About Treehouse37
Mission Statement
Treehouse 37 is a student run, small business that aims to inspire personal and academic growth through building furniture and donating the proceeds to charity.
About the Students:
Five seniors work together to successfully run the business:
Ana Reynoso works mostly on public outreach through the website. She also helps with wood prep for the wine barrel chairs. She is excited to be going to Washington College next year.
Chase Ahrens is one of the two main chair constructors. He has put together all of the chairs and has helped with developing the plans for the new wine barrel chairs. He is all set to go to California Lutheran University next year.
Kush Kakayia is in charge of social media. He runs the business Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts. He also designed the business cards and a sign. He is committed to UC Berkley.
Marissa Stafford wrote all of the blog posts regarding our day to day life. She also works on wood prep by sanding and poly-acrylicing. She will be attending UCLA next year.
Tai Gomez has been the head of the construction team. He mostly worked with Chase to design and build the wine barrel chairs. He will be taking a gap year to gain culinary and business experience.
The Treehouse:
The Treehouse 37 workshop is located in the High Tech High Media Arts senior building known as ‘the treehouse’ despite it not actually being on top of a tree. The seniors that make up the chair building team work during their engineering period, which means they get to spend about 2 hours, Mon-Fri, working on designing, building and painting the chairs, as well as doing public outreach through social media, blog posts and websites
Who Our Chairs Benefit:
The students decided they would find organizations that help the homeless and donate the profits from the chair to that organization. This year, they're going to support Project Heart, a High Tech High Media Arts junior project. The chair is going to be sold at a silent student work auction. All the proceeds from that auction will be donated to another organization that is working to build schools in Guatemala.
To read more about the company, how the chairs are built, what the average day looks like and more, visit our blog here!
Our Products
Wine Barrel Design
Equipped with only a video tutorial of how to make barrel chairs, we had to figure out how we were going to build this customization of the adirondack chair. Modern Times donated 6 beer barrels, which we soon took apart in order to make the chairs. Through the semester the students worked on building 2 prototypes, and 1 'good' chair. They learned early on that the video was not as helpful as they'd hoped, so they decided they would start making as many chairs as time allowed and learn from their mistakes.
The new, and improved version is one that features the same wide armrests as the original, along with a curved back and seating to mold to the body and a very comfortable lounging position.
You can purchase this chair here.
The Original Design
Brendan’s first semester class worked on perfecting the original Adirondack, and the result was a popular one. Demand for the chairs went up and the class started turning into a sweatshop, making 14 chairs in just one semester. Although the result was one that was sought out and was making a profit for the class, we wanted the class to be an enjoyable one and one that required more thinking than just following plans that had already been written and perfected. They decided they would have customization options for this chair in order to slow down the production of them, and that they would learn how to make a chair out of wine barrels, which turned into a whole other challenge of it’s own.
This design features a comfortable leaning position, arm rests thick enough to place cups on, a height that is comfortable enough for most heights, and an all around perfect lounging chair.
You can purchase this chair here.
Customization for original design
Pick a color!
Now you can get the Classic Adirondack Chair in Sea Foam Green (far left), Sky Blue (middle) or Off White (right).
Pick a finish!
You can also pick a different finish for your chair! We offer a distressed look (far left), a matte finish (middle), or the normal, glossy appearance (far right).