The "Christmas Candy Kitchen Treehouse" has got to go, says Placer County in California.
In November, Pete Nelson, who constructs treehouses, built a 500-square-foot treehouse for the Splinter family of Granite Bay, Calif. The house within the branches features a fully functional kitchen, bath and loft. The treehouse was built for a December episode of Nelson's "Treehouse Masters" that aired on Animal Planet.
But because the Splinters already have a guest home on their property, the kitchen appliances and loft mattress has to be removed or the county will not sign off on the structure.
"The kitchen has to be removed," said E.J. Ivaldi, the county's deputy planning director, according to The Sacramento Bee. "They can use it for entertaining. What the county approved was a residential accessory structure. For the purpose of them being able to do a TV show, they were allowed to build a kitchen with the understanding that the kitchen would come out."
Nostalgia propelled Mike Splinter and his wife Pat to contact Nelson Treehouse and Supply to construct a grandkid-friendly treehouse. Nelson's show producers loved the idea of the three-generations-old Splinter tradition of making hard candy, so an episode of "Treehouse Masters" was whipped up around it.
The county was consulted throughout the construction process and the rule is that the county must give the final OK, ensuring the construction is compliant with local laws, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Ivaldi said that if the guesthouse wasn't already on the property, the treehouse could have been approved as built.
