Builds

Three builds, floor to ridge.

Every project gets a fixed bid before we cut lumber. The bands below are what these three actually cost, rounded to honest ranges — most of our work lands between $60k and $180k.

Glass-and-timber treehouse studio glowing at dusk on a mountainside, a spiral stair wrapping the host oak and a stone path below, Blue Ridge mountains on the horizon.

Fairview

The Laurel Ridge Studio

A novelist wanted a workroom she could not see the house from. We hung 240 square feet off a 32-inch white oak, picked up the outboard corners with two weathering-steel posts, and wrapped the stair around the trunk so the walk up spirals through the branches she grew up climbing.

Glass on three sides, a daybed for reading, and low-voltage path lights so the walk back down after dark feels like part of the room.

Elevation: 14 ft at the door
Footprint: 240 sq ft + 180 sq ft deck
Structure: White oak + two steel posts
On site: 14 weeks
Budget band: $120k–$150k

Suspended wooden footbridge with rope rails spanning a rocky creek between two hemlocks, ferns below and a small gabled bunk cabin at the far end.

Brevard

Whiteside Creek Crossing

The property's best campsite sat on the wrong side of a creek that runs loud all spring. We hung a 34-foot suspended bridge between two eastern hemlocks — cables anchored in the trees on sliding hardware, decking in black locust, which shrugs off ground contact and weather without treatment.

On the far bank, a 120-square-foot bunk cabin sleeps three grandchildren who now have to be retrieved at dinnertime.

Bridge span: 34 ft
Height over creek: 16 ft
Cabin: 120 sq ft, three bunks
On site: 10 weeks
Budget band: $60k–$85k

Octagonal glass lookout room with a standing-seam metal roof on a timber tower, rising above the treetops at sunrise with fog lying in the valleys.

Canton

The Cold Mountain Lookout

Not every site has a tree that can carry a room — this ridge had been logged in the eighties, and nothing up there was ready. So we built the tree: a braced timber tower on four concrete piers, with an octagonal lookout room at 40 feet that clears the young canopy by a full story.

Eight windows, 360 degrees, and fog in the valleys most mornings. The owners call it the lighthouse.

Tower height: 40 ft to the floor
Room: 320 sq ft octagon
Structure: Glulam tower, 4 piers
On site: 18 weeks
Budget band: $150k–$180k

What moves the number

Three things drive cost more than square footage: how far material has to travel from the nearest truck access, how much glass you want, and whether the site has a tree that can do the structural work or we build a tower instead.

We price everything as a fixed bid after design, and we would rather lose a job than surprise you in week nine.

“They told us our first idea was too heavy for the tree and talked us into something smaller. Nobody trying to sell you a bigger project does that.”

Dan — Canton, lookout tower, 2025

Talk to a builder, not a call center.

(828) 555-0142

Request a site walk