[birds chirping]
[music playing]
JEFF SORENSEN: I built this tree house for my daughter.
This was not something that I sent off to a design firm
and they put it together for me.
I built and designed every part of this,
and I was intentional with every single detail
in this tree house.
I would come up here and sit and imagine
things for literally hours.
I knew exactly how I wanted the flow to be.
I wanted people to walk in, be sheltered from the rain.
I wanted it to be welcoming.
I wanted it to be peaceful.
I wanted it to feel like a cottage.
I just wanted to build a fun, whimsical world
for my daughter.
So my daughter is my only child.
She's seven years old.
And we live in Kona, Hawaii.
This is the best place in Hawaii, in my humble opinion.
It seems like we go to the beach once a week
and recharge our batteries and come
back up the hill to the farm.
We're up on the mountain.
We're actually on Mount Hualalai, which is a volcano
that's not erupting anymore.
This whole farm is on a 3-acre rectangle,
and the tree house is in the very top corner.
You still have this beautiful beach life.
You're still right there.
I mean, you look out and you see a 180-degree view of the ocean.
But you can come up off of that atmosphere into a far
more tranquil setting, and you're
up here in this beach cottage.
I mean, it's kind of perfect.
It's just like the most relaxing place, I think.
I grew up in Utah, right outside of Salt Lake City.
I moved to Hawaii 10 years ago to pursue
a career doing solar--
like selling solar panels.
And the funny thing is I had no intention of buying
this land or anything.
I thought I would just live in an apartment,
and this kind of found me.
I was living in Oahu.
My ex-wife, she was nine months pregnant.
I had this thought of try and raise my daughter
on like some land and grow all these fruit trees
and like have that kind of sovereignty.
It just felt like I was-- like I need to go for it.
Behind me we have this beautiful thing,
which we call a tree house.
It would be cool to show you--
we'll show you the early beginnings how the tree house
started, before any of this was here, when this
was all just weeds and rocks.
So you can actually see, originally, years ago,
there was a very small tree house built in here,
and these were the rungs to go up into that tree house.
I actually left them here intentionally
because it reminded me of how it all started.
So here we go.
Look at this.
Let's see if they still work.
They still work.
Look at this.
I feel like I'm a little kid again.
Here we go.
Climbing up in here, I had a little--
I had a little trap door right here.
It was great.
You can only open it from the inside.
There was a lock on it.
Every kid's-- [chuckles] every kid's dream.
And I thought it was so cool.
We would come up here sometimes, but
then, of course, it would rain.
And I was kind of sad because I was
like, I love to having this little like getaway tree house.
But I'm like, man, I wonder I gotta keep these leaves
and the water off it.
So I'm like, I wonder if I could build a roof on it.
And then the wheels kept turning and turning,
and I thought, man, maybe I should
build something even bigger.
So here we are.
We're at the top of the property.
One of the cool things I love about this
is that we're at ground level up here.
So we got the street behind us, and we have a bridge
coming into the tree house.
So rather than climbing upstairs every time you want to come in,
this is the grand entrance.
You can walk through the gate, and you're already
at the level of the tree.
So the construction of the tree house is pretty cool.
I actually did these cedar shakes,
cut them all individually so that they all line up.
Took me like weeks but I love it because it gives the tree house
that really nice cottage feel.
In terms of this tree house, I didn't
really have an architect.
But we built this without a set of plans.
We built this with me and my builder friend.
He would come over after his normal construction job.
So he would show up at about 3 o'clock,
and I would work with him on all the real technical stuff
from like 3 o'clock until dark.
The idea has changed so many different times along the way.
The first thing I built was the main platform right here.
I actually built the platform around these five
massive tree branches in here.
I didn't want to disturb the tree.
I didn't want to harm the tree.
I want the tree to be free to move in the wind.
So nothing's too rigid.
The bathroom is its own little walk-in bathroom right here.
The tile has this grain.
Obviously, we have trims from mango wood trees,
and so everything is--
I'm trying to have as much of a natural feel as possible
in here, you know.
So we have all the comforts that you
need and want of a bathroom.
In the kitchen, we have what I love.
These are mango wood cabinets.
Every trim in this tree house is all done in mango.
And I love mango because it has so much character to the wood.
This is a tree branch that I almost
put through the main bedroom.
But in the end, I decided not to,
and you can actually see why.
It's been raining today, and you see
how the rain obviously hits the tree branches
and comes all the way down.
So if this was incorporated inside of the bedroom,
there would be ants, there would be bugs, there would be water,
and so you couldn't have that secure feeling
and you couldn't be as clean--
I don't think.
Now, the main room, here we have the bedroom.
My goal here in the bedroom was I
knew I wanted to fit a king size bed
and I wanted everything to feel nice and big
and open and spacious.
So we have a little closet here so you can, you know,
have the essentials put away it doesn't interfere
with your walking room.
And my favorite part, we can open up these doors,
and now we have the big 10-foot opening
with the drop-down screen.
When you want to go outside, you just open
this thing up, ready to go.
And then this, this is the vibe.
Now you can just sit here, relax.
[birds chirping]
This property has about 300 fruit trees that I've planted
since moving here 10 years ago and over 200
varieties of individual fruits.
So we got a lot of diversity here.
You look out, you can see the loquats.
There's figs, limes, pomegranates--
essentially, every kind of fruit you could ever imagine.
So I gave, honestly, a lot of love to this land.
I've worked so hard on it.
And I've planted all these things,
and I have taken care of it.
And I feel like it's--
I don't know, has cultivated this type of feeling here.
Hey, look.
There's one here.
It fell off.
Oh, I see one.
Ooh, Dad, I see a bunch.
JEFF SORENSEN: You do? - Uh-huh.
JEFF SORENSEN: I want to have something to--
honestly, that my daughter can look at me
and be proud of for building something like this--
something that's special for us to come
sleep up here to have like a getaway.
It's designed to feel like a place where it's fun to be
and it feels good to be here.
And that goes for myself and for my partner
Justyn and our family too.
I just want this place to be like the most magical, amazing
place anyone's ever come to.
This is special.
There are not two of these.
JUSTYN BONOMI: Jeff always talks about his creations
as this matter-of-fact thing.
He's like, I don't know, it just felt like a cool fun thing
to do.
But your soul really shines through
in all of your creations.
JEFF SORENSEN: I wanted it to be this awesome, amazing place,
and then I wanted to share it with some other people.
And so people feel that--
the intention that's put into it and the love that's
put into it when you build it.
I'm sure that this tree house would
not feel the same if I just hired
a company to come build it.
If I had an architect draw something
and I said, hey, draw whatever you want,
it would probably be cool, but it wouldn't be this, right?
I mean, this represents significant blood, sweat,
and tears, like all of the above in spades.
I've put so much of my heart into this project.
This tree house literally has my heart and soul built into it,
and I think people can feel that.