Tree House Building Workshop

Tree House Building Workshops

We are primarily a tree house building company. However, we realize that most tree houses will be built by father & son or by local contractors. We fully support that and want to help people learn how to build tree houses properly to avoid excess damage to trees or practices that are not safe. Join us for the next workshop if you want to learn the best practices in tree house building today.

Upcoming Workshops:

Please Contact Dan today to inquire about reserving a spot at our next workshop.

View Past Workshops

What Do you do at a Tree House Building Workshop?

We try to balance four activities at our tree house building workshops:

  1. Formal instructional sessions. These are interactive sessions where we do have certain subject materials to cover, but questions are encouraged and we want to make tree house building theories as practical as possible. These sessions will be led by the Tree Top Builders staff and various guests.
  2. Hands on tree house building experience. Each tree house building workshop will feature construction or partial construction of a tree house, tree house platform, or some other tree attached feature. Please see the specific treehouse workshop description for more details. We will teach proper installation for treehouse attachment bolts and other tree house fasteners. We may also demonstrate proper installation of common tree house options depending on the workshop schedule.
  3. Informal time where we can "talk treehouses." We are available to review your plans for your tree house or help you get started making them, so if you want specific advice, then please bring pictures and measurements of your tree(s) and sketches of the treehouse if you have drawn them already.
  4. Good food and Good times! We will fire up the grill, and have prepared meals during the tree house workshops so that people can stick around and enjoy fellowship with other tree house builders and learners.

Workshop Philosophy

We care deeply about trees. We also are very concerned for people's safety. That's why we teach people how to build better tree houses.

We know that tree house building will always be primarily a do it yourself activity, but there are very few places where people can go to learn proper tree house construction methods from expert tree house builders. A lot of the free advice out there, while well meaning, is very harmful to trees. Our goal is to teach you tree house construction methods that are safer, longer lasting, and better for your trees.

You can't get a degree in tree house building, nor can you read any one book and know it all. Building a better tree house requires cross training in many fields such as tree biology, engineering, welding, tree climbing & rigging, carpentry, and construction in general. Our special expertise is in how these fields integrate and inform proper treehouse building practices. So if you want to learn how to build a tree house the right way, or think you might like to be a professional treehouse builder some day, then a tree house building workshop will give you the confidence to get started. We can also point you to appropriate sources to continue your education.

We take time at each workshop to offer consulting on your individual tree house projects. If you have a certain tree house plan or set of trees in mind, then bring your pictures and measurements to the workshop, and we will help you design your tree house. This can be part of a private individual consultation during the tree house workshop, or we may use your real life scenarios as classroom examples. We love to share our knowledge about building custom tree houses and help answer individual tree house questions. "Good treehousing" is a phrase that professional tree house builders use to explain that the goal is better tree houses and enjoyment of them rather than doing whatever brings us the most construction business. We want people to design and build safe tree houses to enjoy for decades. But modern tree house building has become more than a bucket of nails and a few boards, so there is a lot to learn. Through our workshops, we would rather do our part to educate people to build better tree houses to prevent suffering in trees and keep people from making common and potentially dangerous mistakes. If you are ready to take your interest or curiosity about tree houses to the next level, then please join us at our next workshop event!

Each tree house building workshop is designed to teach you how to build a tree house from start to finish. We cover all relevant topics from tree selection, tree house design, specifics of how to build tree houses with tips & tricks we have learned along the way, and ongoing maintenance issues. Each workshop will also include some type of application project to give people firsthand experience with tree climbing and building tree-attached structures. We want you to leave our workshop with more than just book knowledge about building tree houses, so bring a tool belt and/or climbing harness if you have one and would like to get involved (just watching is okay too!).