Tree Houses within Reach: 30 Lofty Cabins, Playhouses, and Getaways You Can Actually Build

by Derek Diedricksen

Overview

This lively showcase of wildly different and eclectic tree houses will inspire anyone who has ever dreamed of building a tree house of their own. 

The tree houses featured in Tree Houses within Reach range from simple platform structures to raised office spaces, tiny houses to playhouses—proving that a tree house can be creative, useful, and beautiful while still being affordable and accessible to those with modest building skills. With extraordinary photos and fascinating profiles of the stories behind the builds, author Derek Diedricksen has curated this collection of tree houses with his trademark eye for quirkiness, thrift, and reused materials—featuring everything from a robot-themed tree house with salvaged windows to a 38-square-foot pod that relies solely on trees for support. 

For those eager to start their own projects, Diedricksen leads the reader through the most important nuts & bolts of tree house building and offers tips and suggestions throughout. The book includes step-by-step photographs of a basic sample build.  

This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635868319
Publisher:	Storey Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	124 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Derek “Deek” Diedricksen is the author of Micro Living and Microshelters. He has hosted, built, and designed for the HGTV series Extreme Small Spaces and Tiny House Builders, as well as for the DIY Network, and has just released a feature-length documentary film, The Box Truck Film: Building a REUSEful Home. His work has been featured in numerous places in print and online, including NPR, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Seattle Times, the Wall Street Journal, Make magazine, Yahoo.com, Apartment Therapy, Treehugger.com, and Design Sponge. Diedricksen has taught hands-on building workshops around the United States since 2010, runs the YouTube design channel "RelaxshacksDOTcom", and professionally builds tiny houses, tree houses, and backyard offices for clients. He lives in Stoughton, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
 
Intro: Deek’s background and love for tree houses. What makes a tree house, and why are people so into them? 

SECTION 1: NUTS & BOLTS
Yes, You Can (and No, You Can't)
A chapter on navigating the question of whether or not you can, or should, build a tree house, and some of the simple rules to follow.
Tree House Building Basics
A guide to the main elements of a tree house, including a few different ways to approach securing the base up in the air (the most challenging part). We'd also touch upon other things such as the "weight versus strength" balance one needs to be mindful of, the importance of high-elevation "aerodynamics" (windward faces), safety concerns (esp for kids), what species of trees work best (and which don't), ladders versus stairs (pros and cons), and so on. 
How to Save on Your Upcoming Build 
A chapter, with illustrations or photos to back it, on things you can start harvesting right now (free, cheap, reused) to be implemented in your upcoming project. 
Photo glossary of tree house items/tools
From screws to "Garnier limbs."
 
SECTION 2: THE TREE HOUSES
Showcase Builds
30 or so cool/inventive/fun tree houses. Each will have a short write-up, many color photos, and a little blurb of insight or info from the builder perhaps. Each should have 5-6 photos per feature, highlighting fun little details.
Gallery
A shorter collage-like chapter showing lots of one-off photos of tree houses that aren't otherwise featured.
Sketches: Throughout the book, a scattering of some treehouse concept pen sketches by Deek and others to show the rough design process, the brainstorming.
Prose from the Pros
Guest sidebars/profiles from a few other builders on their knowledge and approach, with a photo smattering of some of their work. 
 
SECTION 3: STEP-BY-STEP PHOTO OF A SAMPLE BUILD
A small, VERY affordable (by comparison) tree house that we photo in a general step-by-step fashion. Photos show the general process, with captions, material selection, approaches, etc--a photographic "build journey" of sorts. This tree house would be simple but modern, fun, and daring. Basic plans included.
 

Editorial Reviews

"A wonderful reminder to never underestimate the joyful, magical powers that come with inhabiting a treehouse!"​—B'fer & Ka-V, The Tree House Guys

"Deek makes construction fun, and within reach for those of us who don't own a hammer."—Kirsten Dirksen, filmmaker YouTube/*faircompanies

"Diedricksen highlights the versatility of tree houses in this enjoyable guide. Among the simplest structures are a narrow box with transparent plastic walls for bird watching and a “truck bed and cap held aloft on a tree stump,” but it’s the most complex edifices that make the biggest impression. These include a luxury Vermont tree house with a bathroom, loft bed, and back porch; an elevated pirate ship with a below-deck crawl space, a crow’s nest, and tree limbs in the place of masts; and a “floating” yurt suspended by “an upgraded version of padded cargo straps.” On the prescriptive side, Diedricksen walks through how to build an A-frame house, detailing how to set support posts in concrete, erect cross beams, and assemble the walls and ceiling. He also outlines general construction tips and principles, suggesting that maple, oak, and other hardwoods provide the most durable foundations and warning that “collaring” trees too tightly with decking or flooring restrains their ability to sway during storms and widen as they grow. The basic guidance won’t be enough for novices to recreate the most dazzling edifices, but it will help get more modest projects off the ground. This will inspire readers to take to the trees."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher