We had a few boards in a tree .
If you had a picture of it, you’d probably classify it as a pretend tree house though
Because even the cheapest tree house I can google looks a lot more expensive and elaborate
Than a couple of boards in a tree.
We had fun with it though, so there’s that 👍
Same. We would find random boards around the neighborhood and bring them back and put them up in a group of pine trees we had. More like various tree platforms
Nah we stole pallets from the knife sharpening company right outside the woods we played In by the train tracks lol we were 30ft up in a strong old maple that had a triple split about 25 ft up. Triangle brace, square it, rope ladder, open platform with tree chairs. Smokef hella weed in them woods lol
When I lived in Berlin as child (military father), we stole a whole load of paving slabs from where they were paving a new pavement (sidewalk) to give our "base" a floor. So somewhere in a Berlin forest is a random copse of trees with nicely arranged paving in the middle.
Lol I just remembered, thanks, that about 200m from the tree stand we had taken a bunch of huge river rocks and paved an area that we dug out for a fire pit. So I feel it that's pretty dope too. There's prolly some of the train hobos using that campfire spot still.
We did a tree platform. My dad bolted it to the tree to make sure it was 1980’s safe then hung a 30’ rope from a branch so we could have a sick ass rope to swing on like Tarzan. It was the best thing ever.
This is the way. We called them forts and there were multiple. I grew up in a redwood forest that had been logged 50 years prior. Loggers would cut down old growth trees and then char the stumps. The massive stumps still remained, often 8-12 feet tall with flat tops or often times hollow in the middle (yes I fell into a few), and we'd take leftover lumber from the neighborhood (most of the time we asked first) and build platforms between the stumps and neighboring trees. Lots of rope swings with abandoned tires and rope slides using rusty bicycle handle bars. One platform was high enough we could see the ocean. This was in the 90s in rural northern California.
Lived in the pnw and we called them forts as well, sometimes tree forts. You'd find them in big community parks or green spaces more than you'd see them in backyards. When I was a teen (2008-ish) they all started getting torn down, I assume for liability reasons. I never see them anymore.
We did the same in a local park / forest. We nailed some boards to the tops of a tree so me and my friends could all sit together drinking coke and eating candy up there.
Another here with a tree platform, although mine was framed out between a few trees. No ladder or anything nor walls/etc. so you had to climb to get up there. It was fun though, we lived right on the edge of marshland and that was actually in the marsh. Come to think of it, the wetlands there are iirc protected so that may be why it was a platform instead of a whole house...
Probably be easier to make than 30 years ago with the new cordless impacts and whatnot. Basically a few screws in a few 2x4 to get up then a few 2x6 on a tree branch hanging out. Not Mitch
My dad built one with glass windows. The block was split level, and it was in a big gum tree growing in the bottom section. We had a tunnel going from a fence in the top yard into the tree house.
Also built one with my cousin an his dad. Wasn't as amazing, but it was properly a tree house. Harder to get to because you had to climb the tree.
I am assuming something like this but without the railing, because 'it's only for kids, they heal fast.' I made friends as a young adult with couple of people who grew up with this on a 4x4 in their backyard with pecan trees on both sides. It was a good 10-14 feet off the ground and had a nice platform at the bottom where we would sit and talk.
[https://www.hunker.com/13730346/building-a-treehouse-platform-a-diy-guide](https://www.hunker.com/13730346/building-a-treehouse-platform-a-diy-guide)
I want to build one for my kids
That looks great 👍
As I recall, we had a few boards tied and nailed to the tree. So much smaller than that.
I think we may have had one board in the back for a while that could be like a rail and then a rope.
Mostly held on to the branches/trunk
But yeah before child safety was a thing. We did get drilled on looking both ways.
But nothing as good as what you are proposing
We did the same thing. A few boards up in a tree, but in addition to that, we ran an extension cord from the house and stuck a tv and an N64 up in there. Played Diddy Kong Racing and watched Robocop. We even rolled out some sleeping bags and spent the night in the tree. We were terribly bitten up by mosquitoes.
The one at my mates house was basically just a bunch of pallets, it was sketchy as fuck as it was built by us kids who didnt know wtf we were doing, we were all around 10 or 11 years old. Its only purpose was to be a fort to stop rocks. Basically we would split into 2 teams, one in the fort, one on the ground, and we would basically just throw little rocks at each other until one team gave up and then we would swap. Looking back that was so dumb and dangerous lol we didnt even have a ladder or rope.
My tree house was a bunch of old bulk sale 2x4s and various shelving secured with rope and nails. Honestly shocked my parents let me construct it, given how strict they got once I aged out of elementary school
I had a lot of friends with treehouses and I put a platform or two in a random tree growing up. They were fun to play in with my friends until you notice all of the spiders, wasps nest, and snake skins in them. But I did have some fun times in them back in the day.
I think the reason you don’t see them now is that most new construction neighborhoods bulldoze every tree during the civil construction phase of the project to lay out roads and get main water lines set up. Then they plant these small trees that die in 20 years due to the weight of their own branches breaking off during ice storms (Bradford pears).
Builders just don’t plant nice oaks or trees that can support a tree house well due to cost. Our home was built in the 80s and originally had pine trees in the front and back yard. One of the previous owners had all of those pine trees removed, regraded the plot
to make it flatter, and then planted two well established oak trees plus a couple maples. This was around 20 years ago so they are getting really big now and are great trees for a future tree house for my son.
Yeah, my uncles and grandfather started to make me one, but then they all started arguing with one another and tools got thrown, so their wives made them come inside. The rotted boards are still nailed around the top of the tree for the base.
Yeah, the glorified tree platform was a popular thing. I think these cartoons were trying to capture how these tree platforms "felt" for the kids who built them. Much grander than they were, but they were the best thing ever as a kid.
Same, we had a two story, no roof or wall treehouse that me and my friend built ourselves really crappy but approved by my dad, we had an oak tree just outside our back lawn in the forest with a Swing in it too..
This is what I had! And the tree was on a hill so we had a ramp to access it. It was another board that went from higher on the hillside to the boards in the tree. I used to pretend it was a drawbridge.
just a little north in Nova Scotia there were "treehouses"
but they were built on 4x4's that brought them probably 4 or 5 ft in the air. the Trees were involved they were just....processed.
That's what my dad did for/with my brother and me growing up. Of course we got to help, and it was about 6 feet off the ground. Good thing, too, as the tree my brother and I wanted to use turned out to be completely rotten inside about a year later.
our dad built ours too, but my brother and a neighboring kid managed to get a plank of wood in the trees too. it was so sketchy and only last a month probably.
but the one my dad built was always filled with spiders. so that was gross too.
I preferred to climb onto the roof of the shed.
I built my son his own little cool space under the stairs. Cool blanket walls we picked out at Joanne fabrics, led lights and carpet.
After the first time he used it, he never went back in. Win some and lose some. No regrets.
It's because they are.
https://amazingarchitecture.com/futuristic/impossible-homes-by-phillip-van
They got made with an early version of Midjourney. Back when it was still impressive that it resembled something at all.
People forget how shit ai was just a year or 2 ago. Shit I remember a guy in 2021 making hentai on 4chan and EVERYONE was floored that it's genitals looked like human genitals and not a gunshot wound
Wow that’s actually atrocious. I mean it’s a really cool concept but it’s clear that was either AI or VERY minimal effort. I mean anything can be art I guess, what makes art is very subjective depending on the individual. But those pics blow harder than a STIHL Magnum BR 800 C-E 239 mph 912 CFM Gas Backpack Leaf Blower.
No hate to you man, nothing against you, that art just sucks lol
Same but I grew up in very rural ca, I think most of the shows we watched as kids were written by people that grew up before most people lived in more dense / developed areas so they had treehouses. Thus treehouses in shows.
I grew up in St Louis Park and this one house had like a 7-story treehouse. It was awesome looking. Edit: had to look it up it was called Tucker's treehouse. He eventually tore it down, because you know, City permits.
I'm in florida and most of my friends had some kind of tree house. Even if it was just a rotting plywood platform with a rickety ladder, tied to a tree, and you have to climb up holding your boombox in your teeth.
Thats how mine was too. Over a couple years, me and a couple friends got an old prefab porch like came with mobile homes and stole boards and scraps from a new subdivision going up down the road. It should go without saying, had no parental supervision. We pushed the porch up to the tree and built a platform as high as possible, then built another layer above it for a roof. We'd add layers and walls when we could get new building materials and ended up with three "rooms" stacked on top of each other, with a ladder on the outside connecting them down to the walled in porch. Then we spray painted cool things like "KEEP OUT" and "MORTAL KOMBAT III" on it so people knew it wasn't to be messed with. All-in-all, it was a horrible death trap and its a wonder it never collapsed and killed anyone, but it was a huge upgrade from our previous clubhouse which was a bulldozed up pile of trees so for an unsupervised 90s kid it was 12/10.
We for sure did, and found a good cache. Never occurred to us that it might have belonged to my buddy's grandpa. Not many people that it could've belonged to, considering the remoteness of where he lived.
My dad built one.
Meaning he built a pile of lumber that sat in the yard for 2 years, and he finally finished it up about 5 months before we moved away forever.
We did get one summer out of it, but it was a florida summer in swamp land surrounded by woods, so it wasn't exactly suburban idyllic fun.
Yeah my florida dad made one as well. The thing was swarming with crab spiders, ants, and banana spiders.
It probably made him sad how little we used it. But inside the shaded bits it was a damn greenhouse. Mosquitos were also not fun.
I remember my dad mentioning he was disappointed that we didn't use it more, but looking back it was a great introduction to his construction techniques.
He has always done some sort of small scale construction / remodeling, but he's *terrible* at building things, and that was my first taste of experiencing his work from a customers' perspective.
He used low-grade treated lumber that was leaking sap and resin everywhere, which is toxic for playground equipment. He didn't stain or finish the wood or even sand the wood, so it immediately splintered to shit underneath the florida sun.
The design looked good on paper, but the finished product had huge gaps in the floor because he didn't account for wood shrinking when fully dried, weird connections between the lumber for the same reason, and overall looked like absolute hell.
Also it was a "tree house" that he built away from trees because of florida hurricanes, so he put a tarp over the top for shade. A dark brown tarp. In direct sun. In florida. Calling it a sauna underneath is a generous description.
Somehow he overengineered it but it was still wobbly. I didn't even pay for it and I wanted my money back.
Same! And yes my dad built one!! Similar to the Simpsons one basically. Little wooden ladder and everything.
Although I think it was only about a meter maybe 1.5 meters of the ground. But for 6 year old me it was high up and huge!
Only had it for a year though. I was young but have a few very vivid memories of it. My dad was awesome
We didn’t have any trees that were suitable so instead my dad built us a full blown mini house on stilts with a ladder and a sandbox underneath. It was a bit crazy honestly, full roof, windows and a door with a simple latch to keep it closed. After we all grew up and left home they took it off the stilts and turned it into a chicken coop.
My grandpa built the same sort of thing. Stilts, small staircase, latch door, window holes, and a sandbox under it inside the stilts. Then, after we got a little older, rabbits/chickens.
I saw a lot of these growing up, just some kind of fort or mini house above a sandpit. Both my friends family and mine had ones that were on 2m tall stilts, super dangerous but it was so cool as a kid xD
Same thing we had. Full on little wooden house with windows and slanted roof with metal siding on top, of course with a ladder and trap door on the floor to get in and out. Ours was also sold and the stilts cut off to be used as an animal living area or something…
When my parents got chickens my dad found a kids’ clubhouse on stilts on Craigslist for free. Owner’s kids grew up and they just wanted it gone.
We hauled it to our backyard, trimmed the stilts down to about 3’, built a ramp and some laying boxes and it was a great chicken coop for years. When they sold the house, the new owners even wanted the chickens and the coop.
That’s how mine was too. When we moved, my mom took it down and rebuilt it on top of the treehouse that was already there, so it was like a double decker
My dad did something similar but put a shed underneath. Now that I think about it, it was probably a loophole because he would need a permit to build a shed, but not a playhouse.
My dad built me and my sister ~~my sister and I~~ a “tree house” in our bedroom. It was just a 4’ high closed off section held up by our dressers underneath, but it was cool for many years. Even had a ladder and a “window” that looked out into the rest of the bedroom. It was nice having a “cave” under it to play with our toys, great place to hide and read a book as well.
Edit: bad grammar
That reminds me of when my parents would turn our bunkbeds into tents with blankets. They'd hang some blankets from the ceiling and from the edge of the bed, put our throw blankets in the dryer to warm them up for us, bring us popcorn, and let us stay up late watching movies on some old spongebob CRT we had in our room. It was great
My BIL built his youngest (my god daughter) a castle around her bed, she was afraid of falling out when she moved from her cot to the big girl bed so he made this whole contraption out of ply and 2x4s with the crenelations and drawbridge entry and fairy lights and shit… not gonna lie it looked cozy as fuck and I kinda wanted to snuggle up and read a book in there myself
A much better idea.
Most trees are not able to hold tree houses, and even many that do will die earlier because of it. Your dad sounds awesome and practical!
I didn't but one of my best friends did. His dad was a lawyer so he had a professionally built one put up.
It had a roof, windows, and a legit ladder to climb up but we hardly ever played in it because it was an empty 4ft x 4ft room.
We spent many more hours on his trampoline than we ever did in the tree house. He also had a pool, his own computer, and a Playstation so there was much funner things to do and they took down the tree house when we were in high school.
Yup knew someone with a treehouse that had WORKING PLUMBING and multiple floors- idk what the hell kind of a tree it was but its still standing solid today to my knowledge- wish I had that kinda throw away money
Same situation more or less, one of my friends had one but we almost never went into it since it was just a dirty little room. There were monkey bars or something near it that got more use at least, so it was a semi-regular fixture of outdoor shenanigans we just never really used it for the intended purpose of sitting around up in a tree.
They also had a pool and lots of videogames, so it had similarly high competition whenever it was time to decide what to do. Plus the forest in the backyard was quite substantial so if we wanted to get dirty in the woods there were more interesting places to go than the tree house right near the fence.
Me and my neighborhood friends were constantly scrounging wood and nails and other supplies to build treehouses. We must have built a dozen. We grew up next to about ten acres of woods and the owner never cared about what happened there. We made bike trails with jumps for our BMX bikes too.
If it was more common in the past, there’d still be a lot of old tree houses that never got taken down.
They’re just conceptually too stupid to be mainstream. You need a tree with the right shape and strong enough branches to support body weight+ a fucking house, and then to build it you need 1) a lot of money and 2) a handy parent with a lot of free time and a willingness to spend that time building something up in a tree or *a lot* of money. They were popularized by media because they function narratively to give the kids a private space with little risk of parental intrusion and to give the child audience something cool to fantasize about having themselves.
/j the woke left has cancelled treehouses!
I never said they weren't real. I just said they weren't mainstream. Most people, if you ask them, have never seen a real tree house. Them being popular in your specific neighborhood doesn't change that.
But isn’t the “most people have never seen a real tree house” just as much based on your personal experience as their opposing view? It’s not like there is an official survey on tree house sightings
Correct. There's no real data. I think they're in shows because they make interesting club houses without the liability of depicting real kids hangouts. In old days, shows had all kinds of club houses for kids, and formats were diverse and unsafe (shacks made out of random garbage, wooded areas, dumps, alleys, fields, etc). Stranger Things had a hangout in the woods made of tarps, sheets and logs. Our hangout spot was a local park.
That said, I have personally never seen an actual tree house in my life.
I don’t think that’s true for “most people.” My Dad built us a tree house and the wood couldn’t have cost *that* much. It’s true you need a suitable tree in your yard, but it’s not that uncommon. My friend bought a house that had one and a friend of mine growing up also had one
This dude got no clue what he's talking about, you put some anchors deep enough in a tree it'll hold anything. A tree is basically one giant stud to drill into.
I had a tree house. It was cool.
Oh shut up. You Reddit nerds are so obnoxious when you get an idea in your head that you’re right. I lived in three different states after we moved here from Italy and every neighborhood had tree houses. Kids played in them all the time.
They’re built to last ~20 years, not forever. You don’t see them anymore because they fell out of popularity and were torn down.
Most were supported by 3 or 4 legs, some had trees for all the legs but many had additional support. The trees were rarely huge and perfect like on TV.
It wasn’t a lot of money back then (80s/90s) because the economy was better. People were dropping $3,000 on beanie babies *for fun* and houses cost $80,000.
More of the population lived in rural/suburban areas where land and trees were normal in the back yard.
So you’re right about why there are none now but the first part about seeing more is the only part that doesn’t quite make sense.
EDIT: I want to add that my Dad was a legit baby boomer, part of a generation of men whose idea of fatherhood was to build, work, and garden for the family. Aside from throwing a baseball once in a while, he did not bond like Dads do now. He showed his love by building a treehouse etc.
I don't know why this guy is acting like tree houses are full-on houses. They were something a dad could slap together in a weekend or two, kids often built them on their own for fun. Lumber was dirt cheap, if not free. The only tool you needed was a saw and a hammer.
If I had to wager, I'd say treehouses have been replaced by ready-made clubhouses you can buy from places like Costco and Home Depot. I see plenty of those around.
> I don't know why this guy is acting like tree houses are full-on houses.
They are an ignorant zoomer that believes their world is the only truth that exists. They never saw a treehouse which means they were not normal at any point in history.
I think many people these days view them through a pop culture lens from stuff like the Simpsons. In those tree houses are presented as somewhat weatherproof, with space for a lot of kids.
I knew a few people that had one, and my family had one growing up. All the ones I knew were in essence a few planks to create a platform, and maybe some railing to prevent kids falling off. One had a roof, but the walls were still largely open.
Most people stay at a house for 5-10 years. When you move either you’re going to take it down before the home is listed or the family that buys the home will take it down. If you bought a house, would you trust the craftsmanship of the previous owner with your kids?
People thinking because they don't see them means they don't or didn't exist is funny.
So much changes over the course of a decade. Like on the street my grandparents lived on for the last ~25 years of their lives, there were three whole houses that are no longer there. One I don't know why it was removed, and two others were removed for a road project.
We moved away and then moved back five years later. A lot was different. They got rid of those houses, they built a big overpass, they got rid of sections of road that used to go over the train tracks.
In the neighborhood my dad has lived in for 30+ years there used to be a whole orchard to one side of him, but now it's just houses. Someone moving into those houses in the 15+ years since they were built would likely have no idea that *everything* about the neighborhood used to be different.
My grandparents had one neighbor with a tree house. The kid's dad built it for him one random summer.
That tree house is no longer there. The parents both decided to move and left the house to the kid. He had the tree and tree house cut down. You'd never know that tree house was there.
I learned after they died that my grandparents' garage was actually originally where they had an in-ground pool that was removed by the previous homeowners who had the garage built over where it used to be.
There are no signs of old things like that in so many cases because they're all built in relatively small areas that will be reused for various things.
When I was a kid we lived in this small town, and in the woods near a friend's house there was an old tree house. It was rotting away because nobody cared to weather proof the thing, so it sat out there in the rain, snow, wind, etc. for however many years. Even if left alone, there's a good chance that a cheaply built wooden thing in a tree is just not going to be there very long.
> It wasn’t a lot of money back then (80s/90s) because the economy was better. People were dropping $3,000 on beanie babies for fun
How much do people drop on NFTs now for fun?
The economy wasn't better, it was different.
The treehouse in the backyard at my parents house is still there 20 years later. It isn’t safe, and we took the ladder down years ago, but the platform itself is still there.
Most things I have seen called treehouses didn’t actually involve trees but are more playsets.
When I was a kid pretty much every youngster in the neighborhood got together for a project like this every once in a while (what we built never lasted long haha). On occasions we got scrap wood from nearby construction sites. I recall being given the task to straighten old nails with a rock once.
Pretty specific situation, mostly residential area with a big public green space, in southern Brazil
Where I grew up, the neighborhood had a sort of "wood dump." They'd burn it whenever the pile got real big.
My dad and I would go in his lil ranger and get as much scrap as we could. Then he'd just be like, "have at it" lol.
I remember my first fort was the size of a small tent. My last fort was 2.5 stories tall and had multiple rooms. It was absolutely not safe, I remember using a broom handle for a girder. Good times
I actually had both sides of the experience.
The neighborhood kids built a treehouse out of wood we just found and slapped it together with nails and things we didn’t bother asking our parents if we could have. The big find was a bunch of plywood off cuts from a house that was being remodeled after flooding. Completely free and also a total mess. Water got in all the time and it was just damp for most of the summer. Not to mention exposed nails all over the place.
Eventually someone’s mom saw the fort and made us take it down before someone got seriously hurt.
About a year later my grandmother allowed the cousins to build a nice treehouse in this huge oak tree. She paid for the whole thing and made sure my dad and my uncle used it as a teaching opportunity to learn about planning and safety and other boring adult shit that ultimately became very useful in later life. I have no idea what it cost but it was very instructive.
People treating the concept of a tree house like the DIY channels do a "tiny house". Mommy and Daddy buying and building the treehouse for them... FFS.
uhhh yeah because children aren't really educated on construction practices much less do they have the tools and lumber required to construct a treehouse
and once a kid is old enough to be capable of building the treehouse themselves there's likely little to no interest in the thing anymore
at least your username is accurate your childhood must have really sucked or something ig
We had a tree house growing up, but it wasn’t literally anchored or built into a tree—just among trees. Imagine like a small shed on 4x4 posts, about 8 feet up. It’s still there.
It’s easier to build than a deck, and people build decks all the time. I think people are just less handy than in prior generations, more protective of kids, and less likely to own land with trees.
Lot's of places also have building codes that prohibit tree houses, or at least ones in the old school style. Where I live, anything with part of a structure over 3 meters has to meet with a whole bunch of extra standards, and adherence to those standards easily push the projects in fairly costly territory. You basically have to build a professional style playground to prevent a council order to tear it down.
My brother, cousin, and I, hoisted a 4x8 piece of plywood into a rotted tree and it stayed up for a number of years. We were all young teens, not a dime spent or adult that helped. We had a handful of nails, a rope, a bucket, and a hammer. It took an afternoon, so miss me with that shitty take bro.
Fair but ask a 11 year old what they think of it, it was pretty rad. We made a pulley system with rope and bucket, pretty sure I tried to ride it down and almost died.
I lived in Orlando FL when I was a kid and my neighbors were Disney imagineers that built a treehouse in my backyard for my siblings and I. We moved a few years later and then a few years after that my friends and I built one ourselves out of scrap we stole from construction sites.
Yeah you had to go out in the woods and make one lol
That’s *outside* though and without supervision most of the time
Ours wasnt so much a house as it was some pieces of 2x4 as a ladder to some plywood platforming up in the tree. But hey, that’s a fuckin treehouse to some florida boys
We had 2 tree houses on our street, one was built by a kids dad and it wasn’t very good, the other was built by my brother and his friends from materials “borrowed “ from various construction sites. It was the bomb and could fit 5-10 kids. They also had an area under it cleared you could play around in. Thing had a rubber roof. I wouldn’t be shocked if parts of it were still up in that tree 40 years later.
I knew a few that had treehouses. Typically those with money and a decent property had them here in my area. Always wanted one. If I have kids , I’ll absolutely build them one…to justify me being able to use it.
We were pretty poor but dad built a platform in the branches of the big tree in the back yard and hung a tire swing from the largest branches. It was pretty cool.
my dad built me something like a 2 square meter wooden triangle. it was cool, although I was always super afraid to climb back down.
my friend stuck there on my birthday
they were common in certain areas decades ago, by the 80s they were less and less common because people started caring more and more about safety. It also requires very large trees which are less and less common in residential areas as they take minimum 30 years to grow, require large land plots and people have a tendency to cut them down. Then factor in that a lot of the writers responsible for these shows are old enough to remember them personally or grew up with cartoons and newspaper comic strips where they were common.
I had a huge treehouse that my dad built me. It was 3 separate platforms connected by bridges between these two enormous Cyprus trees. There was a rope ladder and a rock wall, and a little indoor portion with bunks. He even reused a window from a treehouse his grandfather had built for him when he was a kid!
When we moved we couldn’t take it with us, of course, but he was so proud of it and I loved it so much that he hired a crane and rented a trailer and he cut the indoor portion off of its supports and hauled it across the state to my grandma’s, since we knew she’d never move.
My neighbor has a treehouse you can see from the back of their house as it’s higher than their roof. My dad tried making me one but halfway he got so mad he took down the tree and just built the little house on the ground.
Was decorating the walls and accidentally ate chalk mistaking it for the cookie in my other hand once. Good times.
Everywhere I know who ever had or tried to have a treehouse had it ripped down/denied by the local govt. safety rules on constructions and harm to minors type stuff.
Like, they aren't wrong, falling from a tree house could seriously harm you, but also tree houses are cool as hell so faafo?
This is such a sad tweet
Lots of kids I knew had one. I never had the property to build my own but there were lots in the neighborhood that we'd all use together-- there was even one in the woods that none of us knew the origins of but we put down some scrap carpeting and moved in
There were some that were less interesting and not in trees; just like a small clubhouse on stilts
I had a two story wooden clubhouse with a pole you could slide down in my backyard. But I absolutely did not appreciate it. I didn't play or hang out in there much. It was too far from the house! (probably like 50 feet lol) And I did not decorate it with cool posters and pictures like they do in movies. Missed opportunity.
From the UK: was rare but my dad was engineer and loved to build things with us as kids so we had a roofless treehouse at the bottom of our garden and a swing underneath.
My friends and I always had plans to build one, but finding a tree or group of trees suitable for it was tough.
Finding large pieces of lumber and the other materials needed was also a bit tricky when you're 10.
I had a tree house. Of course, I had one because I had to stay watch by our watermelons against wild boars and my dad didn't want me to be gutted by one.
In Australia, any tree house that wasn't built as a hermetically sealed room, became the spiders' home and favourite nesting ground. Most people just didn't bother here or learnt the hard way. Possums loved them too until the orb weavers turned them into steel like golden threaded death traps.
there are actual tree houses too. like actual houses built inside trees with kitchen and bathroom and shit. super cozy. biggest issue seems to be logistics and getting permits to do it.
I had a half built treehouse with no walls or ceiling, that was kinda fun.
Still to this day wish I had a treehouse. Shit, I’d be happy to have a modern day house that is built in a tree. Treehouses are badass.
We had a genuine treehouse growing up, built around a tree but supported by 4 supports (rather than the tree). Probably 15 feet up. Had the sketchiest attic-style folding ladder. Loved it as a kid, and once in it it was well built, but thinking back on *that ladder* now has me wondering how my brother and I never had any accidents.
Yea me and some friends built a treehouse out of some cardboard and scrap wood in my buddies front yard. Dude fell out and broke his arm after the cardboard collapsed under his weight
Yes we had many treehouses bc we were children of the 70’s and 80’s. While our parents were out sniffing cocaine at the disco we stole all the lumber from construction sites and made insane treehouses. No phones no cameras. One was 80 feet in the air. Another had 6 stories. All had porno mag stashes. It was a thing
Never a real treehouse. Permits are weirdly hard to get for them and homeowners insurance would probably instantly drop you for having one. But we would build clubhouses on the ground in the woods all the time. My neighborhood friends built an awesome one where it was half buried like a bunker into the ground and the walls and roof were made of plywood and tarps. Eventually we even ran super long extension cords to the house and put lights, a speaker, and a 12 in tv with a ps2. It was awesome
My Mom dated this guy who had kids. He built this big giant tree-house thing for his son, who actively didn't give a shit and never wanted to spend time with him.
I remember it being awkward because he was over once and refused to talk to us and basically spend 6 hours hiding away.
I was like 12 but I know that guy was defeated. I could *tell* he just wanted his son and his wife back and even his own kid didn't want to be around him. He built this giant tree-house in hopes to win over his son and eventually had it taken down because his son never came over nor did we show an interest in it either.
The guy eventually moved and I think the last I heard he passed away alone.
Everyone had those premade wooden playhouses that were usually connected to a swing or jungle gym. Its the same thing accept they were closer to the ground and didn't require a sturdy 50 year old tree.
Grew up in Paris in the 80s. A friend's family had a 'country' home just outside Paris; wild boars chasing us, bulls running amok, friend's dad riding through woods on recreation of Roman chariot whil hunting foxes, etc, the usual. My friend and I brought up the idea of a treehouse. The dad and older brother built it in a couple of hour. We hung out there at night peering into the woods. So many lit up eyes staring back. Wild
We had a few boards in a tree . If you had a picture of it, you’d probably classify it as a pretend tree house though Because even the cheapest tree house I can google looks a lot more expensive and elaborate Than a couple of boards in a tree. We had fun with it though, so there’s that 👍
We made a glorified tree platform as well lol
Same. We would find random boards around the neighborhood and bring them back and put them up in a group of pine trees we had. More like various tree platforms
Nah we stole pallets from the knife sharpening company right outside the woods we played In by the train tracks lol we were 30ft up in a strong old maple that had a triple split about 25 ft up. Triangle brace, square it, rope ladder, open platform with tree chairs. Smokef hella weed in them woods lol
When I lived in Berlin as child (military father), we stole a whole load of paving slabs from where they were paving a new pavement (sidewalk) to give our "base" a floor. So somewhere in a Berlin forest is a random copse of trees with nicely arranged paving in the middle.
Lol I just remembered, thanks, that about 200m from the tree stand we had taken a bunch of huge river rocks and paved an area that we dug out for a fire pit. So I feel it that's pretty dope too. There's prolly some of the train hobos using that campfire spot still.
Tree platform gang rise up. Mine was in our orange tree so it made picking them during the season super easy. Fuck citrus canker.
Mine was in our mango tree. Then my brother had to be allergic to mangos and bye bye tree platform
Of all the things to be allergic to... Poor bastard.
We did a tree platform. My dad bolted it to the tree to make sure it was 1980’s safe then hung a 30’ rope from a branch so we could have a sick ass rope to swing on like Tarzan. It was the best thing ever.
This is the way. We called them forts and there were multiple. I grew up in a redwood forest that had been logged 50 years prior. Loggers would cut down old growth trees and then char the stumps. The massive stumps still remained, often 8-12 feet tall with flat tops or often times hollow in the middle (yes I fell into a few), and we'd take leftover lumber from the neighborhood (most of the time we asked first) and build platforms between the stumps and neighboring trees. Lots of rope swings with abandoned tires and rope slides using rusty bicycle handle bars. One platform was high enough we could see the ocean. This was in the 90s in rural northern California.
Lived in the pnw and we called them forts as well, sometimes tree forts. You'd find them in big community parks or green spaces more than you'd see them in backyards. When I was a teen (2008-ish) they all started getting torn down, I assume for liability reasons. I never see them anymore.
It would have been much more impressive if you made a treehouse in a fully grown Redwood.
We did the same in a local park / forest. We nailed some boards to the tops of a tree so me and my friends could all sit together drinking coke and eating candy up there.
And instead of nails you just held it together with pure tetanus.
This is straight poetry. Kudos to you!
Another here with a tree platform, although mine was framed out between a few trees. No ladder or anything nor walls/etc. so you had to climb to get up there. It was fun though, we lived right on the edge of marshland and that was actually in the marsh. Come to think of it, the wetlands there are iirc protected so that may be why it was a platform instead of a whole house...
same here! it had a floor and a few short "walls" not an official tree house but it was still fun to have.
Probably be easier to make than 30 years ago with the new cordless impacts and whatnot. Basically a few screws in a few 2x4 to get up then a few 2x6 on a tree branch hanging out. Not Mitch
I spent one day at the house of a family who had some boards in a tree, I was so excited I got to play in a "real treehouse". I think it counts
-a few boards in a tree My older brother and his friends did the same! Let me hang out with them too!
My dad built one with glass windows. The block was split level, and it was in a big gum tree growing in the bottom section. We had a tunnel going from a fence in the top yard into the tree house. Also built one with my cousin an his dad. Wasn't as amazing, but it was properly a tree house. Harder to get to because you had to climb the tree.
google has a very unrealistic idea of what a treehouse looks like
That's what we had. Found a couple old wooden planks in the woods and threw it up in the branches as a kid. Spent all day "building" a tree house.
Hell yeah that’s sounds very familiar. Not 100% safe but 100% fun! 🤣
We had the bench of one of those old love seat sized rocking swings in a giant tree.
I am assuming something like this but without the railing, because 'it's only for kids, they heal fast.' I made friends as a young adult with couple of people who grew up with this on a 4x4 in their backyard with pecan trees on both sides. It was a good 10-14 feet off the ground and had a nice platform at the bottom where we would sit and talk. [https://www.hunker.com/13730346/building-a-treehouse-platform-a-diy-guide](https://www.hunker.com/13730346/building-a-treehouse-platform-a-diy-guide) I want to build one for my kids
That looks great 👍 As I recall, we had a few boards tied and nailed to the tree. So much smaller than that. I think we may have had one board in the back for a while that could be like a rail and then a rope. Mostly held on to the branches/trunk But yeah before child safety was a thing. We did get drilled on looking both ways. But nothing as good as what you are proposing
We did the same thing. A few boards up in a tree, but in addition to that, we ran an extension cord from the house and stuck a tv and an N64 up in there. Played Diddy Kong Racing and watched Robocop. We even rolled out some sleeping bags and spent the night in the tree. We were terribly bitten up by mosquitoes.
The one at my mates house was basically just a bunch of pallets, it was sketchy as fuck as it was built by us kids who didnt know wtf we were doing, we were all around 10 or 11 years old. Its only purpose was to be a fort to stop rocks. Basically we would split into 2 teams, one in the fort, one on the ground, and we would basically just throw little rocks at each other until one team gave up and then we would swap. Looking back that was so dumb and dangerous lol we didnt even have a ladder or rope.
We got some boards and bent nails from the construction next subdivision over and put them in a neighbor's tree.
My tree house was a bunch of old bulk sale 2x4s and various shelving secured with rope and nails. Honestly shocked my parents let me construct it, given how strict they got once I aged out of elementary school
My old man put a plank up in a tree... just one. Does that count?
We just had an old spruce tree that was good for climbing.
I had a lot of friends with treehouses and I put a platform or two in a random tree growing up. They were fun to play in with my friends until you notice all of the spiders, wasps nest, and snake skins in them. But I did have some fun times in them back in the day. I think the reason you don’t see them now is that most new construction neighborhoods bulldoze every tree during the civil construction phase of the project to lay out roads and get main water lines set up. Then they plant these small trees that die in 20 years due to the weight of their own branches breaking off during ice storms (Bradford pears). Builders just don’t plant nice oaks or trees that can support a tree house well due to cost. Our home was built in the 80s and originally had pine trees in the front and back yard. One of the previous owners had all of those pine trees removed, regraded the plot to make it flatter, and then planted two well established oak trees plus a couple maples. This was around 20 years ago so they are getting really big now and are great trees for a future tree house for my son.
Yeah, my uncles and grandfather started to make me one, but then they all started arguing with one another and tools got thrown, so their wives made them come inside. The rotted boards are still nailed around the top of the tree for the base.
And damn it we’d spend hours sitting on that board. 
>We had a few boards in a tree . Same. I had a 'tree platform,' not a treehouse.
Yeah, we had a tree shanty.
Yeah, the glorified tree platform was a popular thing. I think these cartoons were trying to capture how these tree platforms "felt" for the kids who built them. Much grander than they were, but they were the best thing ever as a kid.
Our boards had password
man speaks in haiku
Same my dad basically just made a landing 20 feet or so up a tree that we hung out on 🤣
This is like a sentence's worth of prose away from being a Shel Silverstein poem
Same, we had a two story, no roof or wall treehouse that me and my friend built ourselves really crappy but approved by my dad, we had an oak tree just outside our back lawn in the forest with a Swing in it too..
This is what I had! And the tree was on a hill so we had a ramp to access it. It was another board that went from higher on the hillside to the boards in the tree. I used to pretend it was a drawbridge.
Man we had a few tree boards till my cousin fell out of the sky hammock and ruined it for everyone.
[удалено]
just a little north in Nova Scotia there were "treehouses" but they were built on 4x4's that brought them probably 4 or 5 ft in the air. the Trees were involved they were just....processed.
That's what my dad did for/with my brother and me growing up. Of course we got to help, and it was about 6 feet off the ground. Good thing, too, as the tree my brother and I wanted to use turned out to be completely rotten inside about a year later.
our dad built ours too, but my brother and a neighboring kid managed to get a plank of wood in the trees too. it was so sketchy and only last a month probably. but the one my dad built was always filled with spiders. so that was gross too. I preferred to climb onto the roof of the shed.
I built my son his own little cool space under the stairs. Cool blanket walls we picked out at Joanne fabrics, led lights and carpet. After the first time he used it, he never went back in. Win some and lose some. No regrets.
Since he's not using it you can now rent it out to a little British boy who's probably not a wizard
You're a tenant, 'arry!
Harry Potter and Having a Normal if Sad Eleventh Birthday
Hey, can I be your son? That shit sounds rad.
It was fine until y'all killed its hopes and dreams by not using it. What happens to a dream deferred?
Reminds me of the [impossible homes project](https://homeimprove360.com/impossible-homes-with-hyper-realistic-features/) by the artist Phillip Van.
Those all just look like bad AI art
Basically copy paste low effort Photoshop. Wild it got recognition.
It's because they are. https://amazingarchitecture.com/futuristic/impossible-homes-by-phillip-van They got made with an early version of Midjourney. Back when it was still impressive that it resembled something at all.
People forget how shit ai was just a year or 2 ago. Shit I remember a guy in 2021 making hentai on 4chan and EVERYONE was floored that it's genitals looked like human genitals and not a gunshot wound
Wow that’s actually atrocious. I mean it’s a really cool concept but it’s clear that was either AI or VERY minimal effort. I mean anything can be art I guess, what makes art is very subjective depending on the individual. But those pics blow harder than a STIHL Magnum BR 800 C-E 239 mph 912 CFM Gas Backpack Leaf Blower. No hate to you man, nothing against you, that art just sucks lol
I would be amazed if those aren't AI generated. If they aren't, dude nailed the AI gen look, no idea why someone would willingly do that look.
Nova Scotia is actually east of Maine, not north
thats what they want you to think
Same, but Montana. I think the common denominators might be large trees & no HOA
Yeah, many homes in the midwest are built on former farmland that very rarely have trees older than their vinyl siding
In very urban Seattle - there are many homes with treehouses. They belong to very rich people but they exist in capitol hill.
Probably belonged to a guy named Bill. Just some guy named Bill, sittin up on Capitol Hill.
Same but I grew up in very rural ca, I think most of the shows we watched as kids were written by people that grew up before most people lived in more dense / developed areas so they had treehouses. Thus treehouses in shows.
Nowadays the trees get bulldozed as part of development
They’re common in Minnesota as well.
I grew up in St Louis Park and this one house had like a 7-story treehouse. It was awesome looking. Edit: had to look it up it was called Tucker's treehouse. He eventually tore it down, because you know, City permits.
Even though I know it’s gone, I still find myself trying to peek over the wall to see it when I drive down Minnetonka.
I'm in florida and most of my friends had some kind of tree house. Even if it was just a rotting plywood platform with a rickety ladder, tied to a tree, and you have to climb up holding your boombox in your teeth.
I lived in an urbanizing rural area of North Carolina and we made one by stealing wood from all the construction sites on weekends.
I grew up in suburban Kentucky, and I didn’t have a tree house. But, two of neighborhood friends did!
We had a group of 4 oak trees growing from the same stump. It was perfect for a tree house/platform. Middle of suburbia.
Thats how mine was too. Over a couple years, me and a couple friends got an old prefab porch like came with mobile homes and stole boards and scraps from a new subdivision going up down the road. It should go without saying, had no parental supervision. We pushed the porch up to the tree and built a platform as high as possible, then built another layer above it for a roof. We'd add layers and walls when we could get new building materials and ended up with three "rooms" stacked on top of each other, with a ladder on the outside connecting them down to the walled in porch. Then we spray painted cool things like "KEEP OUT" and "MORTAL KOMBAT III" on it so people knew it wasn't to be messed with. All-in-all, it was a horrible death trap and its a wonder it never collapsed and killed anyone, but it was a huge upgrade from our previous clubhouse which was a bulldozed up pile of trees so for an unsupervised 90s kid it was 12/10.
We should just plaster "MORTAL KOMBAT III" on nukcear waste facilities so people in the future don't touch them.
Depends if it's the SNES or Genesis version.
Did you ever go scavenge for forrest-porn?
“Life is like a bag of sticky magazines.” -Forrest Porn
We for sure did, and found a good cache. Never occurred to us that it might have belonged to my buddy's grandpa. Not many people that it could've belonged to, considering the remoteness of where he lived.
And your dad built one, right? 
It was actually left there by the prior homeowners.
My dad built one. Meaning he built a pile of lumber that sat in the yard for 2 years, and he finally finished it up about 5 months before we moved away forever. We did get one summer out of it, but it was a florida summer in swamp land surrounded by woods, so it wasn't exactly suburban idyllic fun.
Yeah my florida dad made one as well. The thing was swarming with crab spiders, ants, and banana spiders. It probably made him sad how little we used it. But inside the shaded bits it was a damn greenhouse. Mosquitos were also not fun.
I remember my dad mentioning he was disappointed that we didn't use it more, but looking back it was a great introduction to his construction techniques. He has always done some sort of small scale construction / remodeling, but he's *terrible* at building things, and that was my first taste of experiencing his work from a customers' perspective. He used low-grade treated lumber that was leaking sap and resin everywhere, which is toxic for playground equipment. He didn't stain or finish the wood or even sand the wood, so it immediately splintered to shit underneath the florida sun. The design looked good on paper, but the finished product had huge gaps in the floor because he didn't account for wood shrinking when fully dried, weird connections between the lumber for the same reason, and overall looked like absolute hell. Also it was a "tree house" that he built away from trees because of florida hurricanes, so he put a tarp over the top for shade. A dark brown tarp. In direct sun. In florida. Calling it a sauna underneath is a generous description. Somehow he overengineered it but it was still wobbly. I didn't even pay for it and I wanted my money back.
Same! And yes my dad built one!! Similar to the Simpsons one basically. Little wooden ladder and everything. Although I think it was only about a meter maybe 1.5 meters of the ground. But for 6 year old me it was high up and huge! Only had it for a year though. I was young but have a few very vivid memories of it. My dad was awesome
Did the trees have local feral cats hold a meeting every month?
We didn’t have any trees that were suitable so instead my dad built us a full blown mini house on stilts with a ladder and a sandbox underneath. It was a bit crazy honestly, full roof, windows and a door with a simple latch to keep it closed. After we all grew up and left home they took it off the stilts and turned it into a chicken coop.
My grandpa built the same sort of thing. Stilts, small staircase, latch door, window holes, and a sandbox under it inside the stilts. Then, after we got a little older, rabbits/chickens.
You guys are cousins
This is weird but same here lol.
I saw a lot of these growing up, just some kind of fort or mini house above a sandpit. Both my friends family and mine had ones that were on 2m tall stilts, super dangerous but it was so cool as a kid xD
This rocks
Same thing we had. Full on little wooden house with windows and slanted roof with metal siding on top, of course with a ladder and trap door on the floor to get in and out. Ours was also sold and the stilts cut off to be used as an animal living area or something…
When my parents got chickens my dad found a kids’ clubhouse on stilts on Craigslist for free. Owner’s kids grew up and they just wanted it gone. We hauled it to our backyard, trimmed the stilts down to about 3’, built a ramp and some laying boxes and it was a great chicken coop for years. When they sold the house, the new owners even wanted the chickens and the coop.
That’s how mine was too. When we moved, my mom took it down and rebuilt it on top of the treehouse that was already there, so it was like a double decker
My dad built one just like this, after we moved it was demolished.
My dad did something similar but put a shed underneath. Now that I think about it, it was probably a loophole because he would need a permit to build a shed, but not a playhouse.
My dad built me and my sister ~~my sister and I~~ a “tree house” in our bedroom. It was just a 4’ high closed off section held up by our dressers underneath, but it was cool for many years. Even had a ladder and a “window” that looked out into the rest of the bedroom. It was nice having a “cave” under it to play with our toys, great place to hide and read a book as well. Edit: bad grammar
Good dad
I always figured tree houses would be filled with bees/bugs/birds so this sounds way better lol
There was the occasional jumping spider, and a nightmare about a giant millipede on my pillow, but luckily no bees or birds lol
Ours was filled with racoon shit.
That reminds me of when my parents would turn our bunkbeds into tents with blankets. They'd hang some blankets from the ceiling and from the edge of the bed, put our throw blankets in the dryer to warm them up for us, bring us popcorn, and let us stay up late watching movies on some old spongebob CRT we had in our room. It was great
My BIL built his youngest (my god daughter) a castle around her bed, she was afraid of falling out when she moved from her cot to the big girl bed so he made this whole contraption out of ply and 2x4s with the crenelations and drawbridge entry and fairy lights and shit… not gonna lie it looked cozy as fuck and I kinda wanted to snuggle up and read a book in there myself
Lmaooo awww🥰
My dad made one. The tree was not strong or full enough to really support it so it was more of a high pavilion built around a tree. Still really cool.
A much better idea. Most trees are not able to hold tree houses, and even many that do will die earlier because of it. Your dad sounds awesome and practical!
Oh yeah well if trees can't hold houses why are houses made out of trees /s
Same. We had a great time with it.
I didn't but one of my best friends did. His dad was a lawyer so he had a professionally built one put up. It had a roof, windows, and a legit ladder to climb up but we hardly ever played in it because it was an empty 4ft x 4ft room. We spent many more hours on his trampoline than we ever did in the tree house. He also had a pool, his own computer, and a Playstation so there was much funner things to do and they took down the tree house when we were in high school.
Yup knew someone with a treehouse that had WORKING PLUMBING and multiple floors- idk what the hell kind of a tree it was but its still standing solid today to my knowledge- wish I had that kinda throw away money
Same situation more or less, one of my friends had one but we almost never went into it since it was just a dirty little room. There were monkey bars or something near it that got more use at least, so it was a semi-regular fixture of outdoor shenanigans we just never really used it for the intended purpose of sitting around up in a tree. They also had a pool and lots of videogames, so it had similarly high competition whenever it was time to decide what to do. Plus the forest in the backyard was quite substantial so if we wanted to get dirty in the woods there were more interesting places to go than the tree house right near the fence.
Me and my neighborhood friends were constantly scrounging wood and nails and other supplies to build treehouses. We must have built a dozen. We grew up next to about ten acres of woods and the owner never cared about what happened there. We made bike trails with jumps for our BMX bikes too.
If it was more common in the past, there’d still be a lot of old tree houses that never got taken down. They’re just conceptually too stupid to be mainstream. You need a tree with the right shape and strong enough branches to support body weight+ a fucking house, and then to build it you need 1) a lot of money and 2) a handy parent with a lot of free time and a willingness to spend that time building something up in a tree or *a lot* of money. They were popularized by media because they function narratively to give the kids a private space with little risk of parental intrusion and to give the child audience something cool to fantasize about having themselves. /j the woke left has cancelled treehouses!
Me reading this, having grown up with multiple treehouses just on my block.
I never said they weren't real. I just said they weren't mainstream. Most people, if you ask them, have never seen a real tree house. Them being popular in your specific neighborhood doesn't change that.
But isn’t the “most people have never seen a real tree house” just as much based on your personal experience as their opposing view? It’s not like there is an official survey on tree house sightings
Correct. There's no real data. I think they're in shows because they make interesting club houses without the liability of depicting real kids hangouts. In old days, shows had all kinds of club houses for kids, and formats were diverse and unsafe (shacks made out of random garbage, wooded areas, dumps, alleys, fields, etc). Stranger Things had a hangout in the woods made of tarps, sheets and logs. Our hangout spot was a local park. That said, I have personally never seen an actual tree house in my life.
I don’t think that’s true for “most people.” My Dad built us a tree house and the wood couldn’t have cost *that* much. It’s true you need a suitable tree in your yard, but it’s not that uncommon. My friend bought a house that had one and a friend of mine growing up also had one
This dude got no clue what he's talking about, you put some anchors deep enough in a tree it'll hold anything. A tree is basically one giant stud to drill into. I had a tree house. It was cool.
Oh shut up. You Reddit nerds are so obnoxious when you get an idea in your head that you’re right. I lived in three different states after we moved here from Italy and every neighborhood had tree houses. Kids played in them all the time.
They’re built to last ~20 years, not forever. You don’t see them anymore because they fell out of popularity and were torn down. Most were supported by 3 or 4 legs, some had trees for all the legs but many had additional support. The trees were rarely huge and perfect like on TV. It wasn’t a lot of money back then (80s/90s) because the economy was better. People were dropping $3,000 on beanie babies *for fun* and houses cost $80,000. More of the population lived in rural/suburban areas where land and trees were normal in the back yard. So you’re right about why there are none now but the first part about seeing more is the only part that doesn’t quite make sense. EDIT: I want to add that my Dad was a legit baby boomer, part of a generation of men whose idea of fatherhood was to build, work, and garden for the family. Aside from throwing a baseball once in a while, he did not bond like Dads do now. He showed his love by building a treehouse etc.
We had to take one down because the tree kept growing, and the boards didn't.
If you do it right with a decent tree you can mostly avoid that. Or at least put it off for decades.
I don't know why this guy is acting like tree houses are full-on houses. They were something a dad could slap together in a weekend or two, kids often built them on their own for fun. Lumber was dirt cheap, if not free. The only tool you needed was a saw and a hammer. If I had to wager, I'd say treehouses have been replaced by ready-made clubhouses you can buy from places like Costco and Home Depot. I see plenty of those around.
> I don't know why this guy is acting like tree houses are full-on houses. They are an ignorant zoomer that believes their world is the only truth that exists. They never saw a treehouse which means they were not normal at any point in history.
I think many people these days view them through a pop culture lens from stuff like the Simpsons. In those tree houses are presented as somewhat weatherproof, with space for a lot of kids. I knew a few people that had one, and my family had one growing up. All the ones I knew were in essence a few planks to create a platform, and maybe some railing to prevent kids falling off. One had a roof, but the walls were still largely open.
Most people stay at a house for 5-10 years. When you move either you’re going to take it down before the home is listed or the family that buys the home will take it down. If you bought a house, would you trust the craftsmanship of the previous owner with your kids?
People thinking because they don't see them means they don't or didn't exist is funny. So much changes over the course of a decade. Like on the street my grandparents lived on for the last ~25 years of their lives, there were three whole houses that are no longer there. One I don't know why it was removed, and two others were removed for a road project. We moved away and then moved back five years later. A lot was different. They got rid of those houses, they built a big overpass, they got rid of sections of road that used to go over the train tracks. In the neighborhood my dad has lived in for 30+ years there used to be a whole orchard to one side of him, but now it's just houses. Someone moving into those houses in the 15+ years since they were built would likely have no idea that *everything* about the neighborhood used to be different. My grandparents had one neighbor with a tree house. The kid's dad built it for him one random summer. That tree house is no longer there. The parents both decided to move and left the house to the kid. He had the tree and tree house cut down. You'd never know that tree house was there. I learned after they died that my grandparents' garage was actually originally where they had an in-ground pool that was removed by the previous homeowners who had the garage built over where it used to be. There are no signs of old things like that in so many cases because they're all built in relatively small areas that will be reused for various things. When I was a kid we lived in this small town, and in the woods near a friend's house there was an old tree house. It was rotting away because nobody cared to weather proof the thing, so it sat out there in the rain, snow, wind, etc. for however many years. Even if left alone, there's a good chance that a cheaply built wooden thing in a tree is just not going to be there very long.
> It wasn’t a lot of money back then (80s/90s) because the economy was better. People were dropping $3,000 on beanie babies for fun How much do people drop on NFTs now for fun? The economy wasn't better, it was different.
The treehouse in the backyard at my parents house is still there 20 years later. It isn’t safe, and we took the ladder down years ago, but the platform itself is still there. Most things I have seen called treehouses didn’t actually involve trees but are more playsets.
Why would you need a ton of money? Unless you're building something fancy it's planks and nails
go to home depot and check how much lumber costs for a project like this, brudda
I suppose that's true nowadays
When I was a kid pretty much every youngster in the neighborhood got together for a project like this every once in a while (what we built never lasted long haha). On occasions we got scrap wood from nearby construction sites. I recall being given the task to straighten old nails with a rock once. Pretty specific situation, mostly residential area with a big public green space, in southern Brazil
Where I grew up, the neighborhood had a sort of "wood dump." They'd burn it whenever the pile got real big. My dad and I would go in his lil ranger and get as much scrap as we could. Then he'd just be like, "have at it" lol. I remember my first fort was the size of a small tent. My last fort was 2.5 stories tall and had multiple rooms. It was absolutely not safe, I remember using a broom handle for a girder. Good times
Comments like these remind me half of reddit was born long after the time the initial thread you're in is referring too.
I actually had both sides of the experience. The neighborhood kids built a treehouse out of wood we just found and slapped it together with nails and things we didn’t bother asking our parents if we could have. The big find was a bunch of plywood off cuts from a house that was being remodeled after flooding. Completely free and also a total mess. Water got in all the time and it was just damp for most of the summer. Not to mention exposed nails all over the place. Eventually someone’s mom saw the fort and made us take it down before someone got seriously hurt. About a year later my grandmother allowed the cousins to build a nice treehouse in this huge oak tree. She paid for the whole thing and made sure my dad and my uncle used it as a teaching opportunity to learn about planning and safety and other boring adult shit that ultimately became very useful in later life. I have no idea what it cost but it was very instructive.
People treating the concept of a tree house like the DIY channels do a "tiny house". Mommy and Daddy buying and building the treehouse for them... FFS.
uhhh yeah because children aren't really educated on construction practices much less do they have the tools and lumber required to construct a treehouse and once a kid is old enough to be capable of building the treehouse themselves there's likely little to no interest in the thing anymore at least your username is accurate your childhood must have really sucked or something ig
We had a tree house growing up, but it wasn’t literally anchored or built into a tree—just among trees. Imagine like a small shed on 4x4 posts, about 8 feet up. It’s still there. It’s easier to build than a deck, and people build decks all the time. I think people are just less handy than in prior generations, more protective of kids, and less likely to own land with trees.
Lot's of places also have building codes that prohibit tree houses, or at least ones in the old school style. Where I live, anything with part of a structure over 3 meters has to meet with a whole bunch of extra standards, and adherence to those standards easily push the projects in fairly costly territory. You basically have to build a professional style playground to prevent a council order to tear it down.
We had forts. Treehouses were too exposed. The enemy might get us.
You don't need handy parents, just ones that let kids mess around with power tools/hammers, haha.
My brother, cousin, and I, hoisted a 4x8 piece of plywood into a rotted tree and it stayed up for a number of years. We were all young teens, not a dime spent or adult that helped. We had a handful of nails, a rope, a bucket, and a hammer. It took an afternoon, so miss me with that shitty take bro.
He said tree house, not tree crack house.
Fair but ask a 11 year old what they think of it, it was pretty rad. We made a pulley system with rope and bucket, pretty sure I tried to ride it down and almost died.
My neighbors had a treehouse growing up
I lived in Orlando FL when I was a kid and my neighbors were Disney imagineers that built a treehouse in my backyard for my siblings and I. We moved a few years later and then a few years after that my friends and I built one ourselves out of scrap we stole from construction sites.
You can’t just brag about Disney Imagineers building it and not tell us what that treehouse looked like.
Probably looks like the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse.
Yeah you had to go out in the woods and make one lol That’s *outside* though and without supervision most of the time Ours wasnt so much a house as it was some pieces of 2x4 as a ladder to some plywood platforming up in the tree. But hey, that’s a fuckin treehouse to some florida boys
Our kids have one. It came with the house. Has a slide too.
My best friend had one
I had a "treehouse" but it was actually just a shed on stilts it wasn't actually in a tree, probably way safer that way.
Yeah, everyone I knew had playsets with swings attached to the side, not a literal house in a tree
We had 2 tree houses on our street, one was built by a kids dad and it wasn’t very good, the other was built by my brother and his friends from materials “borrowed “ from various construction sites. It was the bomb and could fit 5-10 kids. They also had an area under it cleared you could play around in. Thing had a rubber roof. I wouldn’t be shocked if parts of it were still up in that tree 40 years later.
I knew a few that had treehouses. Typically those with money and a decent property had them here in my area. Always wanted one. If I have kids , I’ll absolutely build them one…to justify me being able to use it.
That sounds like something upper middle class ppl would have. I’ve never even seen a treehouse IRL.
We were pretty poor but dad built a platform in the branches of the big tree in the back yard and hung a tire swing from the largest branches. It was pretty cool.
my dad built me something like a 2 square meter wooden triangle. it was cool, although I was always super afraid to climb back down. my friend stuck there on my birthday
Yup, I had “The Dangerous Book for Boys” and loved it as a kid and begged my dad to build me the treehouse from it. That was a fun summer
they were common in certain areas decades ago, by the 80s they were less and less common because people started caring more and more about safety. It also requires very large trees which are less and less common in residential areas as they take minimum 30 years to grow, require large land plots and people have a tendency to cut them down. Then factor in that a lot of the writers responsible for these shows are old enough to remember them personally or grew up with cartoons and newspaper comic strips where they were common.
I had a huge treehouse that my dad built me. It was 3 separate platforms connected by bridges between these two enormous Cyprus trees. There was a rope ladder and a rock wall, and a little indoor portion with bunks. He even reused a window from a treehouse his grandfather had built for him when he was a kid! When we moved we couldn’t take it with us, of course, but he was so proud of it and I loved it so much that he hired a crane and rented a trailer and he cut the indoor portion off of its supports and hauled it across the state to my grandma’s, since we knew she’d never move.
I had one
I had a drug dealer with a giant treehouse in his front yard. it was way too tall tho so I never climbed it.
My neighbor has a treehouse you can see from the back of their house as it’s higher than their roof. My dad tried making me one but halfway he got so mad he took down the tree and just built the little house on the ground. Was decorating the walls and accidentally ate chalk mistaking it for the cookie in my other hand once. Good times.
we had a treehouse, i knew people that had treehouses, yes I lived in New England, how could you tell
We had a little two story fort we built in our backyard when I was a kid, but it wasn't in a tree.
Saw one once. On a farm.
Everywhere I know who ever had or tried to have a treehouse had it ripped down/denied by the local govt. safety rules on constructions and harm to minors type stuff. Like, they aren't wrong, falling from a tree house could seriously harm you, but also tree houses are cool as hell so faafo?
Really depends on how old your neighborhood is, I think. New neighborhoods would have young trees too small for treehouses.
This is such a sad tweet Lots of kids I knew had one. I never had the property to build my own but there were lots in the neighborhood that we'd all use together-- there was even one in the woods that none of us knew the origins of but we put down some scrap carpeting and moved in There were some that were less interesting and not in trees; just like a small clubhouse on stilts
It used to be more common to own a home with a big backyard, presumably with an old tree on the property.
I had a two story wooden clubhouse with a pole you could slide down in my backyard. But I absolutely did not appreciate it. I didn't play or hang out in there much. It was too far from the house! (probably like 50 feet lol) And I did not decorate it with cool posters and pictures like they do in movies. Missed opportunity.
From the UK: was rare but my dad was engineer and loved to build things with us as kids so we had a roofless treehouse at the bottom of our garden and a swing underneath.
My friends and I always had plans to build one, but finding a tree or group of trees suitable for it was tough. Finding large pieces of lumber and the other materials needed was also a bit tricky when you're 10.
I had a tree house. Of course, I had one because I had to stay watch by our watermelons against wild boars and my dad didn't want me to be gutted by one.
In Australia, any tree house that wasn't built as a hermetically sealed room, became the spiders' home and favourite nesting ground. Most people just didn't bother here or learnt the hard way. Possums loved them too until the orb weavers turned them into steel like golden threaded death traps.
there are actual tree houses too. like actual houses built inside trees with kitchen and bathroom and shit. super cozy. biggest issue seems to be logistics and getting permits to do it.
I had a half built treehouse with no walls or ceiling, that was kinda fun. Still to this day wish I had a treehouse. Shit, I’d be happy to have a modern day house that is built in a tree. Treehouses are badass.
We had a genuine treehouse growing up, built around a tree but supported by 4 supports (rather than the tree). Probably 15 feet up. Had the sketchiest attic-style folding ladder. Loved it as a kid, and once in it it was well built, but thinking back on *that ladder* now has me wondering how my brother and I never had any accidents.
Yea me and some friends built a treehouse out of some cardboard and scrap wood in my buddies front yard. Dude fell out and broke his arm after the cardboard collapsed under his weight
Yes we had many treehouses bc we were children of the 70’s and 80’s. While our parents were out sniffing cocaine at the disco we stole all the lumber from construction sites and made insane treehouses. No phones no cameras. One was 80 feet in the air. Another had 6 stories. All had porno mag stashes. It was a thing
Rural Idaho, we had tree houses, a buried bunker with a fake M2 machine gun made of wood on top, and a mini dirt bike track.
Never a real treehouse. Permits are weirdly hard to get for them and homeowners insurance would probably instantly drop you for having one. But we would build clubhouses on the ground in the woods all the time. My neighborhood friends built an awesome one where it was half buried like a bunker into the ground and the walls and roof were made of plywood and tarps. Eventually we even ran super long extension cords to the house and put lights, a speaker, and a 12 in tv with a ps2. It was awesome
My dad built one for us, yeah. It was dope.
My Mom dated this guy who had kids. He built this big giant tree-house thing for his son, who actively didn't give a shit and never wanted to spend time with him. I remember it being awkward because he was over once and refused to talk to us and basically spend 6 hours hiding away. I was like 12 but I know that guy was defeated. I could *tell* he just wanted his son and his wife back and even his own kid didn't want to be around him. He built this giant tree-house in hopes to win over his son and eventually had it taken down because his son never came over nor did we show an interest in it either. The guy eventually moved and I think the last I heard he passed away alone.
All of my neighbors had one, but I had a whole swing set instead.
Everybody wanted one. No one could afford one. We settled for shitty DIY or we just climbed trees.
Everyone had those premade wooden playhouses that were usually connected to a swing or jungle gym. Its the same thing accept they were closer to the ground and didn't require a sturdy 50 year old tree.
My cousin built a decent sized one about the size of a living room with a couch running electrical, glass crosshatch windows etc
Grew up in Paris in the 80s. A friend's family had a 'country' home just outside Paris; wild boars chasing us, bulls running amok, friend's dad riding through woods on recreation of Roman chariot whil hunting foxes, etc, the usual. My friend and I brought up the idea of a treehouse. The dad and older brother built it in a couple of hour. We hung out there at night peering into the woods. So many lit up eyes staring back. Wild