I need to buy a house. I need to buy a house to outfit with all the environmentally-friendly products from the new TreeHouse store in Dallas at 8021 Walnut Hill Lane. Bring your truck, it’s worth a visit. 
No matter what you’re interior design style is, you’ll find products to fit your taste. Gone are the days where environmentally friendly meant boring colors and only straw hut homes. Your creativity and style can shine through using eco-friendly products: Soy-based concrete that comes in 24 colors, Romabio mineral paint in just the shade of purple I want in my bedroom, and too many styles of bamboo flooring for me to pick just one. Would it be too much to have a mish-mashed home of a variety of styles?
Beyond the stunning open and clean layout as you walk through the glass sliding doors, there’s something else just as noticeable in the TreeHouse building: the people. I was impressed with all of the TreeHouse employees I interacted with. They were local, knowledgeable and happy to do their jobs. We chatted about bidets, flooring, elegant quartz bathroom and kitchen counter tops, energy efficiency, employee training and the recent bee keeping class upstairs. What was this place?
I gallivanted through the store, checking out each section and thinking about how I never made it down to the original store in Austin. Immediately, I worried about the growth of TreeHouse. As they continue to grow and reach more markets across Texas and the country, will they lose the personal knowledge-based staff and local feel?
Enter the co-founder, Jason Ballard. The fact that I was able to ask an employee for someone I could get a quote from and within five minutes the co-founder was shaking my hand … I have no words. I realized quick, the TreeHouse employees are insightful and conscientious because their leader is. Ballard studied ecology and biology at Texas A&M University and used to be a conservation biologist. His passions led him to solve some of the big issues affecting our environment today — home energy and water use. They now filter employees looking for college-educated, experienced and caring individuals. And then they extensively train them.
All of the interior design services at TreeHouse are available at no extra cost to the consumer. You can plan your kitchen from top to bottom with the help of a specialized designer knowledgeable in environmentally friendly products. The products range from ultra high end, like the fancy Nebia shower head, to affordable and comparable pricing to traditional products.
Let’s talk about another product. TreeHouse is the first authorized retailer to sell Tesla Powerwall battery packs. The batteries aren’t on site quite yet, but they have a space outlined on their back wall ready for arrival. The powerwall battery packs are smaller than expected at about the size of a thick small desk, without the legs of course. With a few solar panels on your house, or solar tiles, and a set of battery packs you could run your Texas-sized home off of the sun’s energy. The store itself runs off of over 530 solar panels on the roof powering two huge powerpacks on display in the center of the store. Actually, more than enough energy is produced from the solar panels, so TreeHouse is feeding the grid solar energy. Energy positive.
“When we come to town, things get better” said Ballard. Treehouse is renovating the entire northeast intersection of Walnut Hill Lane and Interstate 75. Soon there will be a Houndstooth coffee shop next door, and a Tesla super charger station, the first one inside the city limits of Dallas. They’re organizing a farmers market in the fall and the community is utilizing their public space for various meetings.
TreeHouse is a store for people who care about the “home” they live in — the physical house and our larger Earth home. You don’t have to sacrifice style, taste or price to do good for your family and the environment.
If I can find a small, reasonably priced home in the area, you’ll find me at Treehouse every weekend.
TreeHouse introduced me to the inspiring art and business ethics of David Trubridge. Click the photo to find out more about him. Amazing.