Meet our Artist

Talking about possibilities...!

Talented, Visionary, Sweet as can be..... Gaby Perozo  

Gaby (aka Gabs) received her bachelor's degree in Ceramics at Long Beach State and continues to live in this great city where she also has her art studio.  Gabs is a close friend and it just so happens that we have similar art style;)  I look forward to collaborating with her and creating a unique piece, made especially for the treehouse.  Check out some of her artwork below:

Magic is in the Air - Meeting with the Surveyor

Early in the lot buying process, our surveyor Mike, placed marker's on our lot to easily define our property line. After doing so, Brendan and I went for a site visit to check out the property line and we were never able to find the corner flag to our lot... we assumed that the weather knocked it down. Current time: I have been talking back and forth quite a bit with the architect and every time we talk, it seems that our measurements are off....  I go a few times to the lot, to do additional measurements... the additional measurements confuse us even more.  Our architect suggests getting a surveyor to do a full survey and locate the tree's on the lot, as well as utilities.

We give our surveyor a call and Mike comes to the rescue ;)  I can not say enough about Mike; he's easy to work with, has a calming and confident energy about him, really enjoys the outdoors and is excited about the treehouse.  I meet Mike at the lot and mention the flag that we were never able to find... we begin to climb the lot and to my surprise, our lot is about 30%-40% bigger than we had originally thought!  (I guess we never found the flag, because we hadn't walked far enough...!)  In addition to our lot being bigger, we also found a cluster of beautiful tree's tucked away from the street.  My mind was going wild as I was standing on this lot, with the sun on my face (things felt magical)  The new cluster of tree's will give us a lake view from our living room, and we're far more tucked away and secluded!  Mike then proceeds to let me know that he thinks Lake Arrowhead water owns the lot to the right (18 acres of land) of which most likely will never be built on- space to hike, meditate, let the kids roam, run around naked....hehe  The possibilities are endless.  Back to the architect...  Things continue to move forward and work so well - we have special guidance ;)

Land we discovered 

More Land we discovered nestled in the trees

Site Visit: Grading is Harder than It Looks...

Head to the site to gather information (measurements, elevation, etc)  Without any experience ever "grading", we head to the lot to pull measurements...  Check out the video/pics for a better sense of the lot and village ;)

Stopping for the view as we head up the mountain

Our Interior Decorator

Dressed up for a Design Event in Long Beach - fun!

Let me introduce you to Danielle DeCarr (interior decorator)  Danielle has a natural talent and is part of the Fogel Interiors Team.  She is consistently fine tuning her talent and attending UCLA's Architecture and Interior Design Program and is certified from Newport Interior Designers Institute.  Danielle can create an atmosphere just by looking at an empty room and we're so excited to have her on our team!

Design work from her current job at Fogel Interior

Besides Danielle being talented, she's also fun, easy to talk to, and a beauty.... Oh no, I sound like I'm creating a dating profile...  but really, all of these characteristics make her the complete package. Danielle is one of my best friends so I'd say I know her pretty well...

Danielle, Shea (my 7 month old son) and I went to an event recently at Trebor Nevets in Long Beach (Vintage furniture/interior design)  It was such a great event - drinks, appetizers, music, and fun people!  Before heading to the event, I was able to show Danielle a bit of my inspiration for the treehouse and I could see her mind begin to work - within minutes, she understood what look I was going for!  Looking forward and beyond confident that with Danielle on our team we'll have a kick a** interior.  (excuse the language... hard to hide my excitement for our interior decorator)

Preliminary Meeting and Red Tape to Cut Through

After a few months of dialing in the design/architecture for the treehouse, there was still one big question:  We have an exterior staircase going from the main structure to the "hang out" structure; Will this pass as a minimum of 735 sqft that is required?  We were getting to a point in our design in which we were ready to send to the engineer, and I didn't want to be sending the engineer a design that may have to completely be re-done if the city didn't give the OK.... 

Jams on the road are a key component to any important meeting...

I set up a preliminary meeting with a few city contacts - Building and Safety Land Use and the architect was going to be on the phone through the meeting.  With any important meeting, I make sure all my ducks are in a row; the night before I was gathering any information that would help my case and make it easier for the city contacts to see the vision.   A key component with any important meeting - Throwing jams on my car stereo at a good volume to pump myself up...After 1.5 hrs of being well pumped, I walked into that city structure ready to dominate (yet nervous the city may shoot down the plans completely.....)

San Bernardino Land Use Services Department

I walked in to the meeting and more and more people started coming in; apparently there was a lot of interest in this project and I took that as a good thing ;)  By the end of the meeting, there was a good 8 of us in the room discussing the project and it felt good to have all those city contacts at my fingertips with any questions.  In the room we had the following city contacts:

Supervising Planner
Building and Safety Supervisor
Land Development Engineer
Structural Engineer
Building Official
Fire Prevention Officer
Architect

And may I also add, in the building department you don't see too many females, so I used that to my advantage and worked my charm ;)  Needless to say, the meeting went well and we were given the "preliminary official" OK that the architectural design is a go!

Treehouse Inspiration Boards

Ideas, Ideas.....  Back to the boards for inspiration pieces for the different rooms as well as material (exterior, flooring, cabinets, etc)  I will begin to do research on the materials we want to use.  The plans are to start building after the snow is gone...  In the meantime I am finalizing details on the design, sending the design to the engineer and then will be submitting the proposal to the city and obtaining permits

Meeting with Contractor

Shea's pretty into the outdoors:)

After getting a better feel for the design, I needed to make sure we were still in budget for the contractor work.  Originally the structure was going to be a small structure in the tree, with a roof deck, but after talking with the city, they let us know that the structure needed to be a minimum of 725 sqft.  This shifted things around a bit.  A few posts ago, you saw the updated design which shows a structure connected by a staircase to the main structure.  This "extra" structure, adds an extra 280 sqft that we had not accounted for....

I met with the contractor to get a feel for what sort of price range we were looking at and unfortunately it was a bit more than we were hoping for...

Back to the budget to see where we can move things around...  after moving our expectations, we are paying more than we thought we would on construction, but still in the budget (I doubt we'll be "in" the budget much longer....hehe)