A temporary "tree house"

Monday, May 2:





After a late-Sunday trip to Home Depot for some long sticks of lumber, I continued with the scaffold. I'm sure that I over-engineered it, but I want it to serve multiple functions:

• Serve as a sturdy platform to support two men (me and Chris) for the new-window installation in a few weeks.
• Provide a barrier so that debris doesn't fall into the neighbor's yard.
• Provide a strong outside platform to help support the bracing I'll need to hold up the wall-plate while I tear out the existing studs (see previous blog posts).
• Support a stepladder, which will be needed to spread new stucco and paint.
• Serve as a makeshift rain barrier while the wall is open.

I designed the scaffold as I built it. For starters, I used 16-foot 2x4s for the outside posts to get up almost as high as the roof. I also needed to make sure to leave a wide passage beneath for hauling stuff through (i.e. trash cans, a wheelbarrow, lawnmower)

Note the proximity of the neighbors' house. You can see how stucco chunks would fly into their yard as I pounded it outward.



Angular bracing against the block fence allows me to avoid nailing anything into the house. The cross-bracing in all directions keeps the scaffold from swaying.

I used a mish-mash of lumber for the scaffold floor

With the scaffold floor complete, I could drag the small step-ladder to the top and work on the upper part.

I trimmed some branches off the tree and then used various scraps of plywood to build this backstop. Then I added the angular pieces at the very top that connect to the house rafters.  This helped stabilize everything.

The next step will be to shroud most of the upper part in thick plastic. This will help keep the coming mess confined – and will also keep rain away if the weather turns wet.



Inside view: Ripping out this wall and window looks a bit more manageable with this "tree house" on the outside. I might actually cover the floor of the scaffold with plastic and bust the plate glass window outward – then bag up the glass for easy disposal.

With this phase of project done, I can build my upper-wall-bracing and proceed to rip everything out.