Not Your Daddy's Treehouse

CA. company makes any design into a treehouse, if your pockets are deep enough.

ByABC News
November 19, 2006, 10:37 AM

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 20, 2006 — -- It wasn't that long ago that the million-dollar house made real estate headlines, but look at what's causing a buzz now: the million-dollar treehouse.

We're not talking about the kind of treehouse built by 10-year-olds with scrap and sheets of used plywood.

Now, your childhood dream is built by professionals like the people at Daniels Wood Land in Paso Robles, Calif.

There's just something about treehouses that captures the imagination. Children love to play in them, and grown-ups like them because they enable them to recapture their childhood.

The million-dollar treehouse is planned for a customer with some deep pockets.

"We're talking seven houses up in the trees all connected by bridges," said James Powell, vice president of Daniels Wood Land.

And what kind of customized treehouse is most popular among Daniels Wood Land's clients?

"Our biggest selling pieces right now are pirate-ship treehouses," Powell said. "We've taken up to a 50-foot-long pirate ship and stuck it into a tree. Anything they bring to me, we'll figure out a way to do it. If they've got the checkbook or the pocket book big enough, we'll make it work."

Daniels Wood Land was started by brothers Ron and John Daniels, who grew up on a ranch and had their own fascination with treehouses.

Now they have 50 employees and all the business they can handle. They have shipped treehouses to Europe; Saudi Arabia; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Hong Kong.

"It doesn't matter where you come from, where your roots are. Everybody somehow inherently has a fondness for treehouses," Ron Daniels said.

You want a two-story treehouse? No problem. You don't have a tree to put it in? Daniels Wood Land will bring the tree, too. The company uses hollowed-out redwood trunks as the pedestal for treehouses in places where there are no good trees to support one.

The treehouses can be outfitted with electricity, hot and cold running water, Internet, phone, big-screen TVs, and air-conditioning. They can be insulated and fit with weatherproof windows.