Of course off-the-ground forts are cool, even considering the attendant challenges of a living foundation, wind hazards, and plumbing impossibilities.
The “how” aside, when it comes to treehouses the “why” isn’t even a challenging question. The whole Treehouse Point property has become so famous through his books and TV show that tours are offered only by reservation. It took years for Nelson to convince King County that he could meet the requirements (a steep slope helps, which means the house is suspended 22 feet high using two Douglas fir “monsters” while the access ramp is relatively flat). The latest addition to the lot will be its last, but the shingle-sided rental known as Ananda represents something special: ADA accessibility. Nelson is no purist-a treehouse can stand at any height, he thinks, and posts to the ground are no act of treehouse sacrilege: “My definition of a treehouse is broader, but it is anything that is within the spirit.” Still, he draws the line at on-the-ground structures.Īs fanciful as the seven treehouses at his Treehouse Point property on the Raging River may be, they are fully permitted, a griding process of asking forgiveness rather than permission from official housing authorities. When is a treehouse not really a treehouse? Search Airbnb or VRBO to find many with the name that are merely a woodsy cabin near greenery. But to ask Nelson, his real strength is in promoting the whole idea of arboreal life: “I’m more of a dreamer.” For his part, Nelson doesn’t think tree life is solely the domain of the ultra-wealthy he pictures an affordable housing treehouse village on, say, Portland’s steep, unbuildable slopes.įor decades he’s studied how to let a structure adjust to a living tree, and he sits at the center of a community that gathers annually in Oregon (“There’s a lot of THC rolling around at the Treehouse Conference, as you can imagine,” he says with a laugh). A $1,000-per-square-foot price tag is the norm. Even now, one can’t talk trees without hearing about the 59-year-old Fall City man or his now-concluded reality TV show, Treehouse Masters after all, he’s built close to 4oo structures over his 30-year career.Īs a boy Nelson made his first “terribly funky structures” in the woods of New Jersey, inspired by his forester father, and has since become the first name in luxury hideaways that can include rain showers and floor-to-ceiling windows. The Pacific Northwest wouldn’t be the national center of high-end treehouse making, and the construction landscape wouldn’t be scattered with builders who came up under the undisputed king of treehouses. Where would we bewithout Pete Nelson? Grounded, probably.
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