First few days of the trip.

The marathon building trip is over. We survived with all our limbs and digits intact, and ended up with something in the tree that looks pretty cool.

Ted and I left Denver around 5 am on Friday morning. The trip went smoothly, although we had to rush to make it to the Louisville airport in time to pick up Nate. The timing worked out great, we showed up right as Nate was walking out the door of the airport. Not bad for 17 hours of driving.


On Saturday morning we headed to the local lumber yard. We'd estimated how much lumber we'd need, and picked through a lot of stock before we found everything. They didn't have enough T-111 siding, so we knew we'd have to pick that up elsewhere.


We also took a look at the platform, and discussed the trapdoor and additional attachments to the tree. We decided to scrap the trapdoor idea for various reasons, including placement issues, ladder access issues, and knowing we'd be pressed for time otherwise.

Sunday Nate and Ted started adding the additional attachment points to the platform. Dad hauled the scaffolding down to the site, and the three of them set that up. They attached a wire rope sling to each trunk, using a 3/4" stainless steel lag screw and some giant washers. The hope was that these would be backup support, in case one of the original attachments points pulled out. At the very least we hoped it'd give us some time to get out of the tree if things started to collapse.


Later in the day we headed over to Tommy's shop to grab some windows and a door. Tommy had generously offered up some spare windows he had, and one of many doors he had laying around. We also picked up 16 sheets of T-111 siding. Ouch, that stuff is expensive!

With the windows in hand, we laid out the final design, and started building the first wall. Ted and Nate were pretty antsy to actual build something, so we were up until 11 pm or so building that first wall.


Monday was a flurry of framing. As my dad and I put the siding on the first wall, Ted and Nate knocked out the remaining first level walls. After we put on the siding, we hauled them down to the site via wagon. Later, we managed to build the four foot wall that would raise the roof line on the south facing side of the building to 12 feet.


It's amazing how quickly one can frame when using a miter saw and a pneumatic nail gun. Putting the siding on took a bit of work, since we had to cut out seven rough openings. We worked until after dark trying to prepare for the next big day of getting the walls up into the tree.



After all that hard work, we had a few tape measure races. We eventually added stabilizers to the tape measures, and added jumps to the race course. Nate's tape measure was fundamentally faster than the others, although both Ted and I managed to squeak out a few wins due to clever engineering.