Start counting your pennies. You'll need money to complete this step.

Step One

Buying the proper supplies for your tree-house.

Materials   

Money            

Your Mom or Dad

Car               

     You could never make a tree-house without the proper materials.  In the corner, you'll see a list of materials for this step.  We will include the materials for each step but this is all you'll need for now.

     As we said, it would be impossible to build a tree-house without the right materials.  You will need to buy the supplies you don't have.  That is what this step is mainly about.

     First, of course, you will need your parents' permission.  Then you need to get them to take you to buy wood and paint.

             Wood - For a normal sized tree-house, we recommend that you get a 240" × 120" and 3/4 inch ( or 8' × 4') sheet of plywood, for the roof.  This is usually a full sheet.  We recommend that you get plywood over 2 × 4 pieces of normal wood, because the regular wood might shrink in certain weather.  Rain will get in when it shrinks, and destroy the insides of your tree-house (and that wouldn't be too good).

            Now, you will need the wood for the walls.  You will need two 220 × 100 1/2" pieces of plywood (the door will be about 50 × 100 of one of these pieces).  You will also need two 100 × 100 1/2" sheets of plywood.

            For the floor you will need one 220 × 100 3/4 inch sheet of plywood (or bigger to fit supports [or the beams that hold the tree-house up]).

            Your windows (if you want any) can be any size, though we think that a 75 × 50 inch window would be good.  How many windows is up to you, but, we have another recommendation! One on each of the sides.  So that would mean two windows facing each other.  Any more would make it look a little crowded.

            Plywood costs about $10 dollars a sheet.  That would mean ... about a total of about $60 dollars, for the wood.

            Paint - You can use whatever color or amount of paint you want.   We think that the only reason for paint would really be to maybe write something ... like "Club House" or something of the such.

            Conversions - Oh No!  You can only find the wood in feet (though this probably won't happen)!  How are you suppose to buy anything ... if we only put the INCH measurements?  That is where the math comes in!

            It is called conversions - when you change one unit of measurement to another.   People use this a lot, especially in cases like this.  For this project you will be changing inches to feet.  We have put the feet of something's, but we purposely left of the rest so that you can figure them out.

            There are twelve inches in a single foot, which means you want to divide the inches provided into different parts, each with twelve inches in it.

            For example, let's use 120 inches.  You want to know how many feet that is.  The operation is ...     120 divided by 12. Easy - 10.  So that mean that 120 is equal to ten feet.

            Click here to see a complete table of linear conversions.            

            Now you can figure out how many inches are in the feet, so that you have no trouble buying the wood.    

      Okay, so now that you have your stuff, you can build.  Continue on to step two, where we'll talk about finding the perfect tree and/or supports.

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