It’s not every day that you come across a 50-foot-tall treehouse made from old shipping containers.
But the wow factor is exactly what Steve Taylor was going for when he built the property.
“When I say I have a treehouse business, this doesn’t come to mind. People think it’s on a small scale,” Taylor told Insider. “But when I say it’s a two-bedroom, one-bath, with a 400-square-foot living room, a hot tub, and a full kitchen, it kind of catches people off guard.”
Taylor, an engineer who lives in the small town of Ladonia in Texas, first started building treehouses for his family five years ago.
“We have a personal treehouse that we built — it’s a traditional treehouse supported by four trees,” Taylor said. “We actually haven’t finished it yet because this property became available. So I kind of got distracted from my own treehouse to start this treehouse business.”
Taylor’s treehouse is unconventional: It’s made up of four shipping containers and features a cantilevered design, where one end is supported by steel beams placed in a tree.
“I built a model to help me visualize what it would look like, because we literally built it without any plans,” Taylor said.
His family has been using shipping containers for storage on their farm for years, and that gave him the idea to use them for his treehouse as well.
“It was really an ‘aha!’ moment. And now, being a short-term rental, that’s part of the attraction,” Taylor said.
Since the treehouse is on a small cul-de-sac in the woods, there are no neighbors within a mile — giving Taylor the freedom to experiment with the look of the treehouse.
“My father’s an engineer too, so he gave me some suggestions. I got his input and together we came up with this design,” Taylor said.
While scouting the site, the two of them even went up a construction lift to see what the view would be like from the top of their treehouse.
“I knew going into construction, that I would need a boom. Instead of renting one for a very long time, I bought one knowing I would need it for maintenance, window-washing, and even to fill our bird and animal feeders,” Taylor added.
With the help of friends and other contractors, Taylor started building his treehouse in December 2019.
But there were no proper roads leading to the site, which meant that Taylor had to ship rock in from Oklahoma to create a gravel road for the heavy construction vehicles to access.
“It was just before COVID-19 came about. So once it started, we were pretty much in the woods and it didn’t really slow us down because we were separated from everybody else,” Taylor said.
The four shipping containers had to be arranged into position with the help of cranes.
“Our plan was to do as much construction on the ground as we could, just to make it easier,” Taylor said.
Openings were cut into the walls for the windows, doors, and spaces where the containers would be connected with each other, he said.
“But we couldn’t put the windows in on the ground because we didn’t want them to crack from the movement as they got lifted,” he added.
However, it was a challenge to work with the vertical containers while they were lying in their standard positions on the ground.
“You have to cut the floor, the ceiling, and the sides in an orientation that they’re not going to be in the future,” Taylor said. “The containers are lying down now, but when we pick them up, how do make sure you get the door in the right place?”
Since the containers are connected in pairs, Taylor also had to ensure that the doorways on the containers are aligned with each other so that people are able to pass through.
“It’s somewhat inefficient on the ground because you have to take so much time to do it consciously, but it’s still better than trying to do things while you’re in the air,” he added.
The scariest part of the crane work came right after the first horizontal container was welded into position, Taylor said.
The steel beams in the tree were designed to hold up two containers, and putting one container up at a time made it unbalanced, Taylor said.
“We tried to do that pretty quickly to limit the time that one of them was up there by itself,” he added.
Even though Taylor did a lot of the work himself, he acknowledges that building the treehouse was a group effort between him, his family, and his friends.
“I had a couple of friends that are structural civil engineers. They helped me with the design of the steel structure in the tree and the foundation,” Taylor said.
There were also professional welders, plumbers, and electricians who would come in to work on the treehouse, he added.
The hardest part of constructing the treehouse was figuring out how to adapt all the fixtures and wiring so that they would fit into the unusual home.
It was difficult to run wires and install water pipes as the walls in a shipping container are not as thick as those in a traditional house, Taylor said.
“We didn’t have a set of plans. I pretty much had to tell people and sketch what was in my mind that I needed them to do,” he said.
The shipping container treehouse has six floors, with two bedrooms and one bathroom. The structure took slightly over a year and a half to complete.
The white vertical container is where the bathroom and the two bedrooms are placed, while the red vertical container is the stairwell, Taylor said.
In all, the house has 85 staircase steps — including the 20-foot-tall spiral staircase outdoors, he said.
The horizontal containers are where the common spaces are: the living area, the kitchen and the dining room, as well as the balcony with the hot tub.
“This treehouse is welded to the ground, to 150,000 pounds of concrete plus the tree,” Taylor added. “I would feel more safe in the treehouse than I would in our house in a high-wind situation.”
Visitors can book a stay at the shipping container treehouse on Airbnb for $330 per night, for a minimum stay of two nights.
The treehouse currently has a five-star rating on Airbnb, based on 174 reviews. Taylor and his wife, Nancy, have been operating the treehouse rental since May 2021.
Taylor’s favorite spot in the treehouse is the living room.
“Not only is it the most comfortable, but it has a wall of windows where you can see all the animals that come to visit and literally hang out outside,” Taylor said.
Taylor thinks of the treehouse as an investment property, and he’s only ever stayed overnight once.
“Even though our house is about a mile away, my wife and I have a lot of pets and animals. So it’s tough for us both to be away from the house at the same time,” Taylor said.
He estimates that he spent “multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars” to construct the treehouse.
“It’s probably not cost-effective as a personal residence, but as a short-term rental, it’ll pay for itself pretty quickly,” he added.
For Taylor, the best part of the construction process was being able to embrace his creativity when designing the structure.
“That’s where me and my dad balance each other out. He’s almost 85 now, and he’s always been more conservative. So when I started building treehouses, he was pretty uncomfortable with it,” Taylor said.
But now that his dad has seen just how popular the place is with the guests, he’s changed his mind, Taylor added.
“People are coming from out of the state and more than an hour away to come and stay out here,” Taylor said. “I think my dad has seen what goes into it and he’s a lot more comfortable with it now.”
Guests can enjoy a variety of outdoor activities like hiking and cycling. They can also head over to the Ladonia Fossil Park nearby to hunt for dinosaur fossils.
“Just recently, they found a 50-foot dinosaur pretty much fully intact. It’s a Mosasaur, the one that swims in the water, back from when this area was underwater a long time ago,” Taylor said.
But based on his experience, Taylor says most guests hardly ever leave the property, choosing to spend time preparing their own food over the grill and relaxing around the fire pit.
“We opened soon after the peak of COVID-19, when people were looking to get out and travel,” he said. “And that helped because you don’t have anybody within a mile of you here, and you can do whatever you want — don’t have to wear a mask or anything.”
Looking back, Taylor says he wouldn’t change anything about his treehouse — although it’s unlikely that he’ll ever build using shipping containers again.
“There’s so much need for outside assistance, which affects my schedule and costs,” Taylor said.
Some tasks cannot be completed simultaneously and that also causes delays, he said.
“There’s so much welding that went into this that really affected the schedule. I’d have to have welders come in and work for a week before I’d be allowed to do certain things,” Taylor added.
Taylor and his wife are responsible for managing, cleaning, and maintaining the property regularly.
The treehouse is about an hour and fifteen minutes away from Dallas by car, per Google Maps.
“We’ve been surprised by the number of people who have come just for the treehouse,” Taylor said. “They’re not traveling through on a trip, they’re flying in from California, from Seattle, from Florida, to this small Texas town with 600 people for a destination getaway.”
Taylor plans to build three more rental properties nearby in the coming years, and he hopes to make each one different from the others.
He’s been acquiring property in the area as a new lake is under development nearby, Taylor said. Updates about his future rentals will be available on his website, Highpoint Treehouses.
“Right now the treehouse is in the woods, but in about three years or so, it’ll be on the shore of this new lake,” Taylor said.
Despite having lucrative offers from people looking to buy the container treehouse from him, Taylor doesn’t want to sell it.
“I’ve already been offered probably more than twice what I have put into the treehouse for somebody to buy it,” he added. “I could sell it right now and be comfortable, but with the lake coming, it’ll have more value for sure in the next three or four years.”
More importantly, Taylor wants to keep the shipping container treehouse as part of his family legacy.
“My dad’s been involved, my daughter is involved — she did the mural on the side of the container. Ladonia is our town name and we put that there along with our logo, local landmarks, and family memories,” Taylor said. “It’s our intent to keep it as a family business because we’ve been so involved in building it.”
