Tree House: 8/25-8/27

8/25 - 8/27

It has been so nice out the last few days! I had to carve out some tree house time! Here is a quick pic inventory of what has been accomplished.

Finally began work on siding the missing, upper portions of the exterior. I had to install a piece of metal flashing, a drip rail, between the lower and upper pieces of siding. It's very visible in this pic. This type of flashing was ultimately installed all around the perimeter of the house. Here is the section above the door completely sided!:

Before I could install siding on the triangular openings, I had to build out "scabs" of wood for the sole purpose of providing a nail backing to the siding installation. Angles, sawing, blah, blah, angles, sawing...:

For a brief reprieve from all the carpentry, I installed a door handle and a keypad dead bolt. Beep, Borp, Boop, Beep!:

In one last dash for the "dry-in", I completed all cuts and death defying, tipsy ladder installation of all siding! We are now officially "Dried-In". She is not the prettiest just yet, but she'll take weather until I can get around to trimming out the exterior corners & highly exposed siding seams. Then it will be on to deck railing and exterior painting. This will set the stage for turning my sights to completing the interior!

Tree House: 8/22 - 8/23

8/22/2015

My Dad's visit last weekend left me with a tar papered and drip lipped roof. Today, I began the shingle process:

I'm no pro, but in my own jacked up way I've figured this out. Long hot day, but finally had to stop due to running out of product. I only had 2 rows left to do!?!

"Would you say you have an easy time making new friends?"

"YES!"

Oh! Sometime mid-day, my buddy, Reilly, stopped by and helped me hoist the beast of a French door into place. It about killed us, but it sure looks good!

8/23/2015

Day 2 of roofing. I finished up this morn and crafted up a strategy for waterproofing the final run across the peak edge of the shed. Again, probably jacked up, but I think it will perform!

To top off the day, I trued up the door and threw 2 windows in. All in a day's work:

Tree House: 8/15-8/16

8/15-8/16

This weekend was exhausting, but productive. My Dad came into town and we knocked out a significant portion of the house build. I'm still too exhausted to go into the details, so follows is a simple picture progression of our progress. To say the least, my old man is a BOSS!

Hey! One wall!

TWO walls!

Well, you get the picture!

Some siding, windows and a door, and she'll be all dried-in! For now, roof at least has tar paper. Shingles to come...

Tree House: 8/9/15

8/9/15

I completed a major milestone today. The deck is complete! Time to throw up the bat signal and bring Papa Hickory SENIOR in for a weekend to help me stand up the house and "dry" it in. I've been banging on this for over a month now, but it sure does feel good to always have a project in hand. Still a long road to go; Enjoying the journey!

Tree House: 8/8/15

8/8/15

I picked up 16 more 10' deck boards from the HD this morning. Converted over to using the nail gun, so fastening went much quicker than yesterday. Still, it ended up turning into a scorcher! If you want to know what LOVE is, it's your wife braving a mosquito infested jungle and climbing an unsecured job-site to bring you an avocado and roasted garlic sandwich! I'm in Love!

My biggest Fan, Carter, also dropped in for a while, shot the nail gun and hammered some nails. That was nice!

As you can see, looks like I may finish up decking tomorrow. Only 10 more boards to go!

Tree House: 8/7/15

8/7/15

Cut and screwed down the first 4 ft of decking. This area will be the open front deck off of the the actual tree house (shed). 

As a matter of finishing work, I'll come in late in the build and secure with railing. The stairs will be railed as well. This weekend looks like it is going to be a beautiful one! I aim to complete the whole deck by Sunday!?!

Tree House: 8/5/15

8/5/15

First day back to tree-housing after vacation! Decided on a lite load today. Just ran to the HD and grabbed enough 10' decking boards to cover the front deck portion of the total platform. I'm doing this section as a component, as this is the only section of decking I intend to screw down. The rest of the decking will fall below the actual shed structure, will ultimately be covered up with some type of sub-floor and/or finished flooring, and will thus only be secured with my fast, framing nailer. 

Nine 10' decking boards stacked and ready for the next build day:

Now I warned early on that I have a penchant for over-engineering! The following scheme is born of a paranoid delusion I have that the whole tree house is going to fall over! Let me explain. As you know, the platform is essentially a freestanding deck, supported by 4 6X6 posts, with an extension of the platform riding freely over another support beam anchored between the two trees. My irrational fear is that a tornadic wind will rip down through the ravine and overcome the vertical, upright strength of all 4 support beams and simply push the whole tree house over! The shed would act like a big sail, and the "floating" side of the platform would do nothing in the traditional sense of a deck, in that it doesn't represent a secure attachment to a fixed structure, e.g. like the ledger board of a deck fixed to a house. If all 4 beams broke in one direction, the floating end of the deck would simply slide off that beam and all would come crashing down. NOW, I seriously doubt anything like this would ever happen! The build thus far is SOLID as a rock, and only growing more secure as weight is added. HOWEVER, if I can spend $30-$40 on piece of mind, I'll buy it! Here's what I did:

Using chains, trailer tabs & carabiners, all rated close to 5,000 Lbs, I insured that the deck could only drift so far in either direction, relative to the underlying support beam (which is fixed between the trees). It's loose enough to allow for the anticipated movement between deck and beam, but not so loose as to give in to a horizontal, directional failure of the whole freestanding deck. Anyway, I hope this all makes sense! It does to me, and I now intend to sleep much better!