Where imaginations have room to grow
Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jim Smothers
What child doesn’t want a playhouse? What adult didn’t want one as a child? It can be a fort where rebels shoot Nerf guns at intergalactic enemies, a Victorian doll house where little girls have tea parties, or a cabin with a loft for sleep-overs. The use of a playhouse, whether in the trees or on the ground, is limited only by a child’s imagination.
“I doodle on the dry-erase board and do my homework in it,” says Abby Hays, 12, ab the treehouse her dad built. “I like to play with my Strawberry Shortcake dolls,” says her sister, 8-1/2-year-old Emily.
Like many modern-day tree houses, the Hays’ version is built on pine posts because its owners lack a sturdy tree with the necessary split up the middle. Theirs is nestled between two oak trees on their Springville property, resting three sides on 4-by-4s planted in concrete deck piers and attached to a red oak on the fourth. It’s a two-story affair with steps that make a distinct turn at a small landing.
The treehouse is wider than it is deep, with a child-size table and chairs on one side and a small cabinet on the other to house dishes and other playthings. The bow and arrows that Emily uses for target practice hang on one wall near the cabinet. The girls like to hold tea parties with their friends and plan to put sleeping bags in the loft once their Dad has installed its trap door. Each girl has her own side in the loft, and there’s a secret compartment between its floor and the ceiling below. The ladder is attached to the back wall.
“Dad designed it, but we told him some of the things we wanted, like the French doors on the front and the shelves in the loft,” says Abby. “He wasn’t going to put any doors on it.”
Perry Hays used cedar for the exterior of the treehouse and rough-cut poplar for the front doors and the interior. He zigzagged the steps because he wanted them to go around a large water oak, and he set the main platform 10 feet off the ground.
“I always wanted a treehouse as a child,” says Perry, a self-employed carpenter.
Alex Follett of Pell City had been asking for a treehouse for some time when his parents, David and Katheryn, decided to have one built. “My wife and I had been talking,” says his dad. “We decided he is only 8 once, so we dipped into savings and surprised him for his birthday, which was in February.”
The Folletts gave builder Jonathan Hayes of Hayes Construction a crude pencil sketch on lined notebook paper that represented what they wanted. Hayes took the drawing and ran with it, and the Folletts, parents as well as son, couldn’t be happier with the results.
“This is where I keep all my weapons,” says Alex of his two-story playhouse. “I have two air soft guns, four pistols and two swords.” He calls the first floor his warring room, “where me and my friends plan,” while the second floor is his “sniping room.”
Both levels are enclosed, with two ways to enter the second floor: via wooden steps and a rope ladder. The rope version can also be accessed through a hatch in the floor of the second story, making it Alex’s escape route when avoiding enemy combatants. Alex plays there two or three hours on sunny days, he says. A friend or two will often join him.
The covered porch on the upper level features a ship’s wheel that Alex refers to as his “Stargate wheel,” and both levels have simple openings covered by wooden panels that open and close, rather than window panes. Under the porch is a pea-gravel playground with a seated swing and bar swing. A slide to the left of the 13 wooden steps offers another way down.
The 16-by-10-foot structure rests on a platform that’s 8 feet off the ground and anchored with 6-by-6-inch posts set in concrete. The entire house is made of pressure-treated pine, and Hayes custom-made the steps and hand rails. Total cost was $4,200, including the pea gravel and minor landscaping.
Tony Smith of Moody bought 10-year-old daughter, Anna, a Victorian-style playhouse from Coosa Valley Sales in Pell City. “I liked it because it looks like a real house, with a shingle roof and a loft where she and her friends can put their sleeping bags,” says Smith. “Anna loves it.”
The pink house sits on concrete blocks in a sloping yard, and Smith wants to put a ramp and steps on the higher end and lattice around the bottom. “I may eventually run power to it so we can put a little heater in it,” he says. “Once Anna outgrows it, we’ll turn it into a shed. It has a small front door and a big door at the end that you can’t see from the front. We can store pool cushions in it when she has finished with it.”
James David Slay, 8, and his brother Jason, 6, sons of Josh and Jennifer Slay of Moody, were the lucky recipients of the fort their grandmother, Christy Finch, won in a raffle at Shops of Grand River last year. The raffle benefitted the St. Clair CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates), a volunteer child advocacy program. “We call it our Alabama War House,” says James David. The top half on three sides can be opened and propped up, and the boys enjoy “shooting” two wooden machine guns mounted at one end.
“I like the loft, the windows and the fireman’s pole,” says 8-year-old Gabriel Rodriguez, naming the main features of the treehouse he and his 3-year-old brother, Matias, share at their grandmother’s house in Ashville. “I can’t wait until NaNa gets the slide put up.”
Built by Gary Liverett of Alpha Ranch, the 8-by-10-foot structure is set on 6-by-6-inch posts that are concreted 30 inches in the ground. Their grandmother’s yard slopes, so one side of the porch is 7.5 off the ground, while the other is 9 feet. Liverett made the 10-inch rough-sawn lap siding at his own sawmill. He framed the Plexiglass windows with pine boards, allowing the boys to see out whether the windows are open or closed. He also built a long slat in one side that opens out and down, through which the boys can shoot their Nerf guns. He also put in a stationary screened window in the loft to allow air to circulate.
“I used Plexiglass for the windows because it’s less likely to shatter and is more economical than glass,” Liverett explains. “The house has a 29-gauge, low-rib metal roof, and we hand cut the pickets for the porch.”
Liverett is letting the pressure-treated pine age before applying a stain to protect the wood from the weather. He used a galvanized 2-inch pipe that he had on hand for the fireman’s pole. He said he went over the contract price of $3,000 by $700 because it took much more time than he had estimated. “It has a lot of detail in it, and took as much time as some larger buildings,” he says. “I wouldn’t build another one for less than $4,000.”
Matias and his grandmother, who happens to be the writer of this article, have held a tea party in the house, using the same Fisher-Price tea set his mother had when she was his age. Gabriel, his grandmother and his friend Walker Griffith of Ashville have slept in the house twice, the first time in November before it was finished. “We almost froze to death,” Gabriel admits.
