My 12 year-old son is a birdwatching fool! He spends hours each day out in the swamps behind our farm. I want to build him a decent tree fort out there, so he can watch wildlife without having to always be directly on the ground, where the snakes & skeeters are. I have not found anything on the search engines so far, but I am looking for an actual "recipe" for a tree fort. Other advice or suggestions are also welcome.

-- Shannon (Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary) (gratacres@aol.com), June 08, 2000

Answers

Shannon, Take a look at the book "Rustic Retreats A Build-It Yourself Guide" By David & Jeanie Stiles. Some great tree structures in there!( along with clear instructions ) Should be available through your library. His other book "Sheds" is wonderful too. Best wishes, Pauline

-- Pauline Adderley (tworoosters_farm@AltaVista.com), June 08, 2000.

Perhaps your 12 year old son would like to Email my almost 16 year old son who is now building his own tree house. Plans? Probably more to do with the wood he and his buddies scrounge! Get him a tool belt, ladder, and some wood and nails and let him have at it. It won't turn out as pretty as it would with plans and someone doing it for him, but he will love it more doing it himself! Encourage his creativity. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), June 08, 2000.

I agree with Vicki -- we used to build all kinds of contraptions when we were growing up, and we never had plans for them. If it falls out of the tree, well, he'll be more careful the next time! My girls used to build all kinds of things, too, and had a great time with them. I think it is an essential part of childhood to just scavenge together whatever you can find and make some sort of shelter out of it -- I used to wish I could live for a while in some of the driftwood structures we built at the beach in Oregon! And I taught the girls how to build wilderness shelters; maybe they'll never NEED that information (I hope not!) but we had fun!

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), June 09, 2000.

I need to build a cool looking fort for paintball, does anyone got any ideas?

i dont care if they are crappy send me your ideas i wont insult you, i will only compliment you, thanx!

-- Daniel Oliver (ommishfoo9@aol.com), August 29, 2001.

That's really weird, because I'm also looking to build a tree fort for paintball. So if anyone has any ideas, please send them to me, too. Thank you. Stephen

-- Stephen Squires (drummingfreak2000@yahoo.com), November 10, 2001.

I was looking for some tree fort plans of my own and as a child myself (15), I'm going to have to dissagree with the whole "No plans thing". I think planning it out before you build it is a good way to save a trip to the hospital. Thankx for the idea on the book though, I'll check it out.

-- Salius Kai (Mystic_Elessed@yaho.com), December 21, 2001.

Tree house plans can only be drawn up after the trees are inspected and measured and available building supplies inventoried. It all depends on how many trees are invlolved and how far apart they are and the footprint(?) of the floor space.

-- Just Duckie (Duck@spazmail.com), December 22, 2001.

Try this web site http://www.stilesdesigns.com

-- Techbyte (techbyte@yahoo.com), January 07, 2002.

Hey, Im also looking for plans and ideas to build a paintball Tree fort, if ya have any ideas or plans send them to me, thanks......Derek

-- Derek (derekbmx30@aol.com), March 12, 2002.