This Company Builds Luxury Treehouses For Kids

Mod Treehouse

When Covid held every person at dwelling two summers ago, Uma Iyer enlisted grOH! to make a treehouse in her Chevy Chase DC yard for her then just one- and five-12 months-previous boys. (She also lives with her husband, Satish, and their doggy, Pepper.)

Anne Gillyard established to work building an outside spot tailored to imaginative enjoy: “What we don’t want for a playhouse is for it to be one particular-dimensional,” claims the designer. “We check out to add features that maintain the participate in as open up-finished as attainable.” The result: a mod-looking house that matches the shade of Iyer’s household with a climbing rope, an prolonged swing-established arm, and a rock wall on the back again main to a window little ones can climb by. Cabinets within retail store toys or artwork supplies, and the partitions are painted a cheery golden yellow.

The treehouse was crafted with all ages in thoughts. It sits at dad or mum height so older people can lift up and keep track of little types, and a fall-down ladder and hatch door mean the kids can dangle on the roof when they get more mature. A bonus: Tucked into three oak trees in a corner of the yard, the 6-by-eight-foot framework does not get up too a lot important city-garden house. Based on the working day, Iyer’s sons faux it is a pirate ship or a room shuttle. “It’s a person of the ideal conclusions we’ve ever manufactured,” she states. “When we look out in the backyard, we all always smile.”

Plush Playhouse

Tiana Tenet and her partner, John, enjoy entertaining. So when they labored with grOH! in the fall of 2021 to produce a enjoy region in their Chevy Chase lawn for their now two-year-old son, they needed some thing that would elegantly enhance their household. Also on the checklist: It desired to perform for various ages and could not take in far too significantly of their yard.

The result: a white shiplap playhouse tailor-made for open-finished participate in. The entrance chalkboard can remodel into a indicator for a mechanic’s shop, a cafe, or no matter what else looks like entertaining on any given working day. Inside of, one particular wall is splashed with a colourful mural. Another is developed as a rock wall that potential customers to a balcony and slide. The rock wall is not just cool—it will take up much less house than a ladder and stops extra-minor types from accessing the slide with no adult enable. Nearby, a mulch pit allows little ones dig without the need of ruining the landscaping, and grOH! created a trellis with swing attachments. And due to the fact Tenet operates in food stuff (she’s cofounder of the Culinistas, a private-chef platform), cooking was included into the location through a tailor made pretend kitchen area.

Tenet’s spouse and children now spends so a great deal time outside, she states they were impressed to make investments in the grown-up room as effectively, including a fireplace pit and actual out of doors kitchen area. “Because of Covid, he didn’t do any participate in groups,” claims Tenet of her son. “But owning the option to be on your ft and perform with dust and leaves and be outdoors—he does it every single working day. It’s activity-transforming.”

Jodi Arellano and Anne Gillyard had been instructors at the same DC college and became mates when they ended up on maternity depart at the same time. That’s when they acquired the concept to commence a corporation that would structure custom made children’s enjoy areas. They introduced grOH! in 2018.

Both of those Arellano and Gillyard have their master’s in training and are gurus on baby advancement, so they conceive of all their spaces with kids’ growth and finding out in intellect. “[Having] an ecosystem [that] socially, emotionally, and physically supports perform is just so critical to the forms of thinkers and learners that little ones grow to be,” states Gillyard.

The duo operates out of Gillyard’s DC dwelling, where by they give the two comprehensive-service and digital layout offers. They now have a full workforce that operates with them to design and install projects not just in the Washington region but as far away as Qatar and Bali.

grOH!’s recs for amping up outside playtime

Pictures courtesy of stores.
This short article seems in the July 2022 situation of Washingtonian.

Associate Editor

Mimi Montgomery joined Washingtonian in 2018. Her function has appeared in Outside the house Magazine, Washington City Paper, DCist, and PoPVille. At first from North Carolina, she now life in Petworth.