Hi. I'm Jenna with tiny house, giant journey.
We're here at Cypress Valley just outside of Austin,
Texas to tour the nest tree house designed by artistry. Let's go check it out.
Hello. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? Nice to meet you.
This is Will Beilharz the designer and founder of artistry and he's going
to be taking us through the nest so thank you.
So let's check out the bathroom first cause they usually use this as a rental
property and this is where everyone would be able to use the facilities. Okay.
I notice you have a lot of live edge going on.
Yeah, we just like to leave things as close to nature as intended.
So this is just a pecan,
a local pecan countertop that we did and we left the live edge on there cause
it's kind of nice. Nature has a lot of chaotic beauty to it.
Right. And this is the only part of the tree house. It's not in a tree. Correct.
I mean you have the plumbing. So that's probably one of the main reasons.
Yeah, we did that on the ground and that way we can leave the treehouse.
Right. And so it has, you know, a full size shower back here.
Toilet pretty standard but also beautiful.
So let's go ahead and check out the rest of the Treehouse. Okay. Awesome.
How high up are we right now? Well, we're 45 feet up in a tree. Okay.
Let's talk about this structural element that you've added above the tree house.
Okay.
So it's an art structure that's kind of self-supporting because of the curve
nature of it and we've tied it in with all the trees to give them all structural
support from side load. So during wind or any other things,
they're not going to want to tip side to side.
Part of the design was to create a canopy.
So we have vines and other green matter growing across the arc so that uh,
they'll be shade and other things
right. When it's not, you know, dead of winter and like it is right now green,
lashing green. And then what's the under area we got here? It's like a ravine.
Yeah, this is a corridor or a limestone ravine.
Really common to find Cypress trees in this area because you can see there's
actually ground water coming out of the Springs.
Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean it makes a beautiful backdrop.
And then on the property here, you guys do a lot of zip lining,
which is why you like everything to be Aerial I believe. Correct.
So I see a bunch of platforms throughout the property. How many acres is it?
88. 88 acres. And it ends at the nest tree house.
No, it continues further on.
We have the loft Haven tree house for the down and then eventually this Creek
empties into.
Right. But the zip line tour does actually come to the tree houses.
Kind of like a, an awesome climax to a zip line tour.
So it's pretty cool to be able to zip line in Texas and end at a tree house.
All right, so what are we looking at here?
So this is the kitchen of the tree house or kitchenette. Um,
we provide you with a little oven, a coffee maker fridge. That way,
if you want to bring some stuff with you, you can and, uh,
cook here and prepare it here.
One of the ideas behind the nest was to make it more geared towards families.
So we've built this really big table out of this is Cypress from our property.
And that way people can play cards around it or risk or whatever board games
they want to get in.
Right, right. And there's full electricity in this.
The interior design is also really, really well done. I mean,
it looks like a normal home. You wouldn't,
you wouldn't really know that you're up in the trees unless you,
you go outside.
How did you get into tree house building or what's inspiration there?
Well, there's a lot of inspiration,
but part of my inspiration was I wanted to inspire other people to dream and to,
uh, think of what's possible. And so that was really part of my major, uh,
inspiration to do tree houses. Um,
this would be my fourth tree house that I've done for artistry,
artistry started in 2012.
Awesome. Okay. Well let's continue on the tour.
Yeah.
So is this Treehouse often rented out? Rented a lot of time.
Yeah. And you can, how many people can be housed here? Four to six. Four to six.
Yeah. Cool.
At every single level of the tree house has its own balcony as I can see here.
Yeah. This one is actually designed to be an outdoor shower,
although you wouldn't want to use it today.
Oh no. I can see the icicles coming off of it. But that's a pretty cool idea.
And then the water just can leak down below. Yep.
And water the plants down there.
Yeah. And we provide you with biodegradable soap. Yeah.
Here we are, the living room and the bedrooms.
Right. So this is a living room play area.
And I really liked the furniture you guys have chosen. Cause again,
it's not what you'd see in a typical tree house.
It's like a Hollywood Regency type furniture here.
But that's what makes it so, you know, a Regal almost in this tree house.
Yeah. We wanted to bring in a lot of different elements.
Some of them more modern and some of them really more kid like, um,
and this tree house was designed,
part of the multilevels was for it to be almost like a Swiss family Robinson
style so that the family staying here could talk to each other from different
levels and really have that access.
Yeah, definitely. and all the different, um,
bridges that connect everything and staircases.
You can definitely see that inspiration there.
So there's two bedrooms that connect from this living room, correct? Yeah. Okay.
So which one would you like to look at first?
Well, this is the second bedroom. Sometimes call it the kid's bedroom.
You can see the wall is very playful.
And we did this all out of reclaimed pallet.
That's what I thought. Yeah. Pretty cool looking.
And then you built this as sort of, um, like three circles. I mean,
I'm kind of seeing here, right?
So the living room is one circle of this bedrooms is another circle.
And what was the idea behind that?
Part of the idea was because we were reusing some platforms that we already had
some steel structures.
And so we took the circles and turn into pods and then put green roofs on top of
them.
So part of the idea was that circle is a more a nature found shape.
It's not like a square, you don't see squares in nature that often.
And so it was mimicking what nature had.
Does that make the build more difficult though?
Because I know building around circles isn't as easy as building around squares.
Yeah, it's definitely trickier,
especially when you get to like windows or other things,
doors and stuff like that. But uh, it's all
worth it though. Yeah. And then speaking of windows,
you have like a beautiful landscape view here where you can see that we've come
down and to another level and you can see that Drawbridge.
And then I love all your fantasy books.
I just have to say that this is a very whimsical thing to be staying in a tree
house anyway. So might as well bring in some fairy tales while we're at it,
yeah. And you notice we didn't provide a TV.
So this is kind of like get getting a,
another layer back is like read books and you know, play games with each other.
And that's really what we wanted to focus this tree house on. Cool.
Well let's see the master bedroom.
Nice. Nice.
Yeah, we did put a queen size bed in here. It was a debate whether it would fit,
but it did and that's, I'm glad we did.
How did you get it through? Bent it a couple of times.
You made it work. Yeah.
Cause none of their furniture was in as you were building.
So you had to think about, Oh,
what can we fit in now that we've put these doors,
we have a lot of that going on with tiny houses. So it's an interesting thing.
It can't fit a lot through that little door. So what's this one here?
It's actually old cider casks. So we reclaimed a bunch of, uh,
cider casks from a company that's local and we just resurface them and then put
them back together. And it kinda gives us room, the interior feel like a barrel.
Right. No, you're right, it does.
And then what do we have for the flooring here?
This is reclaimed Cypress wood floors and it has a different look than the
Cypress table we saw upstairs. Is it just stains differently or
no, this is actually just weathered. It turns very gray.
The sun likes to gray out a woods. So that's what you're seeing.
Are these tree houses insulated and what kind of installation did you use?
Uh, there's an installation inside that we used. It's a, a, uh,
called radiant barrier. It's like a,
a reflective and bubble or air tight insulation.
Yeah.
It's a really great lightweight form of insulation that provides a lot of
insulation as well as the roof on top has soil.
So soil is one of the best insulators or dirt,
Right. So it's a living roof, right?
You can actually grow plants in the summer when it's not the dead of winter like
it is now, but it can be again, a very lush place.
And then there's heating in here as well. Yeah. Heating and cooling,
heating and cooling. Just, yeah, Texas in the summer. You probably need that.
Yeah.
So is this all lit up at night? How do people see when they walk?
Yeah, it is lit up.
We've run string lights around so that at nighttime. On the property.
You guys have a lot of renewable energy, is that correct? Yeah. Solar. Yeah.
Solar and water. Are you using that for the tree house? Yeah. Yeah.
The tree house is almost entirely powered off solar.
So right now we're in the what will be a butterfly conservatory.
Yeah. But a butterfly hatchery.
So this will be where the chrysalises are hatched and then all the vines and
other things that we've planted all over around nest are going to be for a
butterfly's either like hatching or, um, there are larva.
The caterpillars eat it.
Right. That's awesome.
And we're on the highest level or I guess there's another platform.
Yeah, there is another platform right there. If you're daring enough,
you climb up the ladder.
Maybe not, but we can always look at it. What is it used for?
Uh, it's just a crow's nest and it was originally built just for watering the
planter boxes that we've put up there. So we put position,
a lot of different planter boxes around the arch structure that way, uh,
it grows in faster. What kind of, um, critters do you guys get out here,
Mostly small critters here in central Texas, we have some foxes, gray foxes,
um, rock squirrels. One of the coolest creatures you'll see is a,
a great horned owl or red tailed Hawk.
They really like these high bridges from the Cypress trees,
and then they use the surrounding area for hunting. That's kind of, I think,
pretty neat to be able to like live,
stay within like nature, you know? Awesome. Well,
is there anything else you can say about this tree house or should we check out
the other one?