Walls Going Up

As you may know, if you have kept up with our family tree house blog, we live in Florida, which has been quite an active place in the recent past for hurricanes. Plywood always comes in handy to board up windows and sliding glass doors, when you live in an area know for multiple hurricanes.

Our friends and neighbors, Melanie and Jose, contributed all of their plywood to our tree house construction. They had stored it in their garage for a long while.

Jose said he had to keep moving it out of the way of other garage stuff, it took up storage space, and he was tired of moving it around his garage all the time.

So they gave it to us. This was awesome! We used it to create the walls of the treehouse.

Not So Pretty Areas

I just thought I would show you some not so pretty areas of the treehouse. This view is from the inside looking up towards the ceiling.

You got to see the roof from the outside, this is the view from the underneath.

This opening will hold a stained glass window when we get it finished. I can hardly wait.

Sorta looks like a rib cage doesn't it. . .

Finalizing the Last Layers

The last layer of wooden shingles turned out to be a real pain. I tried gluing down the shingles with some kind of roof tar substance (black & sticky stuff that gets all over you) which didn't work on the shingles too good.

However, it did a number on my fingers. So I ended up using not only the tar stuff but putting a nail in the center of each shingle to make sure each stuck in place. I was real proud of myself when I finished.

So proud in fact that I took a self photo, cut the bottom portion of my head off in the shot, but believe it or not there is a smile down there.

Here's the finished left and final side of the roof! We still have to go back and complete the roof ridge on each of the corners. But for now we are moving on to the next part of our project.

July Was Shingles Month

We worked on the wooden shingles for almost the entire month.

I'm at the point that if I never see another or nail another wooden shingle in place it will be too soon.

But it does look really good after you get another row done.

I'm just hoping the pine needles won't stick to the roof too much. I would hate to think that I have to get up on top of the roof and sweep them off all the time. What a pain that would be!

Beyond This Place There Be Dragons

We had some new creatures take up residence on the treehouse staircase. They caught my attention when they weren't being very friendly towards each other, leaping and wrestling about.

Then they noticed I was watching them and they forgot all about the quarrel with each other and starting paying attention to the shutterbug.

They became quite the hams, one would think they began posing for the camera.

This one decided he would look his best with his back ridge up.

What is cool with these cameleons is right now they are gray/brown in color, but they can change to a brillant green when they get on the tree leaves.

They are really cool creatures