August Break: Magic tree house

Along with renovating a Brooklyn Brownstone another of Frank's dreams has always been to build a tree house for his kids "someday"...and suddenly, with our new yard we had lots of trees to choose from and "someday" became "now" this summer. Frank got to work at the beginning of July, first making sketches and reading the Black & Decker The Complete Guide: Build Your Kids a Treehouse (Black & Decker Complete Guide) 

What started with four posts cemented into the ground behind Jasper above, quickly become this...

and then this, all done...

with places for telling secrets,

and playing house.

One of my favorite parts is the clear plastic roof to let lots of light inside.

The next step will be picking out a perfect outdoor fabric to make some window and door curtains, to make it a real "hide-out". Frank also plans to build some shelves on the walls so the kids can leave treasures in the tree house and really make it their own. We are also throwing around ideas for painting the tree house, but getting these two to agree on a color is hard! I'm voting for just little pops of color (turquoise!) here and there.

In a case of perfect timing we have been visiting our local library and reading our way through this fun series, the Magic Tree House Boxed Set, Books 1-28 , about a brother and sister who find a magic tree house and go on adventures through the books that they find inside. So the kids are even more excited to have their own tree house now, as if that were possible.