Way up in the trees

After three months of hard labor in the woods, during winter, The Treehouse Guys finished the Buttars family’s treehouse with the help of some local friends.

Paul Buttars owns Timberline Adventures, a zipline tour company in the Coeur d’Alene area. Buttars’ friend Jason Lindsey built the zipline structures on the family’s 117-acre property just south of Beauty Bay.

Lindsey, one of the builders involved with the DIY Network show “The Treehouse Guys,” saw an opportunity to build a treehouse on the property as well.

Buttars agreed and they started working on it. They brought in The Treehouse Guys crew to build it and local Coeur d’Alene architect Jeff Lemmon to help design it.

Lemmon designed the house based on the triangular foundation of the trees and the excitement and adventure of flying through the trees on a zipline. He decided a more contemporary look would fit best. He used the angles of the base of the house to inspire the rest of it.

“I really like the angles. With the triangular pattern of the trees and the foundation, we just went up with it,” he said. The house has a wall that angles out farther than the traditional 90 degrees and the roof is slanted as well, giving it the contemporary look Lemmon sought.

They built the treehouse from wood from the trees that were taken down to build the ziplines.

The treehouse itself is 600 square feet with a staircase that climbs to a deck overlooking Lake Coeur d’Alene.

The main floor is furnished with a small couch and wood-burning stove. A wooden ladder leads to the loft where there are two beds and a small table with flowers and candles. Three small windows look out over the deck and the lake.

“My favorite part is the structure of it,” Lemmon said. “It’s very intriguing how they put a house in a tree; we typically build ground up. Seeing how they built the support and made things move off of the trees was very interesting.”

The treehouse, supported by three Douglas firs, hangs 25 to 30 feet above the ground. The tree at the rear of the house is directly attached to the house: If the tree sways in the wind, the house moves with it. The two trees at the front of the house are attached with moving parts, so the trees have room to sway on their own, without affecting the movement of the house.

There is a 36-foot distance between two of the trees. In order to make the house not sag, The Treehouse Guys built an inverted truss to support it. The cables running underneath the support beam are attached to a U-shaped piece of hardware. The physics of it makes the beam arc up, instead of sag down.

“People like tree houses because it’s one thing we all have in common about our childhoods,” Buttars said. “What they’ve done with treehouses in the past 10 years is crazy and I think it’s just starting and going to get more popular.”

Buttars is planning on continuing construction of the treehouse by turning the railing of the deck into a bar top.

The goal is to eventually use the treehouse as part of his zipline tours. He hopes to have lunch breaks there, or start offering half-day zipline trips that end with a catered dinner in the treehouse, perhaps during sunset.

“The show depicts it as a private getaway for me and my wife, but that’s not it,” Buttars said. “The way the permit is set up with the county, it has to be used as part of the tour.”

The Buttars’ treehouse will be featured on “The Treehouse Guys” tonight at 6 p.m. on the DIY network.