Up In The Trees

A few months ago, I mentioned that my husband and I had quit our jobs and were starting a treehouse-building business. (If you thought we were crazy, it's okay. Lots of people did. We weren't so sure ourselves.)

Well, the business is doing really well, and that is 98% thanks to my husband (whose name I might as well use-- y'all know how to work the magic Google machine). I designed some brochures; Josh drives to the sawmill, does all the designing, heavy lifting, and tree climbing, and deals with customers (aka STRANGERS. On the PHONE. He's like Superman.)

But here's the thing: no one wants to hire you to build an awesome treehouse until you can prove that you are, in fact, capable of building an awesome treehouse. So guess what went up in my backyard?

Right now, the inside is "Up In The Trees Restaurant," where my children have been serving tasty meals of leaves and acorns. But this winter, once the structure is watertight, I will KICK THEM OUT move a bunch of pillows and blankets out there and set up writing camp.

Josh uses locally-sourced cedar and cypress, so that we don't have to ship redwood in from the West Coast.  I know not everyone is familiar with Arkansas geography, so I made this handy explanatory map.

The treehouses themselves are designed to impact the environment as little as possible, too. You can see how the walls are built around the trunks of our elm tree, and when possible, we use recycled materials. For example, the front window came from a neighbor's house, and the back window is my parents' old sliding glass door.

There's a real door now, and this winter, we're going to replace the ladder with something like these!

I'm already stressing over which titles to use though.

What books would you choose for your own book steps?

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I realize very few of you live near me (see handy map above for confirmation), but if you want to check out our other projects, you can do so on Facebook or on our website.

Stairs picture is from this Tumblr.