Once upon a time, the Big Pine Tree House story started when Mark and Julie fell in love, married, and looking for an affordable honeymoon near Columbus ended up in Hocking Hills. Finding the region incredibly beautiful and unique, they decided to invest their savings here. Mark, an architect, was already designing the cabin in his head. When Mark first shared his dream with Julie, "...to design and build a cabin"....she thought, oh, sure, a cozy little cabin possibly with running water and hopefully A/C, never dreaming Mark planned to design and build a 2000 square foot 4-level cabin. ... without help.
The Big Pine Tree House took ten (long...did I say long) years to build. Mark and Julie literally built it themselves with little help, hence, this is why it took ten years to build. The cabin is also constructed from recycled wood so the couple, (with the pulling power of a couple of victims, er, friends), kept busy pulling nails from the recycled wood, adding months to the ten long years. (If anyone wants to test a marriage, build a big cabin without help.)
So ten years (and three kids) later, the Big Pine Tree House was built. The cabin is now being shared with others who hopefully will fall in love with the Hocking Hills region as well. It's a place Mark and Julie never take for granted.
Our Story
Me and Mark on our honeymoon in Hocking Hills - this is where the idea of The Big Pine Tree House was created.
Whew, this is gonna take a while.
Look at those rafters...How Mark got those up by himself, we'll never know!
We found out along the way, with all the levels, this would certainly be "a for adults-only" cabin.
Can you imagine only two people carrying up those logs and concrete block up a very steep steep hill?! We were in the best shape of our lives, that's for sure.
Wow, it's really starting to look like something!
Mark designed an open floor plan so people could actually talk to one another from the kitchen and loft area.
These little three were followed by Mom everywhere.
Mark spent a lot of time with his wood planer making all of those rails....they were pretty much best friends during the creation of his vision. He threw the thing away afterward.