Who had a treehouse growing up?

30 comments

1. No but my friends and I climbed the trees that were in the neighborhood common areas.

2. I did! It was so much fun! Several kids in my neighborhood had them.

3. Never had one, none of my friends had one either. I always thought it was like a cool thing for the movies.

4. Never had one or been in one

5. I longed for one but as a kid we lived in new suburbs with zero mature trees. Plus my dad is not exactly a handyman, and he certainly was not going to pay for someone else to build one.

6. We did.

7. Not an actual tree house, but we carved out a cleared area in the shrubbery along our driveway that we used to the same purpose. We called it our bush house.

   Plus we climbed trees and claimed certain trees were ours and off-limits for others, but that was only enforceable if you were actually in the tree.

8. My friends and I tried to build one. Only issue was we didn’t have any hardwood so we mostly tried to do hammocs and sticks. Along with a piece of plywood one kid found. Let’s just say that it did not work out and we were lucky none of us were in it when it fell out of the tree.

9. I built what one might call a “two-level tree platform” on a single trunk and a friend had a triangular deck w/ rails that went between three trees (maybe 10′ on the longest side). But I didn’t know anyone who had a little shack in a tree. There are a couple nearby where I live now, though.

10. Sadly not me- they just weren’t meant for my neighborhood

    But I knew several people that did

    More of a middleclass- rich person thing among people I knew, but they weren’t uncommon

    Most where Just platforms with ladders though, without a roof or siding, just kind of a floor you could climb up to and rest on

11. I didn’t have a tree house per se, but I had an elevated playhouse, basically a tree house but on a freestanding elevated platform, about 8 feet up. The trees around my house didn’t have suitable branches a suitable distance from the ground.

    I feel I got the tree house experience.

12. I grew up on a farm so my treehouse was an old barn. It was cool and looking back probably wildly dangerous.

13. I wish. I’m jealous of those who did

14. Calling it a “treehouse” would be a bit of a stretch. More like a tree shanty, or a tree platform with a flimsy attempt at a roof. But my parents did own a construction company, so I had all the tools and materials at my disposal, and at least a non-zero knowlege of how to build stuff.

    There was also a forest right at the edge of my backyard, so plenty of trees to choose from. So I <ahem> “borrowed” my parent’s company tools, rounded up a few friends, and kind of played foreman over a weekend while my friends and I built the thing.

    I even went a little fancy (I was feeling pretty proud of myself) and actually printed out blueprints for my friends to follow. That part was probably a waste of time — none of my friends knew how to read blueprints — but it gave me that legit “construction foreman” feeling.

    Once we were done though? We were all pretty proud. Only the 6 of us knew where it was at, so it was a great place to go after school. No adults bothering you, since we all kept it a secret even from our parents. We all used it in different ways. Some to socialize, some to get away from nasty family situations, and for me — nerd that I am — to have a quiet place to study.

15. I did. I wouldn’t say it’s super common, you really need to have the right kind of tree in your yard to make one. It obviously fell out of use and got taken apart when I grew up. Now that I have kids, my Dad is planning to rebuild it for my kids to play in when they visit Grandpa.

16. There was one at my grandparents’ place. My cousins and I spent a lot of hours up there.

17. I did and it made airsoft battles a ton of fun

18. We built one! Although it wasnt a full treehouse, more like a couple flat wood platforms we assembled high up in a tree.

    We had a giant willow tree in our back yard. By the time I was 10/11, I could climb it higher than the roof of our 2 story house. One day a friend found an old pully in his garage, so we hooked it up high in the tree with some rope, and started hauling up spare lumber and fence posts. Took a couple weeks, but by the end we had one platform large enough for a couple people to sit on, maybe 6×6, and a smaller one a few feet higher we called the “lookout post”. The only way up was to climb the tree, though.

19. I had one.

20. We didn’t at home, but there was a beat up old one a little ways into the woods on the edge of the neighborhood. It really wasn’t worth hanging out in.

21. I didn’t live where there were trees large enough to build things on. However, the area I lived when I also old enough to be outside by myself had lots of rocks and nooks and crannies and tiny caves etc. So my version of hanging out in a tree house was basically tiny-cave exploring and climbing and hiking around big rocks.

    I found an entire intact rabbit’s spine and pelvis once (no meat just bones). Also found a lot of coins. Found a random weird shed with butchers knives and cleavers that had both dried and fresh blood. Lots of cool stuff- I could write a short book about everything I saw lol

22. I did!! It wasn’t much of a house, just a flat platform with no walls. Maybe 8 ft off the ground. We made it in a pine tree so it was pretty closed in with branches.

    Looking back, totally dangerous. Idk if I’d let my kids on a tree house with no walls!

23. I didn’t have one because we didn’t have good trees for it in my yard but I had neighbors and friends who had them as well as miscellaneous fortlike structures on the ground.

24. I had one but it blew over in a hurricane and was never rebuilt.

    It wasn’t fully enclosed like Bart’s though. It was more like a small deck between two trees.

25. I did.

    They require the right kind of tree to build in, which makes them somewhat regional. I don’t see them like I used to.

    Also, calling what I had a “house” would be… generous. “tree-shanty” perhaps. Made from scrap lumber.

26. tons of my friends had them. grew up in a rural area so tree houses were pretty common.

27. I grew up in the woods and built a small ewok village when I was a tween. That said I’ve only known one person with a Simpson’s style tree house.

28. I had a tree house in one of the houses I lived in as a kid. Great fun

29. Started to build one until the 2 trees it was attached to got pulled apart in the storm. Ripped the treehouse apart

30. I had a regular fort on the ground that I built with some friends. We had an old wooden shed and some pieces were rotting. So we took it down and we salvaged the good parts. My dad asked why I wanted it, and of course I said “Fort!”