The Party - The Next Day

Well it was a rousing success! Here is a picture of the party members the next morning.

The Party

My daughter's Birthday Party went really well. We sent them up in the treehouse, handing out flashlights and cutting up the cake to her four friends. After the movie (Night at the Museum - Smithsonian), we handed out bug spray and bid them goodnight! (Well, I slept in a tent in the backyard just to keep an eye on them.

HOORAY!!!

FINALLY! It's a go!

Up to the very day of the party, my daughter kept asking "you WILL finish in time, won't you?" As late as an hour before the sleep over , I was putting on door handles etc. But fnish we did (With wife,daughter and son chipping in).

After we finished the fittings, we used Christmas lights for decoration and stuck a small TV/DVD player for a movie.

Home stretch/under the gun - dutch door

It sounds really simple! My daughter wanted a dutch door onto the deck. How hard could it be? All you have to do is build a door out of 2x4 s and cut it in half. So that's what I did. I took a width and a length and built a frame threw some plywood on it and sliced it in half - NO GO. It turns out that the doorway isn't quite square. I figured the inch it was off didn't make a difference, but it does. See attached photo - note the curved slash in the door when my saw hit a nail.

Ok, time to start again. This time I taped together to large pieces of Kraft paper, then taped them over the doorway. Then, I drew an outline of the doorway on the paper to use as a template. That worked better. The other change was to use the plywood as the door and use strapping to frame the door and the doorway. Voila! Open...

and closed!

Home stretch/under the gun - screening part 3

Well, believe or not the screening is in. It was a challenge without a ladder (see below), but I screened most of the openings from the inside instead.

At the other window, I built a moveable screen window so the kids could open it and get to the bucket and pulley.

Home stretch/under the gun - screening oops!

So, I was working on an old blue fiberglass ladder. I'm stapling on window screening on the outside of the tree house about 10 feet up. Suddenly I hear this ripping, crunching noise and the next thing I know, I'm dropping through thin air! I had extended the ladder all the way and was standing where the top and bottom overlapped. The fiberglass rails holding the ladder together cracked and the two ends popped free! I ended up ridng the lower section down while the top section fell away! Except for a scrape on my wrist, I landed without injury on my well-padded rear end (the result of all those Buffalo Wings)! Could have been worse I landed two-three feet from a big boulder, I could have bounced my head off THAT on the way down. Yikes!

Home stretch/under the gun - screening

Ok, this is a picture from last winter. I put it up mainly as a place holder, as my next project on my punch list is for screening. The treehouse is built on the back corner of our lot near a vernal pool. During the day, the mosquitoes are otherwise occupied. however, after dark they rise from the pool and would quickly make their way into a treehouse full of 11-year-old overnighters. I was planning on throwing screening on the outside and using wood strapping as trim to hold it into place. More on this later!