Treehouses: The Art and Craft of Living Out on a Limb
October 28, 2008
Treehouses lift the spirits. They inspire dreams. They represent freedom: from adults or adulthood, from duties and responsibilities, from an earthbound perspective. If we can’t fly with the birds, at least we can nest with them. With lively writing and beautiful photographs, Treehouses paints a fascinating portrait of this ingenious branch of architecture. It provides a brief history of treehouses, from Caligula through the Medici to Queen Victoria. It shows how to design and build a treehouse, from picking the right tree to shingling the roof. And it tells the stories of dozens of treehouses and the people who built them, from simple platforms nailed together by kids to arboreal palaces constructed and lived in by grown-ups. The centerpiece of the book is a photo essay showing Pete Nelson building a spectacular octagonal treehouse thirty feet up an old-growth fir on Saltspring Island in British Columbia. With two hundred square feet of floor space, cedar paneling, and leaded French doors, the Saltspring treehouse is one of the finest specimens of the treehouse builder’s art. Anyone who has ever built a treehouse, or dreamed of it, or read Swiss Family Robinson, will find Treehouses irresistible.
Customer Review: Never too Old for a Treehouse
I found the drawings of treehouse construction principles helpful and potentially life saving. The photos were beautiful and inspirational. This isn’t the only treehouse building book I will own, but it was a good one to start out with.
Customer Review: Tree Huggers Beware.
Great Book, with lots of great pictures. Some technical stuff also. Another book that has a little bit on building tree houses is called “Shelters Shacks and Shanties by D.C. Beard. I love tree’s myself but for you tree huggers complaining about a few nails, sheesh, your houses are full of lumber. Look in the walls at the studs, under the floors at the joists, kitchen cabinets, dining room table and chairs, bedroom furniture, etc. etc. so don’t worry about a few nails in a tree eh, they love the iron in them anyhow! buy from here…
