added, hoisted up with a rope. The rabbit ears were worthless so I cobbled a wire from the cable box. Not a qualified electrician, the connection was not too good and the wire would have to be wiggled from time to time to get the reception needed. Soon a phone went in the same way, but this connection was even worse.
So, it was finally completed.
It was cozy but there was always a leak somewhere when it rained, the glass panels were not very well sealed and there was a narrow flat section in the roof - between the two pitched sides - the one with the glass panels and the one without. This leaked too.
The end of that summer, I became a freshman in highschool and was introduced to something called “pot” after a neighborhood kid obtained a small bag of it from their older brother. Both I and the treehouse survived the winter, it was now 1977.
The “sneaking off to smoke pot” continued and the treehouse was the perfect place for this activity - no “adults” would dare trust their lives to the makeshift ladder - rendering the treehouse effectively “off limits” to parents.
Having an enthusiasm for gardening since a small child, and not too long after spying a book on pot growing, I set up a small growlight setup using half of the space in the treehouse. This made the “living” space a bit cramped but it seemed worth it at the time.
After some experimenting - finding light levels inadequate - additional lighting accumulated - until the electrical consumption reached approx 800 watts.
When winter came, the extension cords used to supply the thing were warm enough to melt away any snow in close proximity - which should have been a dead giveaway to the larger than usual electric bill that my dad had begun complaining about.
When I wanted some weed, I would simply head for the treehouse, cut some from the plants using sewing scissors, and at carefully, selected times, use the parent’s microwave to dry it out.
I found that I not only had enough pot for myself but for friends as well.
Thus began a small business.
The illegal enterprise continued into the next summer. It was now 1978.
Friends would call, and as long as they didn’t mind that the weed was dried out in the microwave (none of us were connoisseurs), it could be ready in no time - as long as the microwaving was done with caution.
After all, the parents would not have approved the use of their microwave oven to dry, leafy treehouse weed… or any weed for that matter.
The operation began to fizzle out during my senior year, had a job and less time to sneak off to get stoned. Made preparations to to college in '81, the illegal fort began to fall into disrepair.
The sign adorning the walls that said “no gambling, cussing, or spitting” - along with several stolen traffic signs - a Stop sign, a Yield, and my personal favorite - a brand new sign warning those that there were “Children at Play”, were all given away, not sure what happened to them.
My dad asked me the following summer to please dismantle the damn thing - now in the state of disrepair, it had become an eyesore. (Actually it was always an eyesore but what I mean is it was getting even worse.)
So I finally got around to tearing it down until only the original platform remained.
When my parents sold the house a few years later and moved to Texas, the new homeowners were forced to deal with the remaining platform, and soon after that, nothing remained of the treehouse that I had built.
(I had also lost my virginity in that treehouse. Her name was Shelly and it was her brother who helped us score our first small bag of pot for the exorbitant price of 5 dollars.)
Sorry for all the extra spacings. My pasting skills need improving. :o
Thanks for bringing back memories.
We built very low tech houses stealing the name Flet(if you have not read Lord of the Rings the Elves had basic flat structures built in trees for housing from) Tolkien for our creations.
perfect for haning out on hot summer days in “our” forest
No, but I spent a lot of time climbing trees. My Dad built us a play house which was nice but there is something wonderful about a tree house. I wouldn’t mind living in one.