Treehouse Hero for the Day

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The old man and the tree

Fearing boredom during retirement, Jack Barnhart nears completion of his dream treehouse after five years of work.

By MARY CHALLENDER
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

When he's relaxing in a plastic chair nearly 40 feet in the air, watching the treetops shimmy around him in the barest of summer breezes, Jack Barnhart often finds his thoughts wandering to "The Old Man and the Sea."

Huge projects tackled late in life tend to have that effect.

The Pleasant Hill man was a not-so-old 61 when he went looking for one last big challenge.

Just retired from his third career as a social worker (he'd also been a real estate salesman and college theater producer), he had this fear that without work to drive him, he might end up like one of those senior guys he often saw sitting at the mall with nothing to do.

He needed his own version of Ernest Hemingway's catch of a lifetime.

He found it not in an oversized marlin but in a tree - a 100-year-old honey locust with a 40-inch diameter located in a far corner of his back yard.

Realizing a dream


An accomplished woodworker, Barnhart dreamed of building a treehouse - but not one of the scrapped-together versions the word conjures up in most people's minds.

The cozy little cottage he was envisioning would put the Swiss Family Robinson to shame, with two staircases, built-in closets and cabinets, a wet bar, high-quality insulated windows, water and electricity, cable TV and a rooftop patio - not to mention table service for six.

And instead of climbing a ladder from the ground, his treehouse would be accessible by a soaring footbridge, connected to the deck of his home some 65 feet away across a ravine.

It was a level of difficulty that would keep Barnhart grappling with his tree through five years of labor, some $12,000 to $15,000 in materials and many harrowing moments on ladders.

"It would have been difficult to build this thing on the ground, let alone in a tree," he said with obvious relish. "There were times I was nearly hanging by my toenails trying to get the right angle to drive a nail."

Most treehouses are assembled in an afternoon, a weekend or at the extreme, over a single summer.

It took Barnhart a year just to build the framework for his.

String of lumber trucks

The first step was to prune the tree's center branch to give him space to create.

The next step was to assemble the supports.
His hideaway in the sky

An experienced woodworker, Jack Barnhart built a huge treehouse in the back yard of his Pleasant Hill home. Here are some of the details:

TIME TO BUILD: Five years

COST: $12,000 to $15,000 in materials

HEIGHT: 40 feet from ground to roof

LENGTH OF BOARDWALK: 65 feet

AMENITIES: Electricity, water, cable TV, rooftop patio, built-in cabinets and a wet bar

Half the neighborhood came over to help as Barnhart used a block-and-tackle system to lift the unwieldy 10-foot-by-10-foot-by- 10-foot U-shaped framework into place. The framework rested on four massive 6-by-6 timber legs, each 24 feet long, that were collared and bolted into natural depressions in the tree and jutted upward at an angle like an upside-down tepee.

These legs, designed almost like branches, carry all the weight of the treehouse.

"It could hold a Mack truck," Barnhart brags.

Then Barnhart rented scaffolding and added a fourth 10-foot-long board to tie together the base of the treehouse.

That was the first year. He had barely set the hook.

The next year, he started on the footbridge. Unable to find anywhere to hook his block and tackle, he strung a cable between the honey locust and his house, then hung his rope-and-pulley system from there.

GARY FANDEL/REGISTER PHOTOS
Memories: Jack Barnhart, 65, says his treehouse reminds him of his youth, when he created his own diversions by building forts, treehouses and clubhouses.

For the 20-foot-tall trestles of the footbridge, he used more 6-by-6s, which he sunk 4 feet deep in cement. Barnhart spanned the trestles with pairs of 3-by-12 beams, each 22 feet long.

The neighbors became used to seeing lumber trucks pulling into Barnhart's driveway and dropping off a load. A crane would do the unloading. Then, with the help of his partner of 20 years, Bob Schanke, Barnhart would painstakingly move each heavy wooden beam to the backyard deck, taking it in through the front door and out through the back.

Winter brings relief

From the first warm day of spring to when the weather turned, Barnhart spent almost all of his free time working in or around the tree. One year turned into two turned into three turned into four.

Although Barnhart refused to let go of his dream, he found himself looking forward to the first long cold snap each year.

"I was relieved when winter came," he said. "I was exhausted."

Finally, in the fourth year, Barnhart began working on the actual tree "house." The little cottage is built around two limbs, one that shoots up through the wall near the door, the other across the room.

Shaping the cottage around the tree was an "incredible" challenge, Barnhart said. On a windy day, the tree can sway as much as a quarter inch. On very windy days, it can sway a half inch.

Yet, the fit had to be tight enough to keep rain from winding its way down the bark and seeping into the treehouse.

Barnhart learned to wrap the trunks in rubber "collars" to keep out water.

This wasn't the only challenge he faced.

He decided to side the cottage in oak "pallet" lumber, a rough lumber used to make pallets, after he saw a little cafe in Mexico covered with the wood.

The trick was installing the siding. There were no branches to stand on, and by this time Barnhart was too high in the air for ladders. Barnhart was forced to stand inside the cottage, lean out the window frame and hammer each strip of siding into place.

Above it all: Jack Barnhart scales his staircase to the heavenly retreat in the tree that has occupied four challenging years.

The staircase to the rooftop patio - or the penthouse, as Barnhart likes to call it - was also tricky. One stringer would attach to the cottage at the top. The other, though, would hover in midair.

Barnhart solved that problem by using 4-by-6 boards connected to the tree to anchor the floating stringer.

"This isn't going anywhere," he said, bouncing confidently on the narrow stairs.

Taxed to his limits

Like Santiago in "The Old Man and the Sea," Barnhart's great undertaking has been mostly a solitary one, although he did hire professionals for a few things like the plumbing, and a neighbor and the neighbor's father installed the Shelter windows.

He'll share his joy in it, though, with nearly anyone who asks, from the guy who sold him the pallet lumber (he dropped by later with his son), to neighbors and friends of neighbors, to the delivery guys from Menards.

"We've already had a couple of dinner parties and cocktail parties," Barnhart said.

He's learned not all of his friends share his love of heights. Some, he said, won't even venture from his deck onto the footbridge.

Barnhart is racing to finish the exterior by Aug. 13, when he and Schanke have a private, treehouse-top party planned. By the first of January, he predicts he'll be totally done, inside and out, with bamboo wallcovering, heaters, ceiling fan, easy chairs and all.

A bridge to a dream: The treehouse in Pleasant Hill sits 30 feet up a 100-year-old tree in Jack Barnhart's back yard. A 65-foot boardwalk is the only way up.

Building the treehouse taxed him to the limits of his endurance, he says. In his quest to complete what he started, he admits there were times when he was foolhardy, when he was impatient, when he took way more risks than he should have.

The treehouse reminds Barnhart of his youth. Growing up in an undeveloped Ohio subdivision, kids had to create their own diversions, he says. He found his in building - forts and treehouses and clubhouses.

Unlike when he was a young man, though, he's not racing ahead to his next big project.

When Santiago finished his marathon battle with the marlin, he went home and fell into a deep sleep.

Barnhart finds himself drawn to his chair, high in the tree.

He has come to consider the honey locust a close friend.

It is unburdened by the prospect of old age, and so now, is Barnhart.

"It's fascinating up here on a windy day," he said, gazing out on a sea of green. "The treetops are just dancing."