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Andy Thompson's podcast studio treehouse
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Sam Thompson (left), 9, Julie Gawryluk, 17, and Ellie Thompson, 6, take advantage of a sunny spring day to play a board game.
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This treehouse in Westover Hills doubles as the recording studio for an outdoor recreation podcast, “Views from the Treehouse.”
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Andy Thompson stands on the small deck outside his treehouse’s front door.
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The interior is sided in cedar and features reminders from the author’s days as a Richmond Times-Dispatch outdoors columnist.
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Old James River Park signs line the only wall without windows.
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A massive tulip poplar supports the treehouse and the spiral staircase used to access it.
PODCAST STUDIO TREEHOUSE
There are a number of questions you get asked when you build a giant treehouse on the one big tree in your postage stamp of a backyard: How big is it? How high up is it? Did you build it by yourself? What do you use it for? But no one ever asks, “Why?”
I know, because I built a treehouse.
This question occurs to me as I watch my kids and some friends throw an assortment of balls at each other from the treehouse and the ground. When a couple of them ask if they can sneak up there to establish the high ground, I tell them, “Sure. Just move the podcast equipment out of the way first.”
The first two questions are easy. My treehouse is about 130 square feet, including the deck, and the floor sits 19 feet above the ground. We just covered the fourth question: Kids throw stuff at each other from it and I record “Views From the Treehouse,” an outdoor recreation-focused podcast in it.
“Treehouse building is inherently an act of community.” —Andy Thompson
But the third question is my favorite. The answer is, “Heck, no!” because no one can build a structure like this by themselves. Treehouse building is inherently an act of community. When you tell friends you’re building a treehouse, they come out the woodwork to help. One brother-in-law drove down from Philly twice. Another from Austin, Texas, offered crucial help on the roof. I couldn’t have figured out the spiral staircase that wraps around the tree without an architect friend from Washington, D.C. And I never would have attempted the build without a local contractor buddy whose tools and know-how gave me the confidence to think this crazy dream was possible.
Working in fits and starts, the treehouse wasn’t actually finished for a year. That’s a year of people peppering me with lots of different questions. But never, “Why?”
I guess that’s because it’s obvious.
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The Rogers family treehouse in Westover Hills
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From the queen-sized bed upstairs, guests have panoramic views of the James River Park.
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The Rogers family relaxes on the bottom level of their treehouse.
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Phoebe, 5, draws a picture at the writing desk overlooking the woods.
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Underneath the treehouse, there are more places for kids of all sizes to play.
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Lilly Rogers (front), 4, and her sister Phoebe have their choice of games.
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An oak tree pierces the 12-by-8 foot deck off of the treehouse’s lower level.
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A trapdoor and ladder lead from the lower level of the treehouse to the top.
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Carrie and Josh Rogers on the deck of their treehouse. Its architecture was inspired by traditional fire lookout towers in the Western U.S.
TRAILSIDE TREEHOUSE
If you doubt the power of a treehouse to capture the imagination, consider this: In 2017, the most sought-after listing on Airbnb was a treehouse — a mini Ewok Village, really — in Atlanta, Georgia. That summer the listing, which generated more than 300,000 monthly visits, was on close to 150,000 Airbnb “wish lists” and rented for $375 a night.
Carrie and Josh Rogers’ treehouse in Westover Hills can’t quite boast that following, but it isn’t far behind. The two-story charmer was inspired by fire lookout towers in California and offers views of the James River Park from the second-story deck. Carrie, a freelance writer and mother of three, put the treehouse on Airbnb one night in September 2017. By the next morning, “I had five inquiries from people who wanted to stay there that Saturday night,” she says.
Carrie talked to possible guests before they booked because she wanted them to know that they’d have to go inside her house to shower and use the bathroom. They didn’t care then, and they still don’t. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day last year, the treehouse sat unbooked for just one night. The Trailside Treehouse now boasts more than 1,000 Instagram followers. She’s hosted guests from 10 different countries, including Russia, South Africa and Holland. From the latter two, the guests told Rogers they traveled to Richmond specifically to stay in the treehouse, then flew home.
“At first it was just a place to crash. Now it’s an experience.” —Carrie Rogers
But it’s not just the treehouse itself that grabs you as you stare up at it from the Rogers’ backyard. To stay a night at the Trailside Treehouse is to buy into a carefully curated return to childhood. The walls of the second-floor sleeping level are lined with games like Twister and Etch A Sketch and how-to origami books and a whoopee cushion. The screened-in lower level has more of the same — hammock swings and such — but also a coffee maker and other amenities you might not associate with the treehouses of your youth.
“It’s grown from, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll throw an air mattress up there for you,’ to being now fully furnished … At first it was just a place to crash,” Carrie says. “Now it’s an experience.”
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The Glotzl family treehouse in Sleepy Hollow
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Louie Glotzl looks out the window of his treehouse in Sleepy Hollow.
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A former carpenter, Jeff Glotzl (left) built the treehouse with help from his father, Karl, and father-in-law, Roger Eitelman.
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Jeff’s wife, Lesley, an interior decorator, designed the kid-centric interior.
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Jeff Glotzl describes his treehouse as a “magnet” for neighborhood kids.
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Whimsical decorations line the treehouse walls.
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An open picture window frames the exit for a sweetgum limb.
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Ford Glotzl hangs out in the hammock swing.
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A heavy piece of wood serves as a counterweight for opening the trap door.
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The sweetgum tree required significant pruning to make it treehouse ready.
SLEEPY HOLLOW SWEETGUM TREEHOUSE
If you’ve spent any time on the internet searching for cool treehouses, chances are you’ve run into Pete Nelson and his work. It’s not hyperbole to call Nelson — author of many treehouse books and star of the TV show “Treehouse Masters” — the godfather of modern treehouse building.
Like me, Jeff Glotzl was inspired by Nelson’s infectious love of trees and his ability to craft jaw-dropping structures in them. “We were on vacation,” says the retoucher/photographer, who lives in Sleepy Hollow with his wife, Lesley, and two boys, “and we saw [“Treehouse Masters”] flipping channels in a hotel room. We started buying episodes, and we were thoroughly hooked.”
Unlike me, Glotzl already had the skills to turn that kernel of treehouse yearning into reality. “I finally found an excuse to use a water level!” the former carpenter says laughing, as he showed me up the ship’s ladder, through the trapdoor, and into the 10-by-10 foot gem with a sweetgum tree shooting up through the middle. “I was really looking for a project to get back into it. I’ve got a lot of tools.”
“All the neighborhood kids want to be in here all the time.” —Lesley Glotzl
Glotzl started the build during Henrico County’s spring break last year and was finished by May. During those two months, he became a neighborhood celebrity. “Everybody kept coming by. Dog walkers deviated from their paths to see the progress. People would call out, ‘Hey, can you build me one?’ They wanted to know if I was a company and if I had a card,” Glotzl says.
Lesley is an interior decorator. She established the aesthetic, which, not surprisingly, is very kid-centered. “All the neighborhood kids want to be in here all the time,” she says.
And the Glotzls oblige, because, well, it’s a treehouse. “It’s a great place to come sit and read,” Glotzl says. “I can see myself taking possession of it one day.”
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The Kendig family treehouse in Goochland County
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“The Treehouse Guys” is no longer on the air, but its legacy lives on in treehouses like this Manakin-Sabot gem.
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More than half of the treehouse’s 500 square feet is decking.
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After his grandmother died, Preston Kendig and his family were looking for something to anchor them to the family farm in Goochland.
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The interior is filled with craftsman touches, such as this mechanism for a rotating, live-edge wood desk.
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The treehouse is a regular setting for Kendig family events.
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The branches of the slippery elm tree shoot through the treehouse in 11 places.
MADE-FOR-TV TREEHOUSE
Preston Kendig had never really paid much attention to the giant slippery elm tree on his family’s Goochland County farm until arborist Jason Anderson pointed it out. The two were walking the property for a DIY Network show, “The Treehouse Guys,” that had committed to building a treehouse on the property. When the family decided they wanted to do something with the land, Kendig applied to a number of TV shows and “The Treehouse Guys” wanted to build there. “It was forest on either side of it,” Kendig explains, laughing at the memory. But “once I was out here looking around [with Anderson] it was like, ‘Oh yeah, that giant tree.’”
Today, a 500-square-foot treehouse with a sleeping loft and large deck sits in the massive elm’s branches.
Standing under the incredible spray of limbs, you wonder, as Kendig did then, “How did they even see a house in this?”
The episode from the Manakin-Sabot farm aired in June 2016, after a build that lasted most of that winter. Carpenter and arborist Jake Jacob served as the point person for the show, and Kendig, who was working part-time back then, worked alongside him for the entire project.
“The deer will just come through this field, and we’ll be up here chatting.” —Preston Kendig
Kendig tells me about the build as we sit on the treehouse’s deck overlooking a field that slopes down to a pond and eventually to the James River. Limbs shoot up through the floor, with some continuing through a wall or the ceiling. It’s as if the treehouse is a fingerless glove, and the elm is the hand.
The property the tree and treehouse inhabit a piece of what was once a much larger farm. The question, he says, that precipitated the treehouse was, “What can we do … so that there’s some reason to come out here? Something that would motivate us to ... keep [the land] for future generations.”
A marvel of engineering in a beautiful elm tree turned out to be the answer. Now 35 years old and with an 11-month old daughter, he’s starting to see the true power the structure holds.
“Last summer I brought her out a couple times, we’d hang out on the deck, string up a hammock,” he says. “The deer will just come through this field, and we’ll be up here chatting.”
So you want to build a treehouse …
Do it — but keep all this in mind.
Online research: There are a number of online resources for treehouse building. Watch all the YouTube videos you can find. DVR old episodes of Animal Planet’s “Treehouse Masters.” Become obsessed. Then purchase architectural plans for the one you want to build — but don’t be afraid to modify.
Tree health is paramount. Once you’ve chosen your site, whether in one tree or multiple trees, get an arborist to give those trees a clean bill of health. Just as crucial: Get him or her to identify and remove “widowmakers,” dead branches that could fall on you during the build.
Tools are half the battle. This is true of every construction project; it’s especially true in a treehouse build. A drill, strange bits, a giant wrench, foot-long screws and monster bolts are just some of the things I had to buy for my project. Luckily, a friend had all the regular tools you’ll also need: Table saw, miter saw, circular saw, screw gun, router and more.
Castles in the air: How are you going to get massive pieces of lumber in the air? The easiest way is to rent scaffolding. Even so, you’ll need help from at least one other person to hoist giant beams into place.
Keep in mind: Your tree/trees are still growing and alive. Make sure you leave room for your treehouse to grow with them.
Don’t be surprised if the use changes. I never thought I’d record a podcast in my treehouse. Carrie Rogers didn’t envision an Airbnb business for hers. Preston Kendig said his family spends more time on the deck than inside the actual treehouse, and the Glotzls said the neighborhood kids use the treehouse as much as their own kids do. Build it, and who knows what your treehouse will become?
