Our neighbor, two doors over, built a treehouse in his yard, down by the creek.
He doesn’t have kids yet. The treehouse is for him.
It has a roof and electricity and enough head room to move around easily. He and his wife entertain often, and the men in the group always seem to end up down at the treehouse.
Their voices might be deep now (and sometimes a bit slurred), but because of that treehouse, it’s easy to hear the kids they once were coming out. It invites them to play.
Don and I are envious. We wish we’d had the idea first.
Although we aren’t opposed to copying our neighbor, we considered the risks associated with getting older, climbing ladders, and my ability to get injured on horizontal surfaces, much less vertical, and decided to explore other options.
It isn’t that much room we’re wanting to add. Perhaps a bit more than a treehouse, but not by a lot. I still work remotely a few days a week and need a home office, but the room I once used has become our workshop, as well as housing our washer, dryer and squirrel.
We considered adding onto our house, since we have a flat, empty space directly behind that invites an addition, but the cost and the building restrictions where we live are ridiculous. When Don built a deck a few years ago, the necessary permits and planning committee’s requirements increased the costs by nearly a third. And ours is just a normal old neighborhood of mid-century homes, not something fancy with a homeowner’s association.
Inspectors routinely drive through neighborhoods looking for lumber or other signs of construction, so it’s risky to try and build on the sly. Anything that changes the footprint of the house requires a permit, so we’ve been trying to think outside the box.
Just maybe not up in a tree.
After watching YouTube videos showing old campers being gutted and turned into little home offices, we got so excited about the idea we went so far as to look at a few before-photo type campers, until we realized there was no easy way to get one into our yard. A row of thick hedges blocks one side, while the air conditioning unit and a tree block the other. The cost of getting a crane to lift one to where we’d like it to be would cause the project to be too expensive. Stick-building would be cheaper.
Except the cost of sticks remains insane.
We shoved the idea onto the back burner to stew for a while, hoping a solution might surface, and continued with our favorite weekend activity — attending estate sales and flea markets, which is what caused our need for more space in the first place.
We were at one of these estate sales last weekend, admiring a giant stack of lumber in the basement workshop of a former contractor, when a man came by and said, “Sorry. That’s sold.”
“All of it?” Don asked.
“Every bit,” said the man, “But I can take your number in case there’s any left over.”
A few days later, we got the call. The buyer had picked through the boards and taken only the prime pieces; he said we could have as much of what was left as we wanted. For free.
We now have our own mountain of wood, except it’s more of a hill. Or maybe a mound. Enough to have us taking stock. Sketching out plans.
Looking for other free building materials to fill the gaps between what we have and what we’ll need to maybe start building a tiny home/shed in the spring.
"smell" - Google News
July 24, 2021 at 02:00AM
https://ift.tt/3iBUlP0
Smell the Coffee: A different kind of space race - Charleston Gazette-Mail
"smell" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35zrwu1
https://ift.tt/3b8aPsv
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Smell the Coffee: A different kind of space race - Charleston Gazette-Mail"
Post a Comment