If you haven’t experienced it yet, the time is now. Learn how to build a treehouse and why they are completely awesome.

Adults and kids are both enamored with treehouses. Who among us didn’t secretly long for our our tree topped fort/clubhouse as a kid? And can you really say that desire has diminished now that you are grown up? Of course, as adults we dream of a calming, soothing tree-topped oasis complete with hammocks and a mini fridge full of gin and tonics and margaritas (tree house hotel, anyone?).

Image: Caelie_Frampton

Well, it’s never too late to make that dream a reality. For those of you who are lucky enough to have a backyard full of luscious, strong and healthy trees, why not make it your springtime project to build a great tree house? You can say it’s for the kids, but we will really know that it’s for you, too.

Image: Bohman

There are 4 considerations before you can even get started with your project.

• It’s probably a good idea to have an expert take a look at your trees–you want to make sure that the tree you want to use as your foundation is healthy (and will remain so) and can hold the weight of the structure you want to erect.
• Another consideration: will you need a building permit? I know it might seem like a silly idea to get a building permit for a treehouse, but it’s a good idea to follow all local laws and regulations whenever constructing any structures on your property.
• In that same vein, give a call to your homeowner’s insurance as well. If your house among the trees falls on your house or there is an accident with someone (or you) falling, you want to make sure that you are covered.
• Finally, if you are building a treehouse for children, make it low to the ground 5-7 feet off the ground is high enough for kids to get the experience without adding unnecessary risk.

Image: PhotKing ♛

The next step is to find your plans. Here are some great tutorials and plans for how to build a treehouse.

1. Cabin Style Treehouse – this project utilizes several trees as the foundation.
2. Kid-friendly Treehouse – a simple, kid-friendly treehouse how-to.
3. Family Handyman – building tips and advice for attaching and furnishing your treehouse.
4. Treeless Treehouse – don’t have any trees? Here are tips for building a treeless treehouse.
5. Inexpensive Treehouse – here’s a project that costs under $300 and even has a cool hatch-like door.
6. A-frame Treehouse – plans for building an a-frame style house.
7. Grown-up Treehouse – gorgeous inspiration for creating a grown-up treehouse.

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Top Image: mollystevens

The post How to Build a Treehouse (Because They’re Basically the Coolest Houses Ever) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Potentially NSFW: tiny getaways from the big, bad wolf called life.

Clearly, we have an issue with downsizing, as in we can’t get enough of it. We acknowledge that minimizing, tiny-fying and compartmentalizing has its limitations (space being one of them), but the myriad incarnations and manifestations of the tiny house movement are boundless.

From modernist bunkers to treetops on high, tiny is popping up everywhere – most notably on sites like Tiny House Swoon and Tiny House Blog where we sourced a few of our itty bitty dream homes. Without further ado, twenty we could squeeze into right now.

UFO Tiny House…

Tiny house at the lake…

Tiny house on wheels…

Tiny Victorian…

Tiny double-decker cottage…

Tiny carport house…

Tumbleweed Tiny House…

Rustic tiny house…

Modernist tiny house…

Tiny bunker house…

Tiny piece of heaven house…

Tiny in Texas house…

Shacked up tiny house…

Floating tiny house…

Tiny house a-go-go…

Tiny tree house…

Tiny beach chalet…

Tiny creatively re-used house…

Grown up tiny house…

The “pretty please with sugar on top” tiny house.

Images: Toby Bradbury; Tiny House Swoon (3); Sharona Design; Apartment Therapy; Apartments Interior Design; Angry Unicorns; Tiny House Blog (4); The Stir; The Style Files; The Tiny Life; Tinyhousing.ca; Design Boom (3); Dwelle; Not Martha

The post 20 Tiny Houses We’d Be Happy to Squeeze Into appeared first on EcoSalon.

Forget treehouses as you once knew them – plywood forts for kids bolted into trunks and branches. The new treehouse concept is all about taking the comforts of home (cooking, Facebooking, reclining) to new, sustainable heights. And look, Ma, no splinters!

Treehouses still bring out the kid in many grown ups, like Andreas Wenning, the design genius behind Baumraum Design in Bremen, Germany. His firm, which combines his own architect vision with landscaper understanding, has carved out modern tree homes in Germany, Austria and Brazil, including the extraordinary nests above.

“A treehouse is sort of a modern lifestyle product which respects and fits into nature,” Wenning tells me. “We work with tree experts who help us find the best solution to connect the treehouse with the tree without cutting or damaging the tree anywhere.”

In addition to its own projects, Baumraum (which means tree space) ships prefab elements to customers who want to design their own treehouses. They can assemble the structure between two or several suitable trees in their yards. Steel cables raise the structure in the air and anchor it to the land, but the foundation is largely dictated by the type of tree being used.

A Pear tree, for example, cannot bear the complete weight of a treehouse so part of the construction is propped up on two slanting supports, such as with this Pear treehouse installed in Heilbronn (below). It features a convenient staircase that leads up through a fork in the branches to a slanting terrace. From the perch, the owner has an undisturbed view of a side valley with vineyards. Small steps lead up to a cabin on the next level. Like all of Baumraum’s projects, this treehouse is fitted with glazing on all sides and features a large dormer window and sunscreens for the south facing side.

What’s the biggest challenge to living in a space like this? “It provides a rather small, concentrated space in nature which brings people intensely to the natural environment,” he explains. “It is a space for romantic, quietness and concentration and common space with friends and family. You are very close to nature and it feels different.”

While Baumraum has whittled a niche in the modern treehouse market, other architects are going even more out on a limb to lift up our eco lifestyle. Free Spirit Spheres of Canada makes wooden orbs to basically string in tall trees, such as the forest areas of Vancouver Island.

According to the inventor and maker, Tom Chudleigh, the spherical tree house concept borrows heavily from sailboat construction and rigging practices. “Wooden spheres are built much like a cedar strip canoe or kayak,” he explains, “and suspension points are similar to the chain plate attachments on a sailboat.” The stairways hang from a tree just like a sailboat shroud hangs from a mast. The nut like sphere attaches to a web of rope that connects to the strong points of trees, using the forest as its foundation.

The ladder staircase and earthy interior may be geared more for the Swiss Family Robinson than the average naturalist. “My personal goal is to produce 10 to 15 spheres and hang them all in a large area of old growth forest…a spiritual retreat for me and whoever else is interested,” says the inventor.

Perhaps a little more upscale but just as intrinsically organic, are the treehouse dwellings of Romero Studios, such as the Five Oaks House commissioned by Donna Karan in Chestnut Village outside New York City (below).

Adjacent to a Waldorf school and organic farm, the designer says the owners love the solitude and connection with nature offered by the heightened surroundings, including a stunning eyrie for writing and practicing yoga poses.

Whether you’re housing a top designer or a Partridge family in a pear tree, these homes nestled in the trees are here to stay..and not sway. The diversity in the growing treehouse industry has delivered spaces that are wheelchair-friendly, weather-worthy and resource sensitive.

“We have to develop a new consciousness in respecting and protecting our natural environment,” figures Wenning. “Architects have many possibilities to help us realize that aim.”

The sustainable treehouse is among those many possibilities, and gives a fresh perspective to the proverbial tree of life.

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