Timber Part 3 {Stump Grinding}

To complete our 3 part series, I present to you our final post involving our trees (for now, at least!) Ha!

Click here to read about Part 1 and click here to read about Part 2 of our Timber adventures of our dead old trees.

 

I told you that we hired out a tree company to remove the trees in the backyard.  They initially gave us pretty pricey quote to remove the trees, haul it all away & grind the stumps.  We knew it had to be done, so we decided to go for it. However, Kyle works with a buddy who also had to have some tree stumps grinded at his house.  They did some research and found out that a “stump grinder” can actually be rented for the day from Home Depot. Who knew?! So, they spent last weekend (all day on Saturday) grinding the tree stumps. 

This was no easy task. Apparently the stump grinder machine was quite the monster.  I heard Kyle’s friend say at one point, “I’m not sure what wrestling an alligator would feel like, but I’m pretty sure it’d be like this..”

Here are a few pictures from the day!

 

Stump #1

 

Stump #2

 

And the fun begins:

 

Our backyard before:

 

Our Backyard After:

(If you look closely, you can see that we planted a NEW little tree!)

 

Thanks for reading about our trees!

Timber Part 2 {The Tree Guys}

The story of our Box Elder trees continues. To see how we brought down Tree #1, click here. (If the video tells you it is unavailable, sorry! I’m not sure why it’s doing that.)

To give you all a re-cap, we inherited these old trees with the house when we bought it back in December.  These trees are close to their end & are beginning to attract these little red bugs that are now all over the backyard. Ewww. These bugs eat away at the wood & decide to come inside when it gets cold outside. Ewww again! So, in order to protect our house (in case the trees collapsed during a crazy thunderstorm) and keep the bugs out, we had to get rid of them… Sad day, I know.

Instead of demo-ing the trees ourselves, which we considered (bad idea), we decided to have a few estimates done and have them taken down professionally.  The trees were hanging over house and close to some power lines.  We decided it wasn’t worth risking our lives to take these big guys down. 

Here’s our backyard before. Yep, those are the trees.

I know they don’t look dead, but they’re getting close.

We made the decision & chose to work with Elite Tree Service in Dallas.  They did an excellent job.  They gave us the lowest quote, which is why we chose them.  (Sidenote: To take these trees down, haul off the wood & grind the stumps these places were charging over $1000 dollars! Can you believe that? We weren’t too prepared for the cost, but we knew it had to be done. Ouch!)

The day the tree guys came, I was planning on leaving around 10:30 to see a few kiddos for appointments that day.  However, the tree guys showed up around 8:30 and got right to work.  As they worked, they  up put all the tree limbs in the driveway, which meant I couldn’t get my car out of the garage. AWESOME. Looked like I was staying home for the day…at least until they finished.

Since Kyle was at work, I wanted to document this big project…so I went to the back alley with myself, the camera & an ice chest full of water bottles (for the workers) and began taking some pics.  I’m sure I know it was awkward, but I didn’t care. HA! I thought, “I’m paying THIS much money, I’m at least going to watch them do this & document for my husband to see!” So, I did. I a few pictures…awkwardly.

Then, the owner of the company pulled up. I guess he was coming to supervise his workers or something. He saw me taking pictures and he asked if I would send him my pictures so he could update his website. He offered to give us a discount as a “Thank you” for taking pictures!   I told him I was NOT a professional at all, but he still wanted my pictures. 

Woa!

So, I got to work taking lots and lots of pictures. Anything for a discount, right?!?

It was pretty interesting watching them work.  Each branch was tied with a rope.  After they used the chainsaw to cut it off,  the rope caught the branch & then they would lower it down slowly.  Thanks, tree guys for protecting our house. Ya’ll are pretty good at what you do.

 

I liked this sequence of pictures..

 

They also grinded up the branches with this awesome contraption. Not sure what this machine is called, but it was intense:

So, a few days after they finished, it turns out that the Tree service owner decided he didn’t want the pictures after all. Bummer. All of that for nothing.  And, now I have hundreds of pictures of random guys cutting down our trees.  GREAT. What am I supposed to do with all of these pictures? Ha. I guess I’ll just put them on this blog for you all to see….

 

Thanks anyway, Elite Tree Service.

 

Coming up next…Stump Grinding.

I know you just can’t wait to see that post. Haha. Stay tuned!

Timber Part 1 {My Lumberjack Husband}

When we purchased our house a few months ago, we had no idea that we were inheriting three old (dead & hazardous) trees with it.

Lovely!

Apparently, we have learned (thanks to our neighbors & the tree guys) that the trees we have in our backyard & side yard are called, “Box Elders.” These grow naturally in this area down by the creeks and lakes. So, back in 1962, when our house was built, the owners decided it would be a GREAT idea to dig up some trees by the creek and re-plant them in our yard. I’m sure at the time it was a genius idea because they got themselves some free trees. We all love free things around here…. BUT, these Box Elder trees grow really quickly and then die quickly, too. And, when they start to die, these not-so-lovely red bugs come in to eat away at the bark & live in the trees… We’ve been told that when the weather gets cold, those not-so-lovely red bugs decide to go inside where its warm, which would be our house!

 Um, No Thank You!!!!

So, in order to solve the problem of the Box Elder Trees & Bugs, we only had 1 solution. That was to chop them down. I know, it was sad. But, in order to keep our house safe from the trees possibly falling & in order to keep bugs OUT, we had to.

Sorry to all environmentalists out there!

My handy husband got right to work. The tree in the side yard was not quite as big as the other two in the back. Being the lumberjack that he is, he took it on himself! Ha!

And, here is the video of the actual falling. We were risking it a LITTLE since our house was inches away and our neighbor's fence was literally right next to it.  Fortunately, the tree missed both of those things on it's way down!

Up next will be the adventure we had with the other two trees in the backyard!

Stay tuned.