How to Make a Treehouse Part 2 | I Like To Make Stuff

Hey, I'm Bobby and I like to make stuff. Today we're going to finish up the treehouse. In the first part of this video you saw us build this platform. We had to build a really strong structure that was anchored to the ground and then cover it with decking so we can stand on it, but we also had to figure out how to attach it to the tree so that the platform and the tree can move independently. That's for safety and for the health of the tree. So with all that in place we've got to build a railing around it for safety and a ladder so we can get up and down. Let's do that now. To make the ladder we're going to start with this structural steel pipe. This is in the plumbing section at Lowe's but it doesn't have any threading because this is specifically made for ladders and furniture and things like that. This comes in 36 inch pieces. We're going to cut these in half with an angle grinder and then mount each one of these rungs in between two pieces of four by four. Usually the rungs on a ladder are 10 to 14 inches apart so we're going to split the difference and use 12. We're going to start about eight inches from the bottom and then go 12 inches all the way up and that makes sure that our top rung is not too close to the top of the ladder. These are one inch pipes but I went ahead and made the holes one and eighth inch so they're going to turn in there but it's also going to allow some room for the wood to expand and contract with moisture. Currently if I tried to pick this thing up it would fall apart and the rungs would fall out. Eventually it will be tied to the platform and that will give it its strength but for now we're going to temporarily tie these two pieces together so that we can pick it up and put it into place. The ladder is going to go right here and it'll be screwed in at the top and that'll be nice and sturdy but the bottom is still kind of free floating even though it's sitting on the ground so when you put your weight on it it's going to want to try to kick forward downhill. We're going to use one of these. We're going to mark where these four by fours are sitting and then drive these things down into the dirt then put the four by four in them and that'll stop the four by four from being able to move forward and back. These are made for mounting a post in concrete so you're supposed to sink this part down below the surface so that's why it has kind of this pinched and then the open part on the end but we need this to be more of a spike so we can drive it down into the dirt and use a hammer. I've got these four inch long screws so these are going to go through here but only penetrate the back about a half of an inch so I'll have to come in from the back side and drive some screws through as well to make sure it's really nice and tight. The ladder's all there and working. It's nice and sturdy and strong. There is one little problem based on where I decided to put mine. I've got it on the corner so it didn't have another thing coming down from the platform but unfortunately that overlaps this double section so these top two rungs actually don't have a lot of room for your foot to go. You can still climb it it's just not terribly comfortable for an adult. So when you put your ladder on you may want to consider putting it on a side like this where there's not a lot of vertical area that's going to get in the way. Now we got to make the railing to go around this whole thing and make sure everybody's safe. There's really specific codes and regulations around railings for decks. Make sure you look those up and follow them exactly. I'm going to be using four by four posts and put them all the way around the perimeter and I wasn't really sure what to use in between those posts so I went to Lowe's who's sponsoring this video and looked around and I found these. This thing does all the work for you. These are the barristers in between the pieces that go on the posts. This whole thing was $38. You can't beat that. That saves a huge amount of time. So I got a bunch of these. Before we can put these in we have to put up the posts. So I've started some screws in this four by four. Josh is going to hold the level and hold the piece and we're going to set it right here and then I'll screw it in. Again we're only using four inch screws so we are going to have to come back and put some from the back side to cut it off to fit it in the gap. On this one we've actually got a limb in the way. Fortunately those things are put together with screws so we can just unscrew the right pieces, slide it over this, and then screw them back together. Of course that's going to leave a gap vertically here so we're going to have to reinforce that and make sure that the gap in between this section is not bigger than it needs to be. If your deck has 90 degree angles the corners are going to have a single post but in this case we've got weird angles so we've got two posts so this plane and this plane are separate. We want to tie them together for strength. I'm going to use this corner piece put it onto one of these and then squeeze these two posts together and drive screws in on this side and that should hold them relative to each other. I decided not to put a roof on this thing so instead we're just going to do two eight foot posts on the front face. That way we have a place that we can tie some lights to the tree and stuff like that. We get all the railing put up and now we want to cover this with like a handrail on the very top. You want to cover the tops of these posts because this end grain will end up rotting if it gets filled up with water over time so you can either put a cap on here and then use this part as your handrail or you can lay down something on top of the entire thing. For that we're going to use a piece of decking just line it up with the two ends and chop it off. We finished up all the rest of the railing it was done exactly the same way but now that that's done pretty much the structure is complete so now it's time for some fun stuff. The first small thing we're going to do is add a pulley to the back side of this and put a bucket on the bottom so the kids can lift stuff up into the treehouse. We've only got a couple of things for this we've got a pulley, a carabiner to hook to the basket or whatever we want at the bottom, a cleat to tie off the string, and some paracord to use to put the whole thing together. Now none of this stuff is made to carry the weight of a person this is just for lifting small things. I'm going to feed this string through here and then just tie a very simple loop at the end of this and you can decide on how long this needs to be and then cut it off and melt the ends of it with a lighter so that it doesn't fray anymore and then once you've got the pulley on the loop you can swing it over and just hang it through that way if you ever need to move it it's really easy to take on and off. And then at the end of this I'm just going to tie another loop these are just extremely simple knots because they don't need to be anything more than that then once you've got the carabiner you can just hook it through that loop and then hook it into whatever you want to pull up. I just put an eyelet in here so we can have a place to stop the rope from being able to fall down so I'll tie this off and that will give it kind of a maximum length. The last big thing we're going to do for this treehouse is build a slide. Now you can buy slides but usually they're made for platforms that are four or five or seven feet off the ground this is like eight eight and a half so we're going to make one instead. We're going to make a really strong sturdy wooden structure that's supported in every direction and then cover the middle with aluminum flashing so it's really fast. The sides are going to be made out of two by eights like I mentioned and to connect those together we're going to have some two by fours running between them. Then this center section is going to be covered with plywood so it's nice and strong of course this is all pressure treated so it'll last outside. Then we're going to cut a slot all the way down top to bottom in the two by eight and that is going to house the edge of our aluminum going to slide on wood so we're going to cover this surface with some aluminum flashing. I did have to trim this down in width because we just made a measuring error but normally if you make the slide the same width as you're flashing you can just lay it down. So we're going to lay it down on this surface hold it down and then secure it to the plywood. A couple of things about this flashing it is very very thin aluminum so it is going to get some dinks in it some bends some crackles and all that type of stuff but it should work over time it's not going to rust. The big thing here is to make sure that the outside edges which are sharp from the factory are covered up so we're going to cover those with some pieces of trim but first we've got to get this fixed down. I'm going to use some really small nails there are very specific nails made for this flashing with kind of a wide head so we're going to nail this down along the edge as close as we can get both sides it's in its final position so I'm going to go ahead and cut off these but I want to leave a little bit past this post just so there's a kind of an entryway to the slide. The last thing on the slide is we want to cover this edge of the aluminum just to be sure that nobody snags a finger or some clothing on it so we're going to cover it up with a little piece of trim unfortunately it's white but that's just what we have to work with. This is good though because this is PVC trim extremely happy to have this thing finished and my kids are even more happy than I am. Big thanks to Lowe's for sponsoring this video we got all the tools and all the materials from Lowe's and of course it was great to be able to get those materials to build a custom slide but if you don't need a custom slide they've also got all sorts of playground equipment if they don't have it in your local store they will have it on the website. It was also great to get things like the prefab railing that saved a huge amount of time and it was actually really easy to work with it was great to be able to cut out those sections to work around the limbs and to fit that in kind of the weird angles of the shape of this platform. Another thing I wanted to point out is that we added posts on these two corners and right now those are just holding lights but eventually those could hold a roof. In fact it's a really good example of adding a little bit of infrastructure now can let us do all sorts of fun stuff for this thing in the future. Like I mentioned before every tree house is different every tree is different and you're going to have to do a lot of problem solving to make yours but it will be unique and awesome. If you learn some stuff from this video or if you got some cool ideas I would love to hear those down in the comments. I've got tons of other types of project videos that you may want to check out as well and if you're not subscribed make sure you do that and hit the bell that's it for this one thanks for watching see you next time for that last section of the what's this thing called we've got all the railings up and now I want to put a railing let me start over you railing and railing what's this called so we're going to sandwich all three of those things together in poof