Ep 082 Your Treehouse with Pete Nelson of 'The Treehouse Master'

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:02):
Welcome to Luxury Outdoor Living Podcast with Mike and Trey
Farley of Farley Pool Designs.
For over 40 years, we've helpedhomeowners turn their backyards
into personal retreats, spaces ofjoy, relaxation and unforgettable
memories, and whether it's a cozy as.
Scape or a resort style oasis.
We design it all.

(00:24):
We know how overwhelming a projectcan feel, and nothing feels worse than
a homeowner having a bad experience.
And that's why after decades ofdesigning and teaching in this
industry, we're here to share ourknowledge, helping you navigate.
The process with confidence.
Every week we break down designtrends and insider tips that
turn your vision into reality.

(00:45):
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We'd love to have you along for the ride.
Let's build your paradise together.

Mike (01:17):
Pete Nelson, the founder of Nelson Tree Houses and a renowned figure in
the world of tree houses, has turned hischildhood passion into a lifelong mission.
His journey began with a humblebackyard tree fort in New Jersey,
built alongside his father.
Today he stands as a pioneer inCustom tree Treehouse, design and
construction among his Pursuits.

(01:38):
Pete is widely recognized as the hostof Animal Planet's Tree House Masters,
and through this hit TV show, he'sbrought Enchantment of Tree House living
to global audience and turning dreamsinto reality One Tree House at a time.
He's also the author of sixcoffee table books on Tree House
construction, including his latest work.

(01:59):
Be in a Tree House.
Pete's Mission goes beyond business.
He's on a mission to reconnect peoplewith nature by encouraging them to
embrace in the magic of tree houses.
Whether it's experiencing a night in oneof his thoughtfully crafted Nelson Tree
House experiences, offering suppliesto DYI Tree House Project, or simply
appreciating the wonder of tree houses.

(02:21):
Pete is dedicated to fosteringa deeper connection with nature.
Join Pete on a journey into the worldof tree houses and discover the bounty
possibilities that await among the trees.
Look forward to talking to Pete.
We just read your bioit's really interesting.
So tell us something that wasn'ton the bio that'd be fun to know.

Pete (02:41):
Well, I was left back in third grade.
That is funny.
Seriously?
Yeah, I remember.
It was a little traumatic.
I thought.
I, you know, I'm trying to figure outwhy I am who I am why I am the way I
am, and we all look for, boy, what wasit in our childhood that caused us to
take a turn one way or another, and.
I think I had this chip on my shoulderbecause I was slow to learn how to read.

(03:03):
I'm dyslexic, I'm a DD.
And I remember very clearly, I mean,this is like yesterday, I was lucky
because we moved to Brussels Belgiumof all places from New Jersey.
My dad opened an office in Europe andsame company he worked for 35 years.
But I remember being impressed, thinkingrecently as a 34-year-old, he opened up
this office sales office in Brussels.

(03:23):
And I go there and I'm goingto the American school.
But it was a Catholic school thatwas the English speaking school.
And Sister Mary John sat me down.
I had to read in front of herand she said, look, you're
doing third grade again.
it was crushing, right?

Mike (03:36):
Yeah.
Oh, yes.

Pete (03:37):
had, but thankfully I was somewhere else.
So my friends wouldn't know, youknow, Andy and Greg, they had no idea.
And so I spent the rest of my life tryingto hide that Then also proving to the
world that no I'm good at something.
And the only thing I couldfind were tree houses.
Really.

Mike (03:51):
So I understand that you and your dad built a tree house in New Jersey,
so is that how the adventure started?

Pete (03:58):
It was I credit my dad for so much as we all do.
And it's just, he wasalways into the woods.
In fact, he was a forestry major atSyracuse University in upstate New York.
And he was always one to wannahead out into the woods and
explore and have adventures.
And in our little tiny house inRidgewood, New Jersey, there was a

(04:20):
three stem maple next to the garage.
And we went up into thatabout five, maybe seven feet.
Seemed like a long way up whenI was a kid and built this tiny
little tree house and it was.
That first taste of having yourown place, with your own rules.

Mike (04:36):
Oh yeah.

Pete (04:36):
And it was great.
It was great.
In fact, you may remember the patternof the linoleum that would go on
the floors in the late sixties.
Remember that kind of red brick?

Mike (04:45):
Yes.

Pete (04:46):
I do oleum.
Yes.
Yeah, that was it.
You know, This thing mighthave been six square feet.
I mean, Literally tiny little place,but it had that linoleum floor on it.

Mike (04:55):
you got it finished out pretty nice.
So I actually grew up in Tom's River.

Pete (05:00):
New what?
I was there too.
You're kidding me?
No, Toms River.
We lived in Toms River whenI was like one to three.
so

Mike (05:07):
what year?

Pete (05:08):
It would've been 1963 and four.
Okay.
That I was there.

Mike (05:13):
So we moved to Toms River in 67.
Okay.
When I was four.
so my dad, we had 45 oak trees onthe property, and my dad built me
a tree house, but it was crude.
It was a platform with some, a roofand some windows, and that was it.
Windows

Pete (05:30):
that's better than mine.
Windows.
I had no windows.
I had that nice linoleum, butthere was just open on the sides.

Mike (05:35):
Yeah.
So I grew up reading the Swissfamily Robinson, and the other
one was my side of the mountain.
Oh yeah.

Pete (05:41):
I loved that one.
Where the kid, I loved both.

Mike (05:43):
Yeah.
so tree houses always, but then at 12I moved to Lubbock, Texas, no trees.
Totally gone.

Pete (05:50):
Wow.
So sorry.
Yeah.
That's tough.

Mike (05:52):
So you moved like Pacific Northwest, right?
At what point?

Pete (05:57):
Yeah, my wife determined that we should live here.
I went reluctantly.
I've always heard it's so rainy and.
I just thought, oh man,I need my summer times.
And anyway, it was the greatest moveever because it turns out that, yeah,
it does rain here, there's no doubt,but it keeps things green and the
trees grow like mad and it's heaven.
It really is heaven on earthand the Pacific Northwest.
And I do love parts of Texas, let'sjust say that like the hill country.

(06:20):
And there's some great treesdown there on those beautiful
rivers, or do you call 'em rivers?
The saal and the

Mike (06:26):
Oh,

Pete (06:27):
sure.

Mike (06:27):
It's wider than, it's wider than three feet.
It's a river in Texas.
So anyway,

Pete (06:32):
no beautiful trees down there where you are in parts of
Texas, but then up here it's TreeParadise in the Pacific Northwest.

Mike (06:39):
so did you start doing tree houses before the Pacific Northwest
or did that come after you went there?
How did the story go?
You know, I

Pete (06:46):
did.

Mike (06:46):
I.

Pete (06:46):
So I was an economics major at a little liberal arts
school in Colorado Springs.
I majored in, economics for no goodreason except to think maybe that's
what you're supposed to do witha big, fancy education as it was.
but I found myself working with my hands alot in the summer times I would gravitate
to projects, I worked for a carpenter.
One of my first jobs, not my first job,but one of them was with a carpenter

(07:07):
that showed me how to build decksand, put some French doors in the back
of the house to get out to the deck.
And I thought, God, this makes sense.
I had this aptitude, Iguess working with my hands.
And so when it was time to think aboutwhat I wanted to do, you know, in
this time in America anyway when yourparents are saying, look, you can do
anything, you put your heart to, Ithink it's really true, and that's a

(07:29):
unique time in history to be able tosay that with any truth to it, but we
were brought up to feel like, boy, ifyou work hard, you can do anything.
And so as I was thinking aboutwhat can I do, what can I do?
I love working with my hands.
I love being outdoors as my dad hadshowed me the woods such a magical place.
And what if I was a Treehouse guy?
Are there Treehouse guys?
And I looked and, no, thereare no Treehouse guys.

(07:52):
The library yielded one book by AnthonyAman about grownup tree houses, which
was fascinating and all made up, I heard.
But such a joyful thought is ifI could be the Treehouse guy.
And that was 1987 when I was 25years old, all night brainer.
I was so excited.
I'm like, what a naive knucklehead tothink that there could be a treehouse

(08:12):
builder and make, a decent living and.
And yeah, that was the beginning.
And it took I'll tell you that ina capsule, that what I had to figure
out to become this treehouse builder.
I had to a build a treehouse.
not one from earlier in my life, but likeI'm interested in grownup tree houses.
I'm 25 now.
I want eating at least, and I wantsome lights and I don't need a

(08:34):
toilet or anything but a, a nicecot or something to nap in or sleep.
But that fantasy of being theTreehouse guy started with a
quick hurry up, treehouse in mybackyard in Colorado Springs, but
it had to be a coffee table book.
We didn't have the internetof course, in 1987.
So how do you promote, how doyou become the Treehouse guy?
And I thought the quickest thingwould be a coffee table book.

(08:57):
So I looked high and low aroundthe country and even in other
countries for tree houses.
It was a boondoggle.
A fun excuse to go to Hawaii, forinstance, and look at maybe, you get a
few leads to see tree houses and takepictures for the coffee table book.
And it took seven years asthings do take seven years.
Anything that's worthwhileyou, I've noticed happen?

Mike (09:19):
Yes, sir. It's a

Pete (09:20):
Long time when you're 25, but seven years.
The book came out in 1994.
Houghton Mifflin publishedit, there was some fanfare.
The New York Times wrote it up in theirmagazine and it put six of my very
photographs into the magazine itself.
And I was thinking thathere I go, I'm on my way.
I'm gonna be the tree house guy.
And that didn't happen.

(09:40):
Exactly.
But, the fact is it was now out thereat least in some people's minds as a, an
alternative to the normal kids tree house.
And granted, I found a bunchof tree houses that were built
by grownups for grownups.
And so it's not like.
we're seeing this forthe first time in 1994.
These things have been part of thecounterculture, in the sixties.

(10:00):
Lots of great stories around that.
Like Taylor's camp out on what wasit, the big, no, that was on Kauai.
Hawaii island and other placesall over that had those kind of
the hippie hangs that were so funto imagine Tree, all inspired by
Swiss family Robinson, I'm sure.
the history goes much further back thanthat in terms of when we were in trees.
And I've gathered a lot of funstories about, about that very thing.

(10:23):
Tree houses have been around for along time, and they're and so for me
to suddenly jump in and try to lookat it from now the standpoint of,
structurally can we create somethingviable that lasts and, works with
the tree, there's so much to learn.
And so starting right away in 1987, Ifound out I didn't know much at all.

(10:44):
And here in 2025, boy, we have abody of knowledge now around it.
And it's all great news withone important exception.
Permitting.

Mike (10:55):
Yes.
Cities.

Pete (10:57):
Painful, but doable.
Doable.
The thing that we love about tree housesis that they're so spontaneous and
they're, it's the amateur that buildsthe treehouse, the amateur am love.
Maybe little more love in there than, justthe fact that you don't know what you're
doing, but you've got a, great projectthat typically starts carpenters like

(11:17):
myself on their path to building things.
But so tree houses have been aroundforever, but let's put the right size
stuff, under the platform to, span ifit's 20 feet or something between trees
and, oh boy, that bolt can't be thefive eights that you can get at the.
Hardware store.
You gotta think about, okay what can holdup a 20 foot long beam with a, let's say

(11:38):
an 8,000 or a 28,000 pound structure?
Well, There's math andit's just fascinating.
that side of building, can come into theworld of amateur treehouse construction
and then be, well permittable, getthe engineer to stamp that drawing
and let's put some mini splits in thisthing and have some air conditioning.

(12:00):
And maybe that toilet actually isn'ta composting, it's a flush toilet.
Oh my.
Wow.
That's great.
And the thread count could go up alittle bit too in the king size bed.
I don't know.
Queen seems plenty.
That's kinda you'd do.
Anything,

Trey (12:15):
yeah.
I'm wondering 'cause you saidyou were trying to make that
book and then it happened.
Was there a single project alongthe way through your journey that
maybe kicked everything off where itwas like, okay, we're cooking now?

Pete (12:27):
The project that I had determined that, okay, the idea isn't just to
be, some figure it's to have a living,make a living and a, career, you know,
that happened in 1992 up on Salt SpringIsland and that first book that came
out, it was really largely HoughtonMifflin that said why don't we, if you
wouldn't, consider creating a treehousethat we could do a photographic journey

(12:50):
through the beginning to the end.
And I got 10 of my best buddies all inthe building trades, to agree to come up.
And actually not all of 'emwere in the building trades.
That's, I tried to get as many of theguys that I thought would be decent
and help come up there with me.
And they did.
And in fact, as many as I counted,I recall in, the course of 10 days,
there were 23 people that camethrough and lended their help.

(13:12):
And it was a kind of a life changingmoment that time where you go, oh my
gosh, look, we're working hard in the day.
We're Creating something artistic.
And this tree was extraordinary fivefeet through at the base, and we built 33
feet up and created kind of a water towerround, 16 foot diameter shingle exterior.

(13:33):
We, didn't do the roof very well whichled to some trouble as it always will.
Bad roof is a bad project.
But it was life changingin that we had such fun.
Up on that beautiful island andthat beautiful tree creating
something that we were proud of.
And all of us worked hardand played hard at night.
We were, 20 whatever.
We I just turned 30 that year in 92.

(13:55):
So I had my two little boysthat were twin boys, Henry and
Charlie, they were on the TV show.
And Emily, my daughter was two years old.
And, we had all our young familieswith us and we just created this
memory that, was that fork in theroad for me and said, let's do this.
I wanna figure out how to makethis, if I could get excited, is
this getting up every day I'm in,I gotta figure out a way to do it.

(14:17):
And there were a few moreof those jobs along the way.

Mike (14:19):
That's awesome.
So when you start with a tree house, hwhere do people start in this process?
Do they start with a design?
Do they do.
Have to have a certainnumber of trees together.
You just mentioned one tree.
Can you

Pete (14:34):
do it with a single

Mike (14:35):
tree?

Pete (14:36):
Yeah, so it's so fun.
This is what I mean by every part ofthe tree house process the design,
the, the finding of the trees thebuilding, all of this stuff is
just pure joy for a lot of us.
And and that genesis, the momentwhere you go, okay, I want
to, I wanna find a tree house.
That can be a little daunting becausewait a minute don't, I've got some trees.
Naturally if you're thinking a treehouse, you probably have some trees Yeah.

(14:59):
Will go out in those trees to beginand you will be, once again, I'm
telling you, you're gonna findthose trees almost immediately.
It's not like you're gonna bewandering around like aimlessly.
You're gonna go right to the treesthat you are gonna build in, and you're
gonna go, oh, are they talking to me?
No, you just, you intuitively are ableto feel like, oh wait, this is right.

(15:19):
And yes, it's multiple trees, unlessyou have that one on salt Spring that's
five feet through and it's crazy.
And they're rare.
Texas has a lot of these trees.
It turns out those cypress trees, thebald cypress that, a lot of those big
pecans that you've got down there, it'sso many great trees all over the country.
Long living trees, good oak trees.
I love a a straight up treelike a telephone bowl tree.

(15:40):
'cause it's easier.
Okay.
Let's be, let's honest here.
I just, if you go into your woods andyou've got a lot of live oaks where
the branches are all over the place,you might become confused again.
Oh wait, Pete said itwas gonna be no problem.
And you get out there and you'vegot a, complex trees and then you've
got, an interesting problem to solve.
If we keep it simple and you go intoyour woods and it's a standard, set of

(16:03):
hemlocks or pines or whatever you've gotideally you're going to be in a bunch of
trees that are long living, around here.
They're the dug fursthe western red cedars.
Some hemlocks, although I don't lovethe hemlocks here in the northwest.
But, your trees big broadleafmaples here are good trees.
There's a lot of deadwood in them, but youknow, you know your local tree and try to

(16:23):
find the ones that aren't gonna be, aroundhere there's the alder, which is that
tree that lasts about 60, 80 years andthen it dies, and you don't want to invest
a bunch of time in one of those trees.
That's not gonna be around the hackberry,I know down in Texas is suspect,
find those hardwoods the dug furs.
That's probably my favorite tree.
But if you're lucky enough to wanderinto your back tree with this.

(16:45):
Inkling of an idea, then I promise you,you'll find that tree and you'll want
to be in that tree or in those trees.
And then the multiple treeset up is 99% of the builds
that we do are multiple trees.
And you'll find something that,again, it's always good news.
You'll go into the center, sayyou found the perfect spot.
It's got the view of the lake alittle bit, but there's privacy.

(17:07):
And you go into this little groveof trees and you'll also notice
that, wow, look at, in the centerof this, there's a big opening here.
I mean, the branches all kind ofhead out towards the sun or the other
direction, but look at the buildingenvelope that I have to work with.
And now.
If you trust yourself intuitively, you cango into the phase of, concept design real

(17:27):
quickly you first celebrate the fact thatyou found your tree house location because
you're like, wow that's working out.
And now you get the joy of creatingsomething in your mind's eye, right?
you put it on paper.
I do this on paper all the timewhere you just measure between
the trees, you get the diameter.
If they're telephone pole style trees,you just get a good diameter and you

(17:49):
can triangulate on your drawing paper.
Say I use everybody's using computersthese days and I have to confess I'm
a hand drawing guy and I get my grid.
I use the 11 by 16 and Igo down to quarter inch.
That should be plenty scale, andI just do everything by hand.
And I build it in that way verydeliberately, very consciously with my

(18:11):
thoughts, that beautiful meditation ofdesign and drawing, and you're in there.
Okay, more good news is that, you knowwhat I like to make sure people do is you
can certainly have branches go throughand stems go through your tree house,
but it's gonna leak if you do that.
I would caution against that.
And then again, if it's just a hangoutthat you don't mind having the drips

(18:32):
come in probably on your poetry orsomething that you don't want to have get
wet because that's the way that works.
But yeah, I'd say don't have anypenetrations in the envelope.
If your building, if you want it to besomething that, you send guests out to
for an overnight or something and youwant it to be a nice conditioned space.
So this then I'm saying you get your treesplotted on your paper to the right scale.

(18:54):
And then I'll usually go about.
I can squeeze up to a tree maybe18 inches away, 12 inches if it's
tight and you need that space.
But, give the tree some spaceand then you just basically
put, oh, here's my no-go zone.
And then you do that around all yourtrees and then you have the envelope,
what are the parameters of thisbuilding that you wanna put up there?
And is that big enough or is it too big?

(19:16):
Sometimes it's too big.
And then you create the platform.
that's the starting point in your concept.
here's the platform.
I've got two beams, that stickstraight out one tree to the next.
And there's one over here thatI've got, I don't know, I'm getting
a little into the weeds here.
Forgive me.
But, the idea is you get a platformup pretty darn easily, quickly.

(19:37):
I mean, Yeah, go ahead.

Mike (19:38):
Is it easier to platform lower or higher, or is there a certain height?
You want to be with a tree house?

Pete (19:46):
Absolutely.
So the higher you're in the tree, themore the tree's moving in the wind.
Ah, yes.
You can absolutely do that, but youmight be hanging your platform, say
from cables and, we've got extra heavyduty hardware these days that would,
could take the weight high or low.
But my feeling, especially asnow I'm in my sixties is I've

(20:07):
thought this way for a long time.
I don't wanna climb 20 feet in the air.
Some people don't think that's, legit.
you've gotta be at least20 feet to be a treehouse.
And I disagree.
I think that you can use yourtopography sometimes to your advantage.
So if your deck is 20feet in the air, great.
But if you're having to climb 20feet up, that's a ways up, you know?
so I,

Mike (20:25):
yes,

Pete (20:26):
it's, I love.
I love a little, 12 foot climb and workwith the topography if you've got it.

Trey (20:32):
Also getting a permit for 20 feet up is especially if you're doing
residential in a backyard, they mightnot like that, especially the hoa.
They may not.

Pete (20:38):
That's a good point.
The HOA is another side of this, and Iwould say there's so many tips I want
to give to people that are consideringthis, but one is if you're in an
urban area with neighbors and such,getting 20 feet up in the air, whether
you're looking over their backyardor something, it's probably a no go.
But also, even if you're not, it'salways nice to talk to your neighbor and
let them know that this is what you'recreating and hoping that they're okay

(21:01):
with, because when the neighbor complains,that's when the building department
gets involved and then, yeah, on and on.

Trey (21:07):
So you don't want that.

BBQ End (21:11):
We are gonna take a break here for a second and get into outdoor living.
So with outdoor living, we like togo to barbecue bits here we're gonna
share some information of everythingthat you may want to consider in
your outdoor living space as far asfeatures, especially for the kitchen.
Hope you enjoy this.

Mike (21:31):
Filling up a pot.
Mm-hmm.
That's sitting on a burner.
One of the nice things aboutthis burner too, I'm just gonna
point out is it's recessed.
Yes.
It's not up on top.
So if this is up here, me cookingup here is much harder, right.
Than if the, this is lower.
Right.
And we're gonna, you know,cooking something like that.
Right.
So if you're gonna do somethingwith a burner a lot, a lot of times

(21:53):
that's a nice feature to look at.
It is that you've got set up here,it's, but this explain this feature.
'cause I think this isreally nice to have.

Bobby (22:00):
We were specifying these in the early eighties.
It not that it took a dive.
We see trends thatreenter the market again.
Sure.
The pot filler faucet, here we go again.
They wanna bring everythingfrom the indoors to outdoors.
We don't have to bringgallons of water out there.
Um, water is right there at your command.
You can fill it up withouthaving to lift the pot up there.

(22:22):
You're exactly right.
This burner recess does a lot of things.
It pro provides a wind wall.
I can see inside of it, it's not toohigh where I don't burn my forearms.
But also if you're doing soups,um, any type of tortilla soups or
chilies, it's always nice to havethis feature here if you need that.
Um, also it serves other purposes.

(22:43):
If I need a wipe down a counter andthings like that, I can take when I'm
done and I'm doing my cleanup, I can.
Have my dawn dish washing liquid,fill that up and then do a wipe down
of all my equipment after the cook.
So,

Mike (22:55):
okay.
So is there issues withthis, with the cold weather?

Bobby (23:00):
There is not.
Um, and it's just like any other faucet.
But with the, uh, creation ofpecs, uh, instead of copper.
Yeah.
Uh, it's now value added.
We're seeing a lot more water and,uh, ice machines in outdoor kitchens
because that PEX line, which isa poly vinyl line, doesn't expand

(23:21):
and contract like copper does.
Uh, I will mention this though.
When you terminate your water, youdon't, you wanna make sure that you
have a water termination under here,and then you open up the valve on this.
So the ice or water, if it freezes duringcold months, it doesn't expand the line.
We want to do that.
So a lot of people will terminate thewater, but they'll forget to release this.

(23:45):
That opens up an airspace.
So if the ice does, you know, thewater does expand after it freezes,
it will not break the unit, so.

Mike (23:54):
Awesome.

Bobby (23:55):
And who

Mike (23:55):
is this made

Bobby (23:55):
by?
It's made by Alfresco.
This is their pot filler tower.

Mike (23:58):
Okay.

Bobby (23:59):
3 0 4 stainless.
3 0 4 Tower.
What is stainless?
What does 3 0 4 mean to you as a consumer?
Has a lot of nickel and chromium in it.
So if I have a salt water system, um,then this is not going to pit or rust.

Mike (24:14):
Okay, very good.
Thanks.
Thanks all.

BBQ Ending (24:18):
So I hope you enjoyed the barbecue bits that we just featured today,
and we'll have more coming up next week.
If there's something in particular thatyou're interested for, let us know and
we'll get back into the episode now.

Mike (24:32):
Okay.
So it's nice to have something up about 12feet and so we build our platform there.
And is there a certain size that's like,Hey, these are good treehouse sizes.
I mean, Is it a hundredsquare feet or 200 or 800?
Or where is y'all sweet spot.
Yeah,

Pete (24:50):
I think my sweet spot it's funny 'cause I'm looking at, there's,
my phone is sitting next to me.
It says 3 5 1 3 51.
350 square feet is a good size tree house.
Okay?
I can squeeze a decent tree house into200 square feet if I needed to, and I've
needed to for, those same reasons that thebuilding a department allows 200 square
feet or 120 square feet without a permit.

(25:13):
So 120 gets a little tight.
But, look at the sprinter vans.
Everybody's got, you can make do withjust about anything, but I would say
350 square feet is a. A pretty goodsized tree house where you can have your
separation between, say your bed area.
It's always great to have, a bedroom.
treehouse is, perfect place fora nap, let alone an overnight.

(25:34):
But yeah you've got a bedroomarea, a kitchenette area, living
room, hang gotta have a deck.
Of course up here you gotta have alittle roof over your deck so you don't
get wet in that kind of drizzly rain.
Yeah.
Just not much.
Not much.
And you can fit even all thosethings I described into something
tighter when you need to.

Mike (25:53):
Just like tiny houses up in the air.

Pete (25:55):
Yeah, but you're not confined with, going down the road at eight and a
half feet wide or whatever that reg is.
they can be such interesting structures.
So fun and, and once your platformis up, then you can create
whatever you want on top of that.
The hardware we're using, is it's, I don'twant to, certified isn't the word, but
we've gone over to the Washington stateand tested this hardware and dug fur and

(26:17):
some softer woods and, you can handlequite enormous weights in the trees.
You've gotta allow for thesetrees to move and the wind.
So there's some important.
Techniques that are quite simpleand easily understood once
you do a little investigation.
But, you know, if you allow your beams,those two beams that I was describing,

(26:39):
you've gotta let those move a little bitwhen the trees are moving in the wind and
when they're growing, you've got the otheradded consideration is they get fatter.
Trees are gonna get fatter and it's hardto believe how quickly they do grow,
some of them in the right environment.
They might put a half aninch of wood on every year.
Oh, wow.
So 10 years later you've got weight.
That's a lot of wood.

(27:00):
Another quick thing to point out isrelative to the ground, once you lock
into your tree height, let's say youget up there at 12 feet and you, your
platform is there at 12 feet when thetrees grow, they're not all growing up.
That platform isn't movingrelative to the ground.
You're locked into that.
The heartwood or thesapwood anyway of the tree.
And so the tree, as it grows,it's getting greater in girth.

(27:23):
It's getting fatter, butit's growing up at the tips.
So it's getting taller up aboveyou and it's getting taller out
at the tips of the branches, butyour platform is not moving up.

Mike (27:33):
Okay.
That's good to know.
So to get up to my platform,do people use ladders?
Do they build staircases?
how do you get up that 12 feet?
I. My, with my 60-year-old legs.

Pete (27:45):
Yeah, don't ladders.
And especially not a ropeladder, please, people.
Oh, no rope ladders.
they kick away from you.
They're terrible.
So I say build a staircase.
Come on.
The dog's gotta come up there.
What's he gonna, you can't climb a ladder.
Some dogs can, I think, but no, let'sget a ergonomically correct staircase.

Mike (28:05):
Okay.
So we do a seven inch riserand, build it all the way up.
And that way the buildingdepartments are happy that we meet
food as we go up to our stairs.

Pete (28:14):
We can meet code and that's what's so fun.
And we do 99% of theprojects they're permitted.
when we're out in Montana well,heck, there's plenty of places around
the country where you don't needpermits, which is quite amazing to me.
parts of Texas we built, yes, same thing.
But you do wanna build it up tocode because you want it to be safe
and you want it to be long lasting.
And yeah.
A normal set of stairs, a normalrailing, you know, I don't love

(28:37):
the 42 inch railing just because ofproportions on a tree house, but I do
a 42 inch railing because that's thecode, at least in the commercial stuff.
And hotel type tree houses,which we build a lot of.

Mike (28:48):
Okay.
So we've got our platform, wegot some stairs going up to it.
We're recommended.
We don't penetrate thewalls and the ceiling.
And then we can create whateverspace we want in there.
So what are some really coolthings people do in those spaces?
besides the bed, gotta sleep out the tree

Pete (29:07):
Puzzle tables, my kids are all into puzzles big time.
Game tables it's an intimate space.
So these are what make them so magical.
It's

Trey (29:16):
unique.

Pete (29:17):
You know, I'm not saying you don't have a television in there, because
nowadays, we put plenty of TVs into thesetree houses, and at the beginning of
this, that was a swear word in my mind.
What?
No, but TVs aside, what you'reoften doing is having that.
Time.
If you've got a loved one upthere or a anybody up in a space
like that, you automatically arein a little more intimate place.

(29:40):
Solve the world's problems,solve your own problems.
Do some communicating and put thephone down and it seems automatic in
tree houses where you do more of that.

Mike (29:50):
I feel that there's gotta be a certain connection with nature in
that space which takes you away from,the normal setting and provides you a
place of tranquility and peace in that.
Space.
like you said, it's kind ofmagical, but I think that's part
of the magic, I would think.

Trey (30:09):
Talk about biophiliac design.

Mike (30:11):
Yeah.
That's biophilic design to the hilt.

Pete (30:14):
Yeah.
It's neat 'cause had myoffice in a tree house.
very fun.
In 1994, we moved out fromSeattle to a community about.
25 miles to the East and it's,this great piece of ground.
A lot of it great woods.
That's why I was so attracted to it.
Built a tree house right away and triedto convince Judy to move in with the

(30:36):
kids and she said, absolutely not.
We will not be moving.
So I made it into my office and asyou were talking about that nature
being, connected to nature like thatI spent many years, looking out to
see a goldfinch or, a little re justface to face and sitting on that branch
and it really was a beautiful thing.

(30:57):
Being directly in nature like that,you can't help but appreciate it.
When you're in it, I.

Trey (31:02):
It's a different nature that we get to experience too.
'cause you're higher up, you see thesquirrels running on the trees, but when
you're in the tree and the squirrelsjust running around, like it's different.
Yeah.

Pete (31:11):
It's different.
And good luck keeping those squirrelsout of your tree house because
man, they're crafty, aren't they?
Oh

Mike (31:17):
Yeah.
I had the perfect place for a treehouse and I planned it in conjunction
with my pool, and that's gonnahave a slide coming out of it.
Perfect.
And I told the kids, I waslike, the slide's not coming
till the grandkids come.
And they're like yeah, whatever.
Well, When they were building mypool, only time it's ever happened,
the the guy that was doing the rockwork at a rookie out there and he

(31:39):
ran in to all three of my key trees.
Oh.
And killed them all.

Pete (31:45):
Oh my gosh.

Mike (31:46):
So I was just like well, That ruined my tree house.
Yeah.
so I'm so sorry.
Yeah.
because it was gonna wrap aroundthe waterfall and it was all set up
those trees have since passed andoh, there might be another place in
the yard that we can do something.
But that, that's right.
You have some

Pete (32:04):
other sounds like you've got other trees, but damn,
that would've been great one.

Mike (32:07):
Yeah.
So now the grandkids havestarted and my oldest daughter's
like where's our tree house?
And slide.

Pete (32:14):
Pressure is on.
The pressure's on I've, I put pressureon a lot of dads around this country.

Mike (32:18):
Yeah, I'm sure granddads step up to the plate too.
Especially, so one of the things that'sreally generated, especially since Covid
is Tre mentioned the biotic design,but the health and wellness aspect of
people just wanting to be out in nature.
I'm sure that's driven the treehouse industry as well is we do
with all outdoor living spaces.

Pete (32:39):
Yeah, no doubt.
We've been extremely busy.
The I know since Covid there was abig uptick in a lot of those more
wellness things and particularlyin the hospitality world.
Our business is the one-off, things thatthe market that we've seen to, to find
in our everyday business is the one-off.
For somebody that's just gotta have theirtreehouse, and it's a high end product.

(33:00):
It, this is where we've endedup and we're grateful for it.
The ones where you have to sharpenyour pencil, let's say a little
bit more, and, do multiple treehouses for this hospitality
market it's a different animal.
but they've seen this too that,they find that world finds
tree houses very attractive.
Like we want to get out in natureand we wanna reconnect with nature

(33:22):
and fall in love with nature.
So these tree houses are really,in demand in that market too.
It's a hard one for us to meetwith budgets being tighter, I
think in general, in that world.
But we are still, finding workand creating these great spaces.

Trey (33:36):
Well, It makes sense because doing a little research before we
did the podcast, I've loved goingto like cabins for vacations with
friends or family or stuff like that.
And then I'm looking at allthese quote unquote resorts, but
like these places to go to fordestination and these tree houses.
And I'm thinking in my head,I'm like, why not spend like a
weekend trip in a tree house?
This sounds amazing.
So it's seems like a reallysmart business idea to do.

(33:58):
You see these like bamboo areas inBali and all, all over the world.
There's different cultures that have donetree houses and cities and not really
cities but small towns of tree houses.
So it's really cool

Pete (34:11):
there's a really neat one in Utopia, Texas that yeah.
Has four tree houses andthat Yeah, on the SA River.
Oh my gosh.
With those gorgeous cypresstrees and big monster cypress
trees and tree houses to match.
there's four tree houses at TreehouseUtopia that are opulent, to say the least.

Mike (34:29):
Yeah.
That's just west of San Antoniofor uh, those that don't
know where Utopia, Texas is.

Trey (34:35):
Yeah, they're

Pete (34:35):
big.
It's really utopia too.

Mike (34:37):
how long ago did y'all build that project?

Pete (34:40):
We started, it was a stair step.
We were in Lakey, Texas on the Rio River.
Built a beautiful tree house for couplewas on the Tree House Master Show.
And to celebrate that, we went overto the next valley in Utopia and had
a fancy dinner with a great restaurantthere at the Laurel Tree Restaurant.
And Laurel said, wait a minute,you guys are tree house builders.

(35:00):
Look at this tree.
And we built a six top.
So in the restaurant lingo, webuilt a little place for a special
dinner at this restaurant ina beautiful, big old oak tree.
White live oak.
so suddenly we were there in utopia.
And then celebrating that finish,we were down on the, Saal River
and found the most amazing trees.

(35:20):
And I said, can we come back andjust build a few tree houses here?
And they agreed.
That's how we ended up creatingthose in 2015 through 17.

Mike (35:29):
Okay, so I've got a dream of a tree house.
I'm gonna call you and I'mgonna have you work up a design.
how long is that, like six monthproject, nine month project?
Three months?
How does it take to do adesign on a tree house?

Pete (35:43):
it depends, you know, I mean, that's a fair

Mike (35:46):
answer, but, you

Pete (35:46):
it's always been amazing because we did that tree house masters show
and we would do two shows a month.
And that went on forseven years, essentially.
And it was nonstop.
So when there was often an issue.
So there's a range here.
And this is why I say it depends,because typically, you know, if if we're
gonna do a, real comprehensive fancy.
Tree house, which is most of them now.

(36:08):
It could take three, four months to, dothe design work in the back and forth.
And then we have to finda spot in the schedule.
But when we were doing the show, Iremember one time I was we had an
opening that all of a sudden showedup right after Christmas and I went
oh gosh, it was in Texas too notfar out of Dallas, Celeste, Texas.
And we got there sometime betweenChristmas and New Year's and then

(36:28):
looked, found the trees, drew thething, they were excited we were
there, that first Monday of the newyear, boom, ready to go, built it.
And we had 19 film days, so itwas done within three weeks.
So they went from zero todone in, about a month.

Mike (36:45):
Not a common thing today, I'm sure.
But

Pete (36:48):
you know what, it trained us all in a funny way, and we
are we're all sort of a DHD.
We've got the hyper in thereand we get bored quickly.
So we go through these thingswithout cutting corners.
I'll have, you know, but we absolutelylike to go a little high speed.
And that's the fun of it.
These things I built single familyhouses for years before the tree house

(37:09):
thing started really picking up for me.
I went right into doing singlefamily stuff and I would find myself
bored by the time I was framed up.
And oh, it just on and on.
And so these things, at leastfor a personality like my own,
these tree houses, the scale ofthem, it's so satisfying because
even the er ones, we just wrappedone in New Canaan, Connecticut?

(37:30):
And it was six weeks all in, but it's got,tile around the fireplace and it's got
incredible wiring for all the new stuff.
And, it was complicated.
Very complex treehouse, and we'redone in six weeks beginning to end.

Mike (37:45):
Okay.
So the design work takes some time, butthen the construction sounds like you're
saying moves fairly quickly once youfinally get on the boots on the ground?

Pete (37:54):
Yeah.
that's typically your, a crew that mightbe as little as four, but typically six.
We don't go much more than sixguys on a job with the scale of it.
It's just we'd be on topof each other too much.
So that's about The typicallength of a construction project.
But yeah, design is such a beautiful thingbecause you could spend a lot of time
with it and get to know the property.

(38:14):
That's another thing that is a joy whenyou have the time to property properly,
locate something set it, considering allthe factors and when you have time to do
that, you can really make something sing.
had two hours on site many timesand said, okay, here's where we go.

Mike (38:32):
Yeah.
I was looking, you have liketwo or three architects on
staff that just do design work?

Pete (38:38):
We do, we have, we actually have three at the moment and myself, I. I
hate to admit it, I get it to 60%.
I always say 60%.
Here it is, and I think it's a hundredpercent, but it's really only about
60% when they take, they find all theproblems and they iron out all the things.
And then what about over here?
Oh, yeah.
That, yeah.
I thought yeah, it takes time.

Mike (38:56):
It's a concept.
It's the idea.
You're the idea guy, and then theyflesh out how to make it all work.
That's a good team.
Yeah.

Pete (39:03):
In fairness though too, I give a lot of, blank slate stuff to, to,
Daniel's our lead architect there andhe deserves to have a blank canvas.
Of course.
So I love this.
As you can see, design is one of myfavorite things, And yet I've got
employees that I gotta keep busy.
So a lot of times I'm just kindalike, guess you can have it.

Mike (39:21):
I understand.
That's, yeah.
I have a degree in landscape architectureand, I've specialized just in
outdoor living spaces for, decades.
But it's the fun of comingup with the idea yeah.
Solving and creating thedream of somebody's setting.

Pete (39:36):
It's often fun too when you see this what you've been doing, and that is,
trying to capture vision of the client.
I think you can seethrough our website that.
There's somebody thatloves Frank Lloyd Wright.
Okay we'll do a Frank Lloyd Wright styletreehouse, but then there's another
one that likes the green and green.
So you get that more arts andcrafts and, I'm just a conduit and

(39:58):
I think you are in your landscapebusiness, probably to a degree.
I don't know, but a

Mike (40:01):
hundred percent.
Yeah, sir.

Pete (40:03):
Yeah.
I like that part of it.
'cause you're kind of a chameleon andyou can turn whatever color you've
gotta turn just to make sure thatyou're getting the dream captured.

Mike (40:12):
That's the fun of it, that, some people are like I have a certain style.
And I'm like and then you're limited.
So if you get to be the chameleon, as yousaid, you get to go all kinds of different
places and do all kinds of differentthings and it's just never boring.
So you guys do work outsideof the United States?

Pete (40:28):
We do.
In fact one of the, fun things that justhappened I was aware of it, but Daniel,
lead architect and Darrell, who's beenwith me for 25 years already, I can't
believe it just got back from Zimbabwe.

Trey (40:41):
Oh, what, okay.

Pete (40:42):
Yeah.
I was like, wait, I knowthese things happen.
You comes across your desk.
a possibility of somebody in Zimbabwe.
And I go, that sounds great.
And that was, I remember now 'cause Isaid, why don't you guys do that one?
That sounds like too far away.
I'm busy right now.
They just got back and, mydaughter who does the books,
I was like how did that work?
And she said $58,000 is how it worked.

(41:03):
Wow.
They paid $58,000 to havethem come to us Zimbabwe.
That they did.

Mike (41:08):
Yeah.
You want the right peopleto do the right job.
You gotta get 'em there.
But

Pete (41:12):
that's cool.
I'm impressed with bothguys, Darryl and Daniel.
Thank you for that.
And Emily, but yeah, they just got backSaturday, so I haven't been downloaded.
I think they're wrecked.
I'll find out how it all went.
Probably tomorrow, I hope.
Yeah.

Trey (41:24):
This podcast is directed to the homeowner and there might be homeowners
out there that are going through aprocess right now, maybe building a tree
house, and it's maybe not through y'all.
we talked about, y'all don'twant to cut corners, we talked
about how your trees got killed.
So how does a homeowner knowokay, they're doing something
wrong that could kill the tree.

(41:44):
Is there any common themes or,

Pete (41:47):
well.
Well, In terms of protecting thetrees that, are the ones that you
might wanna have host a tree housesomeday is this root compaction is
what the arborist talk about a lot.
If you're running equipment over theroot flare the, say the drip line
of the tree, you want to protectthose small roots around most trees.
Some trees are, there's no problemat all with root compaction.

(42:09):
I was stunned at, in Central Parkin New York City just a week ago, I
was taking pictures of the exposedroots of these fabulous trees that
seemed to be doing really well.
And, thousands of peopleare trampling all over 'em.
But, so some trees do fine, if you'retalking about trying to like let's be
careful with the trees that we wannabuild in, then I would say just cordon
off the drip line of these trees.

(42:30):
It's also picking the right tree.
And as I said earlier, I think a lotof lots of help with A good arborist,
which are all over the country canhelp guide you if you're not really
clear on which trees are the longerliving type trees or the, ones that
you might end up, investing a lot ofeffort in building your tree house.
You wanna make sure they're in good shape.
And then also theconditions that they're in.

(42:50):
You might wanna make sure that it's gota good draining soil or, there's a lot of
things to consider here, but, so I don'twanna overwhelm anybody because I think.
The overall answer is almost within you.
You go into the trees and yousee, oh, this one looks really
healthy and this one, and it is,and it's probably the right tree.
You of course, inspect and seeif there's some of that damage.

(43:11):
Like somebody maybe years ago hitthat with your excavator, whatever
that kind of terrible moment was.
But trees are quite resilient too,so they can often come back, like
they're they patch, they fix, theyrams horn around those wounds and
they try to close up that bark there.
And they're sometimes, successful alot of trees, extremely resilient.

Trey (43:31):
So if someone doesn't have the perfect tree do y'all ever build support
structures or towers of some kind?
Sure.
Okay,

Pete (43:40):
sure.
We do that.
sometimes the dream exceeds theability of the trees to hold it.
So we'll push over here and put a postdown for the bathroom or what have you,
there's often in the style of buildingthat, we've really gravitated, as I
said earlier, to the bigger tree houses.
And they're substantial.
350 square feet is on the smallend of what we're doing these days.

(44:00):
They're more often six 50to some more than that.
We did a 2,700 square foottreehouse in Panera, Texas.
That is quite something.

Trey (44:11):
These tree houses have to be strong.
They got shack in them.
He's a big guy.

Mike (44:16):
It's gotta

Trey (44:16):
have

Mike (44:16):
a pretty high roof plate.

Trey (44:18):
Yeah.

Pete (44:19):
Yeah, Trees really do move and that's why, I say I like to be down
in the lower quarter of the tree.
I think about that often whenI'm looking at them and going,
is that the right height?
Quarter of the tree?
And it's generally seems about right.
Yeah.
That, 10 to 12 feet is a sweetspot, I think, for height.
Oh yeah.

Mike (44:35):
So one thing I did notice on your website is you do have like a store
for DYI people that are doing this.
Is that correct?
what does that have forsomebody if they're looking
to build their own tree house?

Pete (44:48):
This is all my daughter Emily Nelson is remarkable.
She's, a dynamo and has two littlekids or grandkids and still is growing.
This DIY side of the business, soit's Nelson Treehouse and Supply.
I concentrate on the tree houses, butEmily was charged with the e-commerce side
of the business maybe 10 years ago now.

(45:09):
And it started out as, mostly hatsand t-shirts for the television show.
But we quickly we'd hoped that therewas a market for the hardware and
that is 95% of what she's selling now.
And it runs the gamut so we can,there's a lot of education in,
selling people treehouse hardware.
We want them to understand, the forceshere, which can be quite considerable.

(45:32):
So a. Part of our website that,does more of the education.
There's a tree house building guidethat, goes through step by step.
as we started with the idea of a treehouse, and then we show you through the
installation of the hardware and creatingof platforms and that kind of thing.
So the hardware is what we sell.
A lot of and Emily, it's all taxtime right now I'm, it may be a

(45:56):
little crass, but Emily sold over amillion dollars of software last year.
what am I saying?
Software, hardware.

Mike (46:03):
Gotcha.

Pete (46:04):
Awesome.
So this is mostly our tree forthardware, which is the smaller version
of the stuff on the bigger tree houses.
We have the heavy limb that we'vegot the standard limb, and these are.
These are bolts that go into the side ofthe tree and then hold up those beams.
So our heavy limb, we tested atWashington State and it dug fur.

(46:26):
Our heavy limb, our biggest pieceof hardware was tested up to 50,000
pounds before the, basically thefibers of the trees started to crush.
And, the engineers deemed itas, failure at 50,000 pounds.
An engineer will only give you, safetyfactor of say two and a half, three
x. You can go and show that heavylimb could support a tree house and

(46:46):
you, or that point could support upto 20,000 pounds maybe thereabouts.
But then the hardware that we'vebeen selling a lot of is that
backyard style, the mom and dadtree Ford as we're calling it.
And we've got hardware that suits that.
Purpose.
that's really cooking right now,especially in the spring when
people start getting excitedabout their Treehouse projects.

Mike (47:08):
So is there a treehouse season where it's busier than others?

Pete (47:13):
It's right now people are planning their tree houses.
when you start seeing the buds comingout on the trees, all of a sudden Emily
gets very busy and it's quite something.
she does it through Shopify, you know,and she's a digital native it seems, even
at 34, but she keeps sending me picturesof her sales and it's just so fun.
She's so excited aboutwhat's cooking right now.

(47:34):
The things are just jumping in theworld of, DIY tree house building.

Mike (47:38):
That's awesome.

Trey (47:39):
Oh, yeah.
I'm wondering, so do y'all do, just'cause it seems like y'all have a good
niche of designing and then building it.
Are there people that come to you andthey just want your design and then
they try to build it on their own?
How does that work?

Pete (47:51):
Great question.
There's only a little bit of that.
But we've done plenty ofdesigns that could carry on.
If it does carry on.
The, this is it's such an interestingbusiness and maybe a lot of others where.
we'll say, okay, if you're serious,the first thing I'll do is a site
visit and the site visit costsx number of dollars, you're not
committing to anything more than that.
And then the concept design andyou're, we'll usually charge

(48:14):
somebody 5% of a proposed budget.
If you have a half a milliondollar tree house budget, you
might have $50,000 as 10%.
So you might have $25,000 in a conceptdesign, and you can stop there.
If you want to carry onand, it's a la carte.
So people that want to have me drawtheir tree house are investing quite

(48:36):
a bit in that and will nine, if it'sa successful sales job and they do the
job, then you know, 99% of 'em, I'm.
We're sending our crew to build.
Okay.
There are those that stop right thereand say, okay, I've got my plans.
I'm happy.
in fact, I know a few ofthem that have done that.
Exactly.
That they've gone offand built it themselves.

Trey (48:56):
We've had that happen too.
And sometimes it's turns out good,sometimes it turns out terrible.
We don't know.
'cause, they don't deal with us.
same thing.

Mike (49:03):
I have a question.
Have you had many people incorporate,I mean my background for 20
years was just swimming pools.
And I did the outdoorliving stuff as well.
But now, today it's all overanything outdoors is basically
what we're working on.
And have you had people incorporatelike a pool slide like I was

(49:23):
talking about with a tree house?

Pete (49:25):
I am so sorry to say that.
We have not done that yet.
Oh,

Trey (49:29):
wow.
We could have a first then.
Y'all had hot tubs though.
I've seen those

Pete (49:33):
been hot tubs.
There's been talk of slides into thepool, there was one guy in Louisville,
Kentucky that was all hot to trot andthen covid that was the end of it.
But no slides into pools yet,but geez, there should be

Trey (49:46):
or zip lines, yeah.

Mike (49:48):
So what you must have a lot of zip lines out of tree houses as an exit route.

Pete (49:53):
There are, but we don't do zip lines.
We were specifically told by ourinsurers that you do not build zip lines.
That

Mike (49:59):
makes sense.
Yes.
We've dealt with zip lines on a personallevel, so that makes total sense.

Trey (50:04):
Yeah.
We would go backpacking and bring thezip line with us, and we've had some
fiascos in the wilderness with zip lines.
I can imagine.
Oh yeah.
So your

Pete (50:12):
backpackers, oh yeah.
You guys go.
I love backpacking.
I still do it.

Mike (50:16):
we've been going up into Southwestern, Pagosa Springs,
Durango women, the Uch Wildernessthere in the Southwest corner.
Been going in there for 50 years.

Pete (50:26):
I took an Outward Bound class in San Juan Range in 1980.
Yeah.
not too long ago.

Mike (50:33):
Well, I was in there at that time as well.
Who knows.
We might've been inwilderness at the same time.

Pete (50:38):
Beautiful area.

Mike (50:39):
instead of Outward Bound, I did through Knowles,
which is a similar school, no.
Oh,

Pete (50:42):
sure.
Yeah.
I did

Mike (50:43):
Knowles up in Wyoming in 85 I was out back back country for six weeks.
So that was a lot of fun.

Pete (50:50):
Anyway.
That's so good.
Yeah, that was, Knowles washardcore, outward Bound was
a little lighter, I think.

Mike (50:56):
They're both great programs.
So where

Pete (50:58):
I, where I've been going my dad took me up into the Sierras
in 1988, that's where I go.
I go into that.
Kings Canyon, Yosemite's great,but it's so full of people.
I generally look for thoseplaces where you're in solitude.
If you haven't been up in the Sierras,but I have a feeling you have,

Mike (51:14):
Trey was born in Northern California, so Yes.
I lived out between Sacramentoand Napa for 12 years.
Oh, great.
And there was a place up, northernCalifornia, which a lot of people
don't even know that exists'cause they think San Francisco's
as far north as the state goes.
And there was some awesome backpackingcountry up there, almost to Oregon.

(51:35):
but that was great.

Trey (51:36):
So when people invest quite a bit of money into something, they typically
want to know about the warranty, right?
And this makes sense with likecars and like custom houses,
custom pools, custom tree houses.
I have no idea how does that evenwork with the warranty process?

Pete (51:52):
That's funny because I don't think about that much either.
I think we don't build a lotof tree houses bottom line.
We might do a dozen a year,something like that, and they're
all like our kids in a way.
And so I just feel like we'llalways take care of 'em and I get
very little, calls to say, Hey,can you come and work on this?
And it's interesting that way becauseI feel like they all have lifetime

(52:13):
warranties, but a, don't get many calls.
And then b I love checking up on them too.
Learning what we can from where we were,how the trees respond is the main thing.
And I guess the straight answer is thatwe probably have the same kind of warranty
that you'd have on a house, right?
Is it a year of
Repair and such?
Yeah.
Yeah.

Trey (52:32):
Warranty.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that's good.
life.
Wow.
Yeah.

Pete (52:35):
I love going back.
So we have a project in Gatlinburg,Tennessee, and I go back there every year.
And it's only been up since,actually it opened, right?
The first year of Covid in 2020.
And it's only been five years and I wasthere last summer and I'm amazed at how.
they're poplars thatare growing so quickly.
So I'm monitoring that a lotand I'm learning too a lot.

(52:56):
You go, oh, well poplarsgrow quicker than I thought.
Okay, what's gonna, how'sthis gonna work in 20 years?
And that'll be Henry and Charliethat have to deal with that.
I think my sons

Mike (53:07):
you mentioned earlier there's certain woods.
Is there certain trees thatyou don't want to build in?
'cause they're too soft or they're,

Pete (53:14):
there are.
Yeah.
There, there're plenty I'm sure.
Cottonwoods are, Ooh,

Trey (53:18):
yeah.

Pete (53:19):
All over the place.
And cottonwoods in the northwesthere, they grow to enormous sizes.
I mean, Three feet through is commonand they're a hundred feet tall and
they will drop a branch the sizeof, Arnold Schwarzenegger's leg.
And It's in the middle of the moststill calm, beautiful summer days,
and it's like a shotgun blast.

(53:39):
And then that thing is coming down andit's horrifying to imagine if you had a,
you were on your tree house deck there.
So avoid cottonwoods.
Again, our alders here the Westernred alder is a very short-lived tree.
They tend to come right in afterthe, common clear cut up here
and then that puts some nitrogenback in the soil pretty quickly.
so they live short periodsof time and become nutrients.

(54:02):
There's a lot of trees that are moreI'm trying to think of examples.
When I was a kid, like the Catalpathey've got those big long bean stocks
and the branches shed almost like a celeryor, there's trees that I think intuitively
you're gonna look at and go, wait, thisversus those that you go, wow, this is
one of those a live oak or a, a Cyprus,a beautiful mature Cyprus or Doug fur.

(54:23):
As I said earlier, my favorites.
There's some greathemlock trees out there.
The northwest hemlock is not a great tree.
It seems like they're susceptibleto some root rot around
here with the damp weather.
And, but the cedars talk aboutliving well and damp weather.
Cedars love the western red cedar here.
The redwood, what a great tree.
Although they grow, talkabout adding wood every year.

(54:44):
Those guys can put on a lot ofwood and mess around with your
tree houses, in a few years.

Mike (54:50):
And there's a lot of mass up there up in the air, that's for sure.
can certainly grow tall.
Mm-hmm.

Trey (54:56):
Have y'all ever run into the bark beetles or wood boring beetles?
Yeah.
Yeah, because I yeah,

Pete (55:02):
yeah.
In Alaska there was a big outbreak.
I did a tree house in 1995 for GusGunther, one of the great character.
And we knew that was in the areabecause the beetle kill can take
out great swaths of the forest, andthat's been going on for a long time.
In fact, my dad told youhe went to forestry school.
I was looking at one of his old booksand we were talking about the, in

(55:24):
Colorado the beetle kill that wouldjust, it was almost like clockwork.
Every 17 years or somethingthat would show up somewhere.
And in the case of our treehouse inAlaska, it killed three of the four trees
that were holding up Gus's treehouse.
So that was sad.
There was another one in Monroe, Louisianathat succumbed to some bark beetles.

(55:44):
So yeah, it's out there.
And that's, I love this whole worldof tree houses, but there's a absolute
wait a minute, trees don't last forever.
argument to that is thatno, there is no argument.
Of course they don't.
And yet can it last for 25,35 years, something like that,
if you were in a good tree?
Heck yeah.
You've gotta maintain it justlike you maintain your house.

(56:06):
Clean off the deck.
Make sure you're not having hotspotsshow up on wood, because wood
doesn't last long when it's wet.
So do some good work with yourflashing and your waterproofing and
sweep all those extra leaves off.
And you should be able to last 30years easily a, in a good tree.

Trey (56:24):
Yeah.
I think the beautiful thingabout, and nothing lasts
forever that we make these days.
Like home won't last forever either.
So it's just how you treat itand the quality of craftsmanship.
And then also luck comes into play.
You can't control the picture.

Pete (56:37):
Yeah.
If you're in a little micro birth,that tree house might get sucked
right up into the atmosphere.

Mike (56:42):
Yeah.
That's the, tornado alley you gotta watchout for some of the stuff that happens
in some parts of the country around us.
so if you were to describe a featureproject, could you tell us how this
project started and the processthrough it and the end result
and timing and that type thing?
Can you walk us through one?

Pete (57:02):
Sure.
I think this last one that we've justwrapped up on Saturday before last, and.
Connecticut good example because Iremember October I get a phone call.
We have a great lady who isthe gatekeeper, so to speak.
And if you come through to Petefor a phone consultation I'll get
on the phone with you and talkabout the dream and the process.

(57:24):
And what I say, and it usually takesabout an hour to get through things
and then sometimes it takes about 10minutes when the person says, Hey yeah.
Don't worry.
Just come.
And the way I describe it isthat okay, we're gonna get on the
phone and talk about what it isexactly that you have in mind.
and then the way that I had talkedabout it a little earlier here is
that, it's a kind of a la car thing.
You'd want to have a site visit.

(57:45):
That's my recommendationis I don't wanna do this.
Over FaceTime.
I just don't so it's a certainamount to get me to your place.
Daniel can come to your place or Darrell,as I had said earlier, there's options.
Pete charges a little more.
I've discovered that sometimes, youknow, I'm being brought to Santa Barbara
for lunch instead of a real project.
So not interested in that.

(58:06):
I wanna make sure that they are seriouspeople about what they're gonna create
and we're serious about building them.
So if we get into that phone call,we're gonna talk about cost of site
visit, cost of the concept drawing.
And again, you don't have to build this.
If you wanna just look at what'spossible, I can create a concept drawing
for you that would be quite detailed.

(58:27):
And if we didn't go to permitstage with engineering and all the
construction documents that go withthat, we can build right off of that.
Concept, we could take that to the,our shop prefabricate, everything, and
then ship it to the site and bring thecarpenters in and build off that concept.
No problem.
It's a detailed concept with elevationsand, you know, we don't necessarily model

(58:50):
it because as I said, I draw by hand.
And so I'll give you elevations, butand certainly part of the package,
you know, if you go further into thepackage, and again, do you want to get
a permit set, engineering's involved,that's gonna cost probably another 5%
or so of the overall project budget.
So if we go through the designphase where everybody's happy with

(59:12):
the design, it's been engineered intheory it goes off to the building,
the department to get permitted.
Then I guess I would back upto say that in this in the
planning, there's a whole lot of.
Contract stuff, like budget what Iwould ask people, and it's a tough
question, but when we're talkingon that phone that first time,
do you have a reasonable budget?

(59:33):
And, Elaine, the gatekeeper hasalready figured out what this is.
Everybody fills out a questionnaire.
I think when you, when Elaine gets'em on the phone, it's because they've
filled out their questionnaire that'son the website and we do have an idea
of what their budget is, of course.
I confirm their budget size.
And then when we get into the finalphases of the design, we're checking
on that budget size all the time.

(59:54):
Like they wanted to spend $500,000.
I don't wanna draw a $600,000 treehouse.
So how are we doing?
And part of that the cost ofthat design is going to be a
rough order of magnitude budget.
By the time we're it.
Ready to submit this thingto the building department.
It will also have, not just theplans, but a proposed budget.

(01:00:15):
It would be, sometimes there's someengineering that needs to be done.
And we do have a little bitof a, let me say that most of
our jobs are just fixed bid.
They go so quickly that we don't do.
Time and materials.
Now that's not to say we don'tdo time and materials 'cause we
have, and we're fine with that.
I would say.
but what happens is, we're therefor six weeks on the outside.

(01:00:36):
We're usually there forabout four or five weeks.
So we should know how much thisthing's gonna cost, especially
once we've got it designed.
So fixed bid has been worked out.
The payment's been worked out.
How it all works.
Again, maybe it'd be a little crass.
We're asking for 60% of thecost of this thing before we're.
Even on your job site when we showup and the crew is there and your

(01:00:58):
materials have arrived we do another15% that comes to us on arrival.
Halfway point, we get 15% more.
I know I'm going into somedetail here, but why not?
So by the time we're halfway donewith your tree house, we're 90% paid.
You've got 10% to hang onto tomake sure that we do what we
say we're gonna do, finish it.

(01:01:18):
And then in theory, the lead carpentercomes home with that 10% check.
Now that doesn't usually happenbecause there's lots of things to do.
And like this job in Connecticutnow, we're hanging out there for
that 10%, probably for another month.
I don't know, we'll see

Mike (01:01:33):
punch out details.
But on the front end, you prefabricatea lot of the things in your shop.
So when you show up with materials,it's just not a stack of lumber.
you've cut lumber and it's somewhat,you've got the pieces to put together, so
that's why things go together so quickly.

Pete (01:01:49):
Exactly.
I mean, We'll spend sometimes,in a typical project we might be
two weeks here in the shop andthat's my son Henry runs the shop.
It's really fun to thinkthat you father son team.
so two years ago my son Henry wascharged with being the shop guy new.
He's in charge, hire, fire.
He does whatever he isgotta do, and he's 32.
And I'm so proud of him.

(01:02:10):
He's doing such a great job and.
Learning all the time.
I mean, He'll take our drawings and put'em into shop drawings and sketch up
because he's building those walls andhe's making sure that, he doesn't build
those walls in the shop and take it apart.
He sends them like, these are the walls.
Math doesn't lie.
they will be put together inthe field and they will work.

(01:02:30):
And so far so good.
Yeah, so far so good.

Mike (01:02:33):
That's a great process.
But yeah, there's

Pete (01:02:34):
a big chunk of work.
It's a big chunk of work, but I wouldsay that by the time, you know this
too, I would guess, that big chunk ofwork where you're framing all those
walls and they're plywoods on 'em, butyou, when that day comes where you put
'em all up, it's just a big day andit looks like you're almost done, No.
Oh yeah.
Might be 30%,

Mike (01:02:53):
but it's just like a house.
When you frame it, all ofa sudden it has a life.
Yeah.
Now you can see it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But there's a lot of work stillto be done at that point in time.
All the little details that make thingswork So you have electrical and water
and a lot of these projects so youhvac you have lighting and heating and
air conditioning wow, that's amazing.

(01:03:14):
How do you hide it all?

Pete (01:03:15):
It's pretty easy.
The chase if you will is coming downsomewhere strategic and we'll fill it up
with the water in the effluent out andpower and when you're in a woodsy setting,
that chase is really just another stemthat's coming outta the forest floor.

Trey (01:03:32):
Gotcha.

Mike (01:03:33):
creative.

Trey (01:03:33):
That makes sense.

Pete (01:03:34):
Yeah.
And it's a good chase too.
And the headroom under there,'cause a lot of people ask
just that what about plumbing?
And, the headroom underthese things is pretty good.

Mike (01:03:43):
Actually you must have some pretty tall ceilings 'cause trace all, you did
one for Shaquille O'Neal, is that right?

Pete (01:03:50):
We did Shaquille O'Neal.
That was so fun.
Oh my gosh, that guy, he's such a badass.
Such a badass.
He is so remarkablytogether, I don't know.
I just, when I met him, and this is 2018,so it's been a little while, but, he
just is so enormous and chiseled, too.
But those clear eyes, big, you know,he looks down at you and you're just

(01:04:13):
like, oh my gosh, this guy, he isa special man and they'll hug you.
He was so excited At the end, he pickedme up, I was standing in front of this
nine foot door we built for him, and helooked at it and he said, Pete, I've been
given a lot of things and he was giventhis Treehouse animal planet paid for it.
He said, I've never been givenanything as beautiful this, this.

(01:04:33):
And he grabs me and picks me up.
So his, my head is down is under hislips for a good smooch on the top
of my head and puts me back down.

Mike (01:04:43):
That's awesome.
you guys had the series for 11seasons and then one of my friends
is Anthony Archer Wells, who wasthe pool master for Animal Planet.
Yeah.

Pete (01:04:54):
And I love that character.

Mike (01:04:56):
he was just like, this was great to do, but this was a real wear on me.
And so I could only do two seasons of it.
And I had to walk away from it justbecause it was a tough thing to do.
And so he still building like crazy.
He's 80 years old now doing theponds and everything like that.
So I imagine life is easierwithout a television crew in

(01:05:18):
y'all's back pocket all the time.

Pete (01:05:20):
Yeah, no doubt.
I loved it, I have to say, because theyreally did crack the whip we needed to
have the whip cracked on us to figureout how to make money doing this.
Really.
Truth be told, before TV camearound, we were always wondering
why we were without any money.
It was a lifestyle in a funnyway, have to admit that I'm not
maybe the businessman that I wantedto be or imagined myself to be.

(01:05:42):
But I just love the creation andthe art and the joy of it all.
And so before TV, I think I was absorbedmore in trying to create successful
projects from the standpoint ofkeeping 'em in the tree and keeping
customers happy and me happy andeverybody, it's a fantasy job, right?
And I think We were a little more inthe fantasy world with it before we

(01:06:03):
had to crank out two of these a month.
And yes, it was heavy dutyand it was really hard.
And I drank a lot of coffee.
I stopped drinking alcohol.
That was probably the best thing to do.
And and so I thrived.
And when they said no more, I wasincredulous like, what we're done.
they said yeah, there were over ahundred episodes and I think that
the model for the networks is thatif they have a hundred episodes

(01:06:24):
of something, they can just keep

Mike (01:06:25):
running reruns,

Pete (01:06:26):
run reruns, man.
That's what they're doing.
thankfully we do not get residualsor whatever you would call those,
unfortunately with reality tv.
As your dear Pool House masterfriend, pool master friend probably
told you, we do not get checksfrom Animal Planet anymore.

Mike (01:06:43):
Yes.
You get advertising, so that's a

Pete (01:06:46):
We sure do.
Oh man.
We're so lucky for that.
And we knew that.
We knew that's what we were gonna get.
I'm

Mike (01:06:51):
sure that's a blessing.
Oh yeah.

Pete (01:06:52):
It's,

Mike (01:06:53):
so what's next for Nelson's Tree Houses?

Pete (01:06:56):
I'm glad you asked because I've been thinking about it too
quite a bit, and I, hope a legacycompany that my two boys are in it.
My daughter runs it essentially,and, I'm still very much a
part of this and enjoy it.
I feel like my role ismore sharing the knowledge.
Like I could see myself, I'm 62,I if I'm so lucky to have another

(01:07:19):
30 years of being on this earth.
I think I'd like to spread thisinformation as much as I can.
The good information, the trees areresponding so wonderfully and that as
I say, every part of this is joyful.
Looking for the trees, imaginingwhat it might look like, your tree
house and then creating it and goingout and finding these materials.

(01:07:39):
A lot of treehouse stuff is scroungedand so I'm I have a secondary thing that
I've been doing a lot and that is youcan see behind me, the wood up on my
ceiling is some old dug fur that camefrom the docks of Oakland in California.
And I have a collection of.
Scavenged materials thatis up not far from here.
That is a little bit outta control.

(01:08:00):
It's beautiful, it's incredible material.
And anyway, this idea of using theseneat materials maybe scrounged or
Craig's listed, and you create yourtree house, it's always a joy, right?
And then you'll find that, oh, yourfriends are wanna come over and help you.
Everybody wants to help you whenyou're building your tree house.
So promoting this essentiallygetting people into nature.

(01:08:21):
I. Which is my main missionhere is like something I think I
can do for the rest of my life.
Just anytime I get a chance to talk topeople like yourselves or, down in Texas
I got to talk to my buddy's classroomabout what I'm doing and I just wanna
share with people that this works.
It's a viable form of architecture now.
It's proven.
couldn't be better.
And what happens as a byproduct is wemight get more people to fall in love

(01:08:45):
with nature and thereby preserve it.

Mike (01:08:48):
That's an important thing today.
Oh yeah, for sure.

Trey (01:08:51):
And it's such a easy form, I think.
'cause like instinctively, as a kid,like you go onto the forest as a boy,
you go out the forest and you find sometrees and some sticks with your friends.
You play around and you always endup building a tree fort of some kind.
So when you can get vertical upthere with your dad or someone that
actually just has a build and thenjust expanding on that idea and make,

(01:09:12):
combining the outdoors with luxuryand you're working with fire for sure.

Pete (01:09:17):
It's, I'm so privileged to be this person in the, role, I think
of myself as an ambassador in a way.
And I feel so, privilegedto be that person.
So I wanna share good informationand as much of it as I can to get
people to really consider this.
'cause yeah you create somethingthat, that is so much more
than, just a tree house.

(01:09:38):
You'll have great memories.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, no matter how you cut it,except for the damn permits.

Mike (01:09:46):
Those cities.
Those cities, they're thebane of a lot of us today.
Oh, they

Pete (01:09:50):
are.
I admire it lately, and this is this isfun, but lately we've been doing more
work for people that are just fed up.
We've been in these lines for sometimesmany years to get these things done, and
a lot of the people we work for are usedto getting things done and they can't
get it done, and they just say, screw it.
Let's just build it.
Come what may.

(01:10:10):
more power to them.
It's really tough.
I feel bad for all those poor peoplethat are in there trying to process
these permits and they don't haveenough people helping them, and they
just, nobody's interested in beingthat person it feels like anymore.
Wow.
And I'm all over the country.

Mike (01:10:24):
The challenge is you're bringing something to them that
they have a hard time wrapping theirhead around, and that's not an easy
situation by any means, I'm sure.
You're

Pete (01:10:34):
exactly right.

Mike (01:10:35):
I appreciate the sharing here today, the

Trey (01:10:38):
insight.
Thank you for coming on the podcast.
It means a lot.

Mike (01:10:41):
And

Pete (01:10:41):
oh, my, my pleasure.

Mike (01:10:42):
I think it's really ironic our paths have been in similar directions.
Who knows if my dad had put brick.
Flooring down, maybe we'd be partnersin the Pacific Northwest Now.

Pete (01:10:52):
Funny to think.
And the fact that you livedin Toms River, that's crazy.

Mike (01:10:55):
Yes.

Pete (01:10:56):
So yeah, the

Mike (01:10:57):
IES were a great place to grow up as a kid.
So I

Pete (01:11:00):
So do you.
Okay.
'cause this is one ofmy earliest memories.
I was three, we moved to NorthernNew Jersey, a place called
Ridgewood in Bergen County.
So I left Tom's River when I was three.
But in the, when you say ies, I rememberwe would go out to the dump and there
were black bears crawling all overthe dump in the Pine Barrens, right?

Mike (01:11:19):
Oh yeah.
We had everything.
There was a subdivision rightbehind me, which they ended
up with a huge development.
It's called Holiday City,I think is what it was.
And it was a retirement village,and they bought that land.
And then they didn'tdevelop it for a while.
And there was a blueberry farm thatwas sat there empty for a while.
And, but we had raccoons and deer and,bobcats and everything in our backyard.

(01:11:41):
That was, it was just right acrossthe railroad tracks from our house.
It was just, woods.
And it was like I said, it was agreat place to grow up as a kid.
And we had forts in the woods andstuff like that until they, who

Pete (01:11:53):
would've thought New Jersey?
Wilderness pine bear.

Mike (01:11:56):
It's, most people think of Newark when they think of Jersey.
Yeah.
And that's the farthestthing from the truth.
I took my wife back, seven, eight yearsago for the first time and she's this
is all just rolling farms and countryand, trees and all this kind of stuff.
I didn't ever garden state.
It's called the garden state for a reason.
So we will look forward to talking toyou some more, I'm sure in the future.

(01:12:19):
But yeah, again, thanks for everythingthat you shared today and we'll
look forward to some time later

Trey (01:12:25):
before he heads out.
Oh, that's right.
A couple questions.
I forgot

Mike (01:12:28):
Trey's got questions for you.

Trey (01:12:29):
Just quickly.
One, one, the first onemight be the longest one.
We usually do a question called pooltrue crime, but I'm just gonna change
it up and do tree house True crime.
And for instance, like with pools,like there's, we've talked about
is salt water too corrosive?
Like certain things that people mightthink in the industry is a bad idea or has
negative in influenced a homeowner, right?

(01:12:50):
Has there Mm-hmm.
Has there mm-hmm.
been any situation like that, liketreehouse true crime in your perspective?

Pete (01:12:55):
So I think the true crime part might be we touched on it a little
earlier, If you're overlooking someoneelse's little private Idaho, backyard
or something with your tree house,you wanna really make sure that those
people are cool with your plans.
Okay.
Because if you just go ahead and chargeforward with your ideas and don't
consider that neighbor, then, youcould open up trouble for everybody.

(01:13:19):
And so I'd say that's the truecrime if you're not communicating
with your very neighbor, when youdo something like this, you might be
setting yourself up for a problem.

Trey (01:13:26):
Yeah.
Perfect.
We've had a pool where it was too high andthe tree house could see us remember that.
Yeah.

Pete (01:13:33):
I was hoping we could talk about Scott Scurlock, who's a
famous bank robber that lived ina treehouse here in the northwest.
And that was, I was thinking,oh, crime, Treehouse crime.
Oh yeah.
I got to visit that and take pictures ofit, but he was cornered in the backyard.
Ofa here.
Not, too far from where I am in 19.
89 and that was the end of thebank robber, Scott Scurlock,

(01:13:55):
the Treehouse Bank robber.

Trey (01:13:56):
Okay.
And then the three last easy questionsI always ask every guest just to get
the normal a little bit better wouldbe your favorite movie, your favorite
book, and then say your favorite meal.

Mike (01:14:06):
Oh, and where do you want to go for inspiration?
Yes.

Pete (01:14:09):
Okay.
Favorite movie?
I just saw the one that was Voted BestPicture A Nora, have you seen that?
It's a long one, but it really,something I've heard of that I've

Trey (01:14:18):
not seen it

Pete (01:14:19):
current times.
Nora is my favorite movie right now.
My favorite book.
Okay, so a design bookcalled The Pattern Language.
it's a tone, but it's all the unwrittenrules of architecture that, if you go
into a room and it's got two walls withwindows, that feels a whole lot better
than a room with one wall of windows,so that the corollaries the rules

(01:14:42):
of architecture that are unwritten.
It's called, I'm sorry,A pattern language.
A pattern Language.
Not the pattern.
Language

Trey (01:14:49):
by Christopher Alexander, I believe.
Yes.

Pete (01:14:52):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Trey (01:14:53):
Cool.

Pete (01:14:53):
I gotta check that out.
Great.
Great resource.
And then what was the last one?
Meal?

Trey (01:14:58):
Yeah, meal.

Pete (01:14:59):
man, I'm an Italian food guy.

Trey (01:15:01):
Pasta,

Pete (01:15:02):
Would be, a good pizza.
Like I still, I finally, I toldyou I was in New York last week
and I finally found the pizza.
I don't have much to choosefrom in the Pacific Northwest.
So I, there were a couple of experiences.
One in Connecticut and one in NewYork that were just exquisite.
Pizza

Trey (01:15:17):
was the Connecticut one.
New Haven?

Pete (01:15:20):
It was close to New Haven.
It was Pepe's Frank Pepe's.
Okay.

Trey (01:15:22):
Okay.
Okay.

Pete (01:15:23):
He's got quite a few of them.
This one was in Newbury, I think.
And then the one in New York was Loki.
Loki, I wanna say on Canal.
Oh man.
Oh, mouth watering androof of the mouth burning.
That's the thing you always come awaywith oh dang, I got that too quick.

Mike (01:15:41):
Yeah.
Your a favorite placeto go for inspiration.

Pete (01:15:46):
The Hi Sierras.

Mike (01:15:47):
Okay.
Yeah.

Trey (01:15:48):
Consistent.
I like it.
Thank you again man, for coming on.
It means a lot to us.

Pete (01:15:53):
Oh, you're too kind and thank you.

Mike (01:15:54):
You have a good day.

Pete (01:15:56):
Okay?
Thank you guys so much.
I appreciate it too.

Outro (01:15:59):
This show is all about helping you become a better buyer, a better pool
owner, and hopefully you're gonna findsome insights into how to enjoy your pool
even more so how to help your friends,your family, anybody looking to buy a
pool in the future or that want to remodeltheir backyard, add an outdoor fireplace,
fire pit, add an outdoor kitchen area, addsome shade cells, or whatever else it is.

(01:16:23):
We wanna be that resource for you and, andthat's the end goal here, and we promise.
That there's gonna bea ton of information.
We'll try to go through it, youknow, as relatively quickly, but
also slow so people can understand.
But the intent of the show, thereason Mike and I are doing this
is because we just got a lot inour heads and we wanna share it.
So we hope to see youhere every single week.
Thanks for listening.

(01:16:44):
I.

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