![]() In the end I had to do some shimming to make the structure as sturdy as possible. My tree fort is not very level, plumb or square. Because I did this myself, and it is really, really, difficult to hold up an 8′ long 2 X 8 at almost 7′ and throw in lag bolts level against a round surface (another good reason to build a tree house at 5′). If I could do something over again I would have had another guy come over and help me build this thing, at least for the beginning stages of putting up the 4 main beams. This allows for 2 anchor points, which makes the tree fort sturdier, but it also makes leveling a much more difficult task. The tree we used splits off into two shoots a bit below where we started building the supports. How To Build A Cheap Tree House Construction: Amazon has these slides but for this particular build they aren’t large enough. The vast majority of slides that are commercially made are 5 feet long. I got EXTREMELY lucky with finding this slide. If I could do it all over again I would build the tree house on a 5 foot platform. It probably would work better off of a 9′ platform, but Mrs. I build a step up on the tree fort giving the slide an 8′ platform, and the slide works great now. You simply couldn’t slide down it off of a 7′ platform. I set the slide up, but it wasn’t at the right angle. I called a friend of mine who owns a portable toilet company and he brought out his large box truck and took it to the house for me. We carefully took it a couple blocks down the road to my sister in laws house and unloaded it. Even pushing it in all the way to the dash it still stuck out about 6 feet out the back gate. We were in the minivan, and the back seats were out. to ask about it when she went in, and they told her it was for sale, for scrap price, so it would be $20. We were taking a small load of metal to the scrap yard and when we went to leave saw this large metal slide sitting off to the side. I lucked out big time in finding our slide. Even used its hard to find one for under $300. Metal slides are impossible to find new, and the cheapest plastic slides that fit a 7′ platform are the twisting turbo slides. I already owned the tools needed, I got a refurbished 18V set of Ryobi tools a few years ago with a circular saw, drill, and reciprocating saw. By buying these and cutting them in half I saved probably $20 – $30. At Home Depot the 16′ boards were not much more expensive than 8′ boards for the decking I used for the floor. Another area I saved money on was buying 16′ boards. We had an old picnic table that we were trashing and we were able to re-use the planks from it for some of the floor boards. I saved a lot of money by skipping walls and a roof, I guess this is more of a tree fort than a tree house, but it really doesn’t matter what you call it. The lag bolts were about $10 total and a few packs of screws ran about $30 total. Wood is not cheap, I would say about $230 of the cost was in wood. How To Limit Expenses When Building A Tree House: Designing a model helped determine how to build a tree house without making a ton of mistakes. The ladder in place now is simply boards screwed into the tree. I originally wanted to build a rope ladder, but that was too difficult for some of the younger kids to use. Another difference from the model and reality is the ladder. ![]() We ultimately did not make a tarp roof, although at some point it would be nice to have a fabric roof that appears to look like pirate ship sales. ![]() The model allowed me to see in 3D what I was missing on paper. I know this sounds a bit anal retentive, but had we not made a model I would have made several mistakes when constructing the real thing. This model showed exactly how many boards of what size we needed and how to best fit them together. Before we got started I made some sketches, and then my youngest son and I built a model out of cardboard. We went with a 8′ X 8′ platform design and built the base to be 7 feet off the ground. How To Build A Cheap Tree House Design:īefore construction started on the tree house I looked up different designs online to figure out the best way to go about this. We built it in the center of the back yard ). thought it would be better to build the tree house in the one tree centered in the backyard, because she wanted to be able to see the kids from the kitchen window. It provided more privacy and shade for the kids and in the future I could connect multiple trees and it would look like Kashyyyk. I originally wanted to build the tree house back in the woods at the treeline. $1,000 is usually a low estimate for building one, with prices ranging up into the 6 figures (yeah people are crazy!) I really wanted to build one for the kids, but building a tree house is a very labor intensive task and can be quite costly. Building a tree house had been on the to do list since we moved to our new house in 2011.
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