Its now came to my attention that I have been left in charge of creating a magical play land for the kiddos of the family, even while most will only use it for a few years I am wondering how many others have given up part of their land for the little tots. How much did it cost too?
As a kid, I never had a tree house, but I always thought it would be cool. I've seen some very fancy and large ones and then others are super basic, like a few slabs of wood nailed together.
While a kids play land may take up space, what it will do for your life will be amazing. Think about keeping young ones contained where you want them and away from the places you don't want kids doing kid things.
I built a rather larger one for my kids 20 years ago and they still talk about it from time to time. It starts off with a 8X8 sand box with a large set of swings coming off from there. It later had a ladder you climbed to the second story with a 4X8 room at the back of the playhouse and off of that in the front was a 4X8 porch. I build the biggest part using 4X4 pressure treated land scape timbers. A bunch of pull up bars and rings hung from the roof too so the kids could hang on. Was used
ever day till years later a tonado picked it up as my five kids watched and threw it in a bunch of pieces
inches away from the back of the house. Cost??? $200 to $300.00 memory priceless $$$$
Our kids have a tree house. It resembles a blind more than a tree house but to the kids, who use it almost daily, it a penthouse. They do Tarzan calls when coming down.
#6
the neighbor
About 20 yrs ago, our twins and I built a treehouse up in a big old willow tree in the corner of our yard. It was sorta-triangular, and sided with "shiplap" siding, with a 4' carved "tiki" head at the "Prow". Also, at the bottom of the tree is an old aluminum canoe set up as a sandbox. We christened it "Kon-Triki", and it kinda dominates that corner of our yard. A coupla years later, we added a 110' "trolley" line from that to a tree across the yard. The thing has been a tremendous hit over the years. The tree is dying, now, but our kids are grown, with their own little ones, and we're planning bigger and better things in a (younger) cluster of elms across the yard. The "Trolley" is still being used (it is ACTUALLY pretty safe, with no major injuries, yet...) and represents considerable "R&D", the current one being the "Mark 7". Its built from BMX bicycle parts. I'd be only too happy to correspond with people who are into this... Mike
#7
the neighbor
OH. I forgot. How much did it cost? Pretty much zero. I bought a few brackets and a bunch of screws, and used salvage materials. Pallet lumber is everywhere! If I see a building being pushed into a pile, I stop and pull stuff out of the pile. One thing we DID do, was work with the tree, as much as possible. We managed to build ours with VERY few penetrations of the tree itself. It died anyway, but it wasn't because of anything we did to it. Mike
WE had a playhouse as a kid, we had beds out there and used to camp out there, also had a sink and some cupboards and such. We had a ball playing in it, it was about $300 to build it.
You might see some places trying to get you to buy a pre built one. They build it for you and then charge you a thousand dollars are more. But if you do some research, get a good book, and look things up on the internet you will see that you can build this yourself much cheaper. And like others said you can let your kids help (in small ways) and the whole experience becomes a learning lesson that builds the young ones up.
I put up a 6' x 6' treehouse for my two kids last summer. I did it over labor day weekend using some railroad ties and 4 x 6 boards. And a rope ladder. It cost be a couple hundred bucks. They still love it.
