Every treehouse needs a trapdoor!

I asked the kids what one thing they wanted on the treehouse and Kai's answer was a trapdoor (Nadia wanted a swing, which i got onto the treehouse early in the process). the trapdoor needed a recessed pull handle, so i needed to get wood flooring or something built up around the pull handle. luckily lumber liquidators had a box for sale for like $18  for 30 square feet. not bad... and perfect for a treehouse.

i ended up getting a rope ladder on amazon, saving me lots of days in construction. ended up being a really nice quality product. huge hit with the kids! they love climbing up it and it's not attached on the bottom, so requires considerable core strength - challenging! and fun

 

Walled in

The walls are finally together, and stained. It's June 2017. Yep, I'm coming on 3 years of working on this thing... it's a process. Decided on a funky door trim, octagon "head" plays off the octagon window on the front wall. An octagon has 8 sides, enough for a ba gua representation of 8 trigrams - a taoist representation of the universe... in the center is a korea roof tile i picked up in Gyeongju when I was there last year... It works with the treehouse and general theme I think...