New pics from Monday....

So Curtis & Lil C went out to try and get that 2nd brace up with success and here's a few pics to show their work!

   

Tightening all of the bolts

 Climbing up to drill the support hole into the tree!

A little extra elbow grease.. that's a big tree! lol

 Cutting our triangle braces for like the 4th time!

 Helping daddy hold the wood steady.

 

Getting the pulley secured and cutting down extra branches. Where his feet are is about where the floor of the treehouse is going to be.

This child is afraid of NOTHING! We have to take the bits out of the drill EVERY time we sit it down, and unplug all power tools each time we use them... He is QUICK!

Sunday 7/31...

The weather today gave us a much needed break from the 104degrees of yesterday! It was between 88 & 92 all day and overcast.. no sun whatsoever.. the threat of rain didn't bother us 1 bit!  We finished the frame supports and had plenty of well needed, well appreciated help from our neighbors! Hoisting the supports into the tree was a great feat but it was accomplished! The 1st support went in without a hitch, but the 2nd, no matter what we did, just did not want to meet up! It fit fine on the ground.. guess 12ft in the air, measurements just magically change....ah well

Short blog doesn't convert to a short day however... It was long and confusing at times.. strategies were all over the place, but we feel accomplished and happy with today's work!

I'll be measuring and marking during the day this week, so that things can be in place when Curtis gets home in the evenings for drilling, fitting, lifting etc.

Brains... Braun... Good combination!

Kids are in the bath.. dinner is done.. bedtime is upon us! Thank goodness!

Night all!

Saturday 7/30's Adventures....

Let's just start this by saying.. the hiring qualifications at our newest Lowes in the area... are LITTLE TO NONE! I mean, I guess if you speak english & can walk around looking busy, then maybe you're good. :-/

We started as usual going to get the last of the tools we needed and the day's load of wood. We're buying by the day so it doesn't get left out in the rain, make a huge mess, get in the way, etc.... So.. Do you know what a chalkline is? It's a pc of rope/string in a contraption like a tape measure..used to mark a straight line when pulled from one end to the other, then lifting the string and letting it go so as to make it snap onto your surface (like plywood) and it leaves a long straight chalkline for cutting etc.   I looked in the obvious places, measuring tape, all of hardware, even in sheetrock & plywood to no avail. Not even a tag with an empty slot. So I asked the hardware associate.. She gave me the blankest stare I think I've ever seen.. I mean she'd give zombies a run for their money! I had to repeat myself cause..just incase ya know. I just said nevermind and walked away. I decided to find someone in wood/sheetrock.. they'd know since they have to cut for customers all day.. He says it should be in hardware and we go back there... and didn't find it. I said forget it, i'll get it later elsewhere. Go to the cashier, she forgets to give us the military discount so we had to go to customer service.. where she screws it ALLLLL up! She refunds our purchase to a gift card...re-rings it and puts in cash as payment.. now clearly her drawer is short. Has to rering a refund in cash to straighten that out. Then re-rings  it again and to our favor forgot 1 item.. haha IDIOT!  After realizing how incapable she was, i decided for shits&giggles to ask her about the chalkline. At this point how bad could it get, i just wanted to see!
 
Me: Do you by chance know what a chalkline is?
Her: You mean like for drawing around a dead body?"
Me: BLANK STARE (zombies, we're comin for you!)

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse... she did it! I thought Curtis was going to blow a gasket! He was overflowing with disgust! It was rather hilarious to me.. Glad I was in a good mood!

--Wish I'd been quicker on my feet.. I'd have responded with "yeah, that's it.. I have a body in my backyard i'd like to mark before burying it" "HERE'S YOUR SIGN"


So shopping trips aside (bought a ladder off craigslist too lol) we laid out the wood and started marking away..The first tree support brace was a lot of trial and error... Luckily most everything was salvaged to actually fix it! ahaha. and we'll definitely be testing this thing out before and children get in it! I'm pretty confident it'll be fine, it's a matter of deciphering these directions when they like to put steps kinda out of order and say later in the writings.. "make sure you did this", when it was never in the instructions! Gotta love it! The little drawings aren't exactly idiot proof either! lol We definitely make no accusations of knowing what we're doing in the least, but with my brains (and they're pretty great) and his braun (which is pretty good too) I think we got this under wraps!

At the end of the night, we hadn't completed a whole hell of a lot, but daylight wasn't our friend by the time we really got in the groove! 

Until the morning....(early before it gets too hot cause we were out in the 104 heat all day and drunk about 2 gallons of Crystal Light!)

Next step... purchasing supplies!

So we got our order of bolts, screws, etc... I thought Curtis was home from work, but instead it was the UPS guy.. and in my bedroom comes Lil C & his friend carrying a 60lb box, struggling to ask me where to put it! I could barely tell them to just drop it on my bed for laughing so hard.. knuckleheads!!!

~~That was yesterday...

Today was quite the runaround...we got a good tip to check out Re-store Warehouse for wood and called and they had tons.. reserved a U-Haul pickup to go get it...and I decided to run by and check it out, only to find out the wood wasn't pressure treated so it wasn't going to work for us after all.. And it was SUCH a good price! Half what the retail stores are charging! Even for unfinished! Ah, well.. maybe next time. So, I cancelled the U-Haul and thankfully there was no charge!

So I came home, went over the plans again and picked out the sizes and cuts of wood that we'll need for the first two tasks.  We made a trip to Lowes and came out pretty good, being that I worked out the cuts on larger pieces of wood to save money, instead of buying individual cuts.  Then.... we managed to pack it all in the back of the van--WITH the baby in her carseat!

Oh yeah... went looking for a pulley system while Curtis was getting the wood cut and this idiot directs me to the clothesline pulleys... :-/  How much wood am I going to be putting up in a tree with that? MORON... moving on... 

We unloaded the small amount of wood in the backyard and told the boys that's all the treehouse they're getting.. unless they buy the rest themselves. They hid under a piece of plywood.. good enough for now I guess! lol

Till the weekend.. there should be some interesting stories ahead!

How To Build A Treehouse

This is a video of another family who purchased this same plan and how theirs turned out!

Our 1st weekend's accomplishments.. Days 1-2

     I(Shannon) started on Friday out and about all over town with Lil C to find the perfect tree house plan for us! We went to Books-A-Million, Barnes & Nobles, Home Depot & Lowes... none of which really sparked our interest in what they had. It was all minimal at most. Lil C did however enjoy finding books on add-ons like rope swings & trap doors.. lol  So, with no luck, we came home and scoured the internet for the perfect one. After viewing a million websites, cross-checking prices & details, and a fairly annoying headache... we came across a site that had user video's added of their processes of building as well as the completed projects. We found what we wanted!

You can check it out here if you like: http://www.treehouseguides.com/sanpedrotreehouse.html

     So, after ordering the plan, we printed the materials list and checked out prices online for all the materials "insert jaw dropping moment here :-( ". Decided to take a trip to Lowes to see it all in person. Walked around for about an hr and decided we could probably buy all the hardware cheaper online in bulk...It was much cheaper once all said and done! So the order has now shipped out and we'll be making a trip for wood in the coming days.

     2nd day of this adventure was Sunday. We spent the whole morning into a good part of the afternoon raking the million pine needles from around our selected tree.  24 HUGE yard bags later.. it's all cleaned up & ready to go! Oh, btw..Lil C was lucky enough to have spent the night over a friends house, so he didn't partake in this venture! Lucky little brat! Brandon however was a BIG help picking up handfuls of pine needles, filling the bags and chasing/stomping on the bugs that ran out from underneath! In the end, we ended up with about a foot & a half more tree that was hidden under that huge pile!

Wish us luck when that 60+ pound box of bolts, nuts, washers & screws gets here, or rather the UPS driver when they have to deliver it!

Until next time.....