The Origin of the Stick-out

Here’s the scenario: You’ve come up with the perfect design for a fort encompassing two trees. Mom’s on board. Dad’s on board. The kids are beside themselves with excitement. Now comes the tricky part.

To speed up the installation process, you’ll be building most of the components in your shop and assembling them on-site. But you need to work around the irregular shape of a tree trunk. Early on in her career, Barbara faced just such a challenge. No matter how careful the measurements, they just weren’t as precise as she wanted. So Barbara invented the stick-out.

The first step is measuring up the tree trunk to the deck height.

Next, Barbara and her team use slender sticks to create a 3-D model of the final treehouse. The angle of the tree, the shape of the trunk and the placement of any branches are accounted for and noted.

Now, Barbara returns to the site plan (above) and makes any adjustments needed based on the measurements taken during the stick-out. And, voila! Barbara’s crew can go back to the shop and accurately build pieces of the tree fort that will fit perfectly around the tree. And pieces that are perfectly aligned with the existing trees means a smoother and faster installation process.