Create
Tree
Art

Custom tree houses are my favorite backyard projects and my latest passion. It's a vast leap from building custom playsets that are perfect, plumb, and square to building a treehouse deck. The tree is imperfect and resists efforts to make it do anything other than be a tree. You can't overbuild or the tree will resist. The trick is to work with the tree and its natural curves. The tree house must move and flow with the tree. A great custom treehouse does not come in a kit and the simplest plan can be derailed in the first 10 minutes because the tree says no.

Treehouse
​Time Machine

People often tell me how cool it must be to build one-off tree houses and backyard play equipment. They're right! There was a time not so long ago when my thoughts about working for a living involved an eventual retirement. That time has passed and been replaced with a resolve to make backyard memories until old age creeps up, my body betrays me and making treehouses becomes physically impossible. "Lucky", some would say about my craft, but this talent for craftsmanship and finding a balance between nature and man-made was groomed over many years.

Treehouse
​Design

Before you contact me for a consultation, keep in mind, my services are more expensive than you might find in the contractor section of some free ad publication. Be prepared to build a quality structure and expect to pay a good price for it. This is not the ranting of some handyman looking to make a dollar making junk and moving on to the next one. Treehouse building is a hobby/passion that keeps getting in the way of my full time work. This means my projects have to be chosen carefully and there is a limit to how many can be built during the year. My custom tree houses are mostly in Austin, Columbus Round Top and Houston, Texas. Please take a few moments to enjoy some of my favorite projects in my treehouse gallery.

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My Treehouse Story

My first treehouse memory takes me back to a time before video games, cell phones and cartoons available 24 hours a day. My grandparents had a lake house in a very country setting in the 70's and you would think a group of 11-12 year old boys would have had enough to do with fishing, swimming, snake and frog hunting and so on, but as it is with boys, we were bored.

There was a giant Willow tree (terrible treehouse tree) rooted in the bank right on the lake. The branches spread out far over the water and we saw the awesome potential of a deck high up in the tree that we could jump and dive from as well as fish. The vision is still fresh in my mind. A treehouse to be envied by all who rode past in their boats, the Taj Mahal of Treehouses in South Texas. We had great plans for that tree house including a security system designed to repel the bravest jealous boater. The plan was to leave one of my dogs in the tree once the job was complete with a "Beware of Peanuts the Attack Dachshund" sign.

My grandfather was a hobby/builder and always had a project going on somewhere. Looking back it's easy to understand my later inspirations and career path. My grandpa was a good man who was a child during the great depression. He possessed a different set of values than most people grow up with today. With that said, when approached about pulling wood and nails from his supply, he said, "You can use what you pay for". A bunch of pre-teen kids could probably scrape up about $.75 if we were lucky. 

He suggested we tour the shoreline and look for driftwood and boards around the lake. We were a determined bunch of future treehouse having guys and over a few days we collected a fair amount of wood and other artifacts from the shoreline including several life jackets, a single ski, and part of a hull of a sailboat. My grandpa donated a large coffee can filled with used nails, his rejects. They were all bent and rusty and he assured us that we would suffer some banged up fingers, but the nails would work.

The schedule was put a board on, time to swim, play, whatever and then back to work. We worked on that deck in the tree for a few days and eventually accomplished our dream hangout. The memory of the sense of pride we all felt for our hard work is still crisp. That poorly built deck in the tree over the lake lasted 3-4 hard years before a storm took down the tree. We played hard and fished long from that spot. There was many a sleepover and a ton of bologna sandwiches consumed. Here it is almost 40 years later and that time will always be with me.