The Squirrel's Nest

Hi there! I've returned from the forest with news of huge progress. It has come to my attention that I've missed a whole lot of the story here so I'm going to back up to the beginning of things and lay it all out.

Once upon a time, there was a family who loved to drive off into the mountains when they needed to reconnect. This family tried lots of different roads into the mountains but one road in particular always felt like home. They went on many drives into those mountains, hiked, explored, played in the river that ran along that road, camped, and found great serenity among those beautiful rolling mountains and stunning evergreen trees.

This lead them to begin to talk about buying a piece of land in the area. After considering all the different angles and deciding it was indeed a fantastic idea, they began poking around side roads  until one chilly day in November, they stumbled upon a "for sale by owner" sign screwed to a tree deep in a small community off the beaten path in the middle of the national forest. They contacted the seller, did all their due diligence, researched the heck out of it, got their ducks in a row, made an offer, filed all the paperwork, and officially purchased just under 1/2 acre of forested land an hour and fifteen minutes from their suburban home in mid January.

Thus began a new chapter in their lives.

Clearly this is my family so now I'll switch to first person.

The first thing I knew we needed was a picnic table.

Once that was complete and set up, I really wanted to build us a shed or a small cabin but I was intimidated by the space. I knew we'd need some sort of really strong footings for anything we set on the forest floor or I'd need to get a full grasp on how to properly build a treehouse. That felt huge and scary and overwhelming so I opted to start with a tree platform. Naturally that grew into a whole big camp thing but that's just how my brain works. The really funny thing is it started as an idea to build a dog house but the dog still has no house out there and yet we have a cool platform with a kitchen area and fire wood storage.

I'm pretty sure I never officially posted when that was complete. It now features a cool climbing net thing, a disc swing off the back side, a trap door, a ladder that can be navigated by even fearful climbers like me, a basket and pulley system for moving things up and down, and great views of the whole property.

Once I felt comfortable building high, digging low, and everything in between, it was time to face my real fears and start what I originally called "the tree shed" but which is now called "The Squirrel's Nest."

It all began with some big-ass-bolts in the trees.

Then I moved on up from there. I installed the beams:

Then I put some joists on those:

Tucked in some insulation:

Fastened down some sub flooring:

And then I started putting up walls!!

And then some more walls:

One window will look out through our property:

Another will have a view of camp but if you look up, you'll see some mountains through the trees.

In case you're wondering where The Squirrel's Nest is in comparison to the platform and camp, here's a view from across the property:

Then I ran out of nails. That's OK though, I was pretty thrilled to have four walls up.

Now it's time for about a week off but I'll get back to it shortly. I need to reconnect with the family and take some down time, rest my muscles, allow my smashed thumb and pinky to heal, let the bruises disperse, treat the bug bites until they stop being angry red welts, and just generally take a load off. The kids are so excited to see what I've been dreaming off. They saw the blueprints but couldn't visualize what I was drawing so now that they can, they want to go out to the property to build with me as much as possible.

I hope you'll follow along here on the blog, on instagram, or on Facebook to see what happens next!

Thank you for reading,
Julie