Here I have just logged (four years on, in the spring of 2008) some changes and improvements. There haven't
been many. The treehouse is still very robust. I spend a lot of time up there — way more than the
kids. Sometimes I sleep up there. The changes have been mainly small things for comfort and convenience.
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The treehouse is within range of my wireless router (a thing to check beforehand if you want to
use treehouse as workspace) so I can work up here on my laptop. A spare patio chair; a waterproof seat cushion
(birthday present from my kids); a $10 folding table from Wal-Mart, and I'm all set up … until I need to
consult a book. |
| You need shelving, of course, and hooks to hang things from. |
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A glass of iced coffee, and you're all set up. |
| The south wall overlooks a neighbor's back yard, so I want to respect their privacy. I have,
though, made a little windown in that wall that I can open when they're not around. It lets in more light and air.
Also rain and leaves in bad weather, so I have to remember to shut the window when I leave. |
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Because I sometimes sleep up here, I need a place to stow bedding and a pillow. From
considerations of dampness and insects, this storage needs to be as open to the air as possible. Solution: a wee net
that I can pull across the ceiling at the southeast corner.
That round blob in the foreground up there is
a hammock. |
| I got an excellent hammock from Eagles Nest Outfitters — this one. It's made from parachute
material, very thin but very strong. |
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I sling the hammock from corner to corner, which is ten feet. It's a nine-foot hammock, so this
works nicely. To support it, I cut a length of 4×4 diagonally, to make two lengths with isosceles-right-triangle
cross-sections. I fixed one of these in each corner, using two eye bolts. This gives two heights you can sling the
hammock at, one for kids, one for adults. |
| The hammock fabric is truly amazing. You can stuff it back into its bag with no difficulty,
ending up with a packed hammock no bigger than a pomelo. |
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So that I can take my breakfast up here, I made a dumb waiter. Some offcuts of wood, paint,
lacquer, eye-screws, four bits of string. I haul it up using the pulley. |
| I got a little carried away making the dumb waiter, I'll admit. Painted the Chinese characters
zaofan ("breakfast") on before lacquering. To make the characters, I just printed them off from my computer,
pricked through the outlines onto the tray, and painted in. A nice elegant flowing style of calligraphy would of
course have been better, but … I don't have one. |
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The only regular maintenance I do is to go over the structure each year in early spring, checking
for (a) any bolts that have worked loose, (b) threats to the structure from tree growth. The latter I solve by just
cutting away structure as needed.
The spaces left between tree and floor (or celing) as a result of this
cutting away have an added benefit: squirrels can run right up and down the tree trunk and through the structure.
They generally pause for a moment if they see me sitting there, as if to say: "What the heck …?" before
proceeding on up, or down. |
| Here's a view from the treehouse looking northeast, over the garage roof and down the driveway.
My house is on the left. |
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The view north. Not much to see but leaves. You can just make out the back of our house, and the
sliding door to our deck. |
| The view west, showing my woodpile and the southwest corner of my back yard. The rectangular
patch outlined with pebbles is Boris's grave. |
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