Anyone bought their children a tree house?

[NakedFlame]

We are just about to get our first garden after living in apartments for years. We have 1/3 of an acre in addition to some adult outside space. My children are 9 and 5 and we want to get them some outdoor things to romp all over. I think that a swing and slide set is too young for DS1 although he is one for playing outside and I think would be the happiest out of the 2 sliding down and swinging around. We are thinking of a tree house with possibly a slide out of it.

Has anyone done this? Are they easy to find? We are moving to Essex.

I thought you were supposed to build one. isn't that half the fun?

look on Pinterest for ideas and make it! your kids will love getting involved and a project like that will be far more interesting than just buying it! good luck!

OP, we have this Gate Lodge except ours doesnt have the climbing net bit on the end. There is space for it, but we haven't yet put it up as DS1 is a bit too young and I would have to constantly supervise him or my heart would be in my mouth.

I reallly recommend it. Its very adaptable. We have the staircase coming out from the side, rather than the front. ours is also the mirror image of this, so the swings are on the left and the house is on the right. you can swap the swings for see-saw, baby swing, tyre swing etc. We used to have two normal swings, but since we had DS2, we have one normal swing and one baby swing.

We have also added bits to ours, like a small picnic bench and table in the bottom of the house bit, a bell, a ship's wheel and a telescope. you can also put a small climbing wall from the ground to the upstairs bit of the house. We don't have a wavy slide - we have a normal straight slope one.

We got it three years ago when DS1 had just turned 3. Its had enormous use.

Unless you've got something more liek this in mind ...

[www.houzz.com/ideabooks/25754297/list/Tour-a-Fantastical-Tree-House-for-Kids-and-Adults-Too Houzz treehouse]]

Serious treehouse envy!!

Houzz treehouse

I think that's what you meant!

This link should work

I just bought DS this. It is half price today.

Not sure if it would be enough for a 9yo although you can get a monkey bars extension for the side.

Kind of depends on your budget- you can buy some fantastic things but they are £££. Like this (a snip at £10.5k)

Oops, I see my link didn't work. Rendle Fort from ClimbingFramesUK here.

Thanks for all the tips. I don't think I can quite manage to make one myself. I'd love to have a Houzz but my budget and my garden are not big enough.

Charles - the Rendle Fort is perfect. I prefer to have just the tree house and slide without swings etc. This one also has a rock climbing frame on it. The more energy burned the better I am not too concerned about my 8 (nearly 9 year old) being a bit big for it as I think he will enjoy it more than my 4 year old TBH. They love role playing more than playing with toys and I think that they would really enjoy hanging out in the tree house. Thx

You're welcome. Great isn't it . DS isn't getting his until a) we have moved house and b) it's his 4th birthday in August. It's going into storage in his grandparent's garage until then. I think I might explode with excitement!