Day Two: Completing the Forest Removal

Today's goal was simple:  complete the rest of the tree and brush chop-down and removal.

Starting Day Two...how we left the mess from yesterday.

We had a little work to do on the side; then the major focus was the backyard today.

But we were going to be faced with one known nemesis (100-degree heat index) and one surprise one (MASSIVE and repeated thunderstorms!).

But before we started outside, I made a call to my go-to HVAC man.  He came out this morning to do a look-over of the A/C and found out a pretty big problem.  "You have 0% freon."  He basically said it's not looking good.  When you have 0%, it's likely a decent leak...or it could have a slow leak over a long period of time.  I informed him that the interior of the house was like the exterior...literally zero maintenance or money put back into the home, so I said I'll take the gamble with a re-charge and see what happens.

The old and obviously dated unit.

Updated to a newer (and free!) unit!  Thanks, Pa!

He put five pounds of freon into the system, and guess what?!  It held a charge!!!  Dad brought over a digital thermostat to replace the archaic one that was installed, and we set the 79-degree house for 77 degrees while we went outside to load up brush.  Within a half-hour, the house was already down to 77!  The A/C was working!!!  Woo-hoo!!!  The HVAC system was an unknown budget item, but I was thrilled to be having a working one for $200.

Back to the work outside!

We finished cleaning up the bushes on the south side of the house.  And I tied a rope to the pesky leaning tree over the fence, and we dropped it beautifully.  It definitely started to fall towards the fence, but Dad's pressure on the rope had it pivot nicely away from it and hit the ground perfectly!  We were actually doing great work felling these trees!

The forest in the backyard.  Most of those tall trees were coming down.  The obstacles were a house, fence, and deck!

Dad pulled on the rope as I cut in between the tree and the house.  Tricky!

The house can be seen again!

Such a huge difference!

Wow.  Just Wow.

But we still had the backyard to go.  And according to the neighbor next door, "you have your work cut out for you back there."  Yes, yes, we did.  The landscaping was a mess of volunteer trees again and some sort of plant that grew tree-like branches all in one spot.  I fired up the chainsaw and just went at it.  They cut so easily.  I love a good-running chainsaw!!!  I had to be somewhat careful dropping a large tree in the mess, but then again, I didn't.  That tree was tied to another tree during the fall, so it didn't really fall, per se.  It was more of a lean and hold on the way down.  And I was thankful for that.

Walking towards the jungle in the backyard.

Walking through the gate into the backyard, you were met with trees and overgrown brush.  The lack of grass is due to the ground not being to receive any sunshine!

Turning to the right after walking through the gate.  Wow.

The backyard forest viewed from the deck.

The tree on the right was staying.  The tall one on the left was going to go.

But I wasn't perfect in my felling of trees.  For that tree had a portion that I tried to fell one way, and the weight and lean of it simply wouldn't overcome my cut.  Once the tree went, it went right over the deck.  Agh!!!  I mean, I missed my target by a long shot!!!  Thankfully, the deck held.  I just cut the tree up into pieces on the deck.  Hey, we can't all be perfect, right?!

One of the large trees toppled over my deck.  Oops.  But it didn't do any damage, thankfully.

But the best part of this whole clearing out of trees and brush was the surprise find in the middle of all of it!  I had noticed a gorgeous and quite mature Japanese Maple in the middle!  I definitely wanted to keep her.  And as I cut around her and pulled the other trees out of her, she kept looking more and more beautiful!  A keeper, for sure!

The view from the gate as I cleared out trees.  Notice the Japanese Maple appearing in the top right!

We had one last tree to go...the hardwood I wanted to wait to cut just in case my chainsaw chain dulled out.  It was a nasty mulberry tree.  And it grew right in the corner of the fence.  So much so that it had actually bulged out the fence.  So much so that the previous owner actually used the tree as a place to screw the fence into.  And so much so that the foreclosure company actually decided to remove the fence portion altogether.  Out of all of the trees, this was probably going to be the trickiest.  It was fairly thick and in a precarious location.  To fell it meant having it dropping over on the fence.  But my options were limited.

The hardwood growing (of course) in the corner of the fence.  The previous owner just screwed the fence to the tree.

I ended up cutting down various branches first (really various trunks).  But then I had to go after the top portion that hung over the fence.  So I grabbed a ladder and tried my best to not have a ton fall on the fence.  It was a mild success...the tree fell but it was definitely on the fence.  I just removed branch by branch.  And then I moved back inside the fence to finish off the trunk.

The top of the tree fell over the fence.  So much tree!

The mulberry was pretty thick!

Wow, we had a lot of tree.  And on top of that, we had the other trees from the backyard.  The neighbor was right.  There was just a lot of tree back there.  And that was our problem.  We had hauled off one more load of trees over lunch, but the burn pile at Dad's was just too much.  For safety's sake, we just couldn't haul any more.

The "volunteer" trees were thick!  This is the tree that ended up falling onto the deck (pictured left).

The backyard filled up quick.

The mulberry tree is down...and quickly filled up my neighbor's yard.

And that's when a Tree Cutting truck drove by.  Slowly.  Likely admiring our work.  :)  He tapped on his horn as a sign of affirmation, and I quickly memorized the number on the side of the truck!  I called him and asked him to "do a U-ey" and come back for a question.  He obliged.

I took him to the backyard.  "Sir, how much would your charge to haul off the rest of this brush"?  He looked it over and threw out a number.  "$200, and I would chip it all."  Without missing a beat, I said, "It's yours."  He agree to come back by July 5th after the holiday in the morning.  Excellent.  I hated the thought of leaving the mess back there (I love wrapping up projects), but I loved the fact that I could have this exterior all complete by Thursday!!!

He also informed us that his crew had to call it quits just south of here due to a massive deluge of a thunderstorm.  We could hear thunder in the distance, but it didn't look overly foreboding in our direction.  Boy, was I sure to be wrong about that.  You could actually see the rain fall from the clouds above you.  Dad and I hauled off the trailer and truck which was already full to his house and saw experienced exactly what he was talking about.  The storms just dumped massive amounts of rain!!!

The rain moving towards us.

We dropped off the last load of trees at Dad's and headed back.

I was fairly content with the current situation of the exterior of the house, but I also had two trees that I wanted to get down.  In other words, these weren't Priority #1 like the rest of the trees were.  They wouldn't hurt anything, but they were certainly ugly.  We decided to knock 'em down.  Might as well.  And then the entire exterior would be complete!!!

The two large and ugly pines I wanted to cut down to complete the project.

I mean, these two guys were massive!

Of course, these two trees posed a little bit of a challenge in felling.  The first one was fairly straight-forward.  Make good cuts, and I would miss the A/C unit, the neighbor's house, my house, and my neighbor's basketball hoop.  Make bad cuts, and well...

I made good cuts!  The tree fell exactly where I intended.  And the pine cut up so easily.  It was tall and skinny, and the branches cut off like butter.  I worked my way from top to bottom once it was on the ground, and the "trunk" (which basically extended up to the top) cut up into nice firewood pieces.

A job well-done!

Tree #1 is down!  Woo hoo!

But the second tree was tricky.  The "trunk" split off into two rather quickly from the ground.  And the "Y" it created posed a threat to my neighbor's house.  For if I cut the trunk below the "Y," the tree would most certainly fall towards the weight of the side branch and land on the corner of my neighbor's house.  Certainly not an option.  I told Dad that I would need him to pull the tree with a rope towards the small space between our two houses, but I doubted even that being possible.  The tree simply leaned too much.
Mom had showed up after work by this time (she got off early for July 4th).  As we discussed our most-certain poor felling of this tricky tree, I had her tell the neighbor to move his truck out of the driveway.  I just had a terrible feeling about this tree.  It just had too much lean.  And I couldn't fell it to the easiest place because it would then land on and destroy my A/C unit.

And that's when an idea struck me.  Why not cut the tree down in sections?  From as far up as I could get?  In other words, even if the tree fell the wrong way, it wouldn't even be able to hit the neighbor's house.  Why didn't we think of this before?!  So we grabbed the six-foot ladder, and I had Dad hold it as I cut the tree as high as I could.  Ok, so so far we had had great results and safety with the chainsaw cutting.  And believe you me, every time I cut I am aware of kick-back, pinching, wrong pivots, and the like.  And we were combining some pretty big no-no's on this nearly last cut.  I was working above my head with the cut (not much control), standing on top of a ladder (not allowed in ladder talk), held by another guy who was in the felling zone (if he gets hit by the tree, he loses his grip on the ladder with me on top with a running chainsaw).  I'm not going to lie, it wasn't the best of decisions.  And with the start of my cut, I warned Dad that the branch WAS going to come back towards us.  You can just read a tree.  I prepped not for the worse but for what to do when it happened.  Hold the chainsaw at all costs.  Protect Dad.  And hold the chainsaw at all costs.

Sure enough, the branch broke and whipped back towards us.  It wasn't an entirely heavy hit, but it was certainly a direct hit.  I was in a mess of pine, and Dad took the brunt of it.  But we all kept our holds, he with the ladder, me with the chainsaw.  Success!!!

With the tree now unable to hit the neighbor's house, I chopped it the rest of the way down.

The second tree is down!  Look, I found a house!!!

What a difference two days makes!

And that's when I could see the next thunderstorm brewing just south of us.  They had been moving northwest all day, and this one was just southeast.  "Mom, Dad, we have 20 minutes.  Tops."

The goal was to load up my truck with the two trees and haul them to the backyard for the chipping on Thursday.  So we loaded.  Thunder.  Darkness.  Grey skies.  "Ok, we probably only have 10.  Tops."

And we had an entire tree to get into the truck....and then two entire trees to unload!!!

We carried the "trunk" of the trees to the front street.  Someone can have them for FREE!!!

We worked feverishly.  It became incredibly apparent that we were going to get wet.  And soon.  We filled my truck, then drove it to the open fence in the backyard.  The rain was impeccably close.  "Just toss it off!!!  Hurry, or we are going to get soaked!!!"  So that's just what we did.  I hopped up in the truck and just hurled the branches into the backyard.  Small rain drops.  We all knew the big ones were coming.  Hurl.  Hurl.  Hurl.

The rain was less than a mile away.

We cleared the truck just as it began.  "Ok, let's call it a day!!!"

We just filled up the backyard with the pine trees!  So many trees cut down today!

And as we called it another hugely-successful day, the deluge began.  And it was apparent that it was going to rain for quite awhile.

The rains just kept on coming all day.  Massive rainfall.

Pulling away on Day 2!  Look at that house!!!  You can see it!!!  Leaving in a heavy downpour.

You can see the house from the road!!!

It's a beautiful house!  Just needed some hard-working men to let her shine!

But WOW, what a day!!!  We literally finished up the chainsaw work!!!  The trees were down!!!  The bushes were down or trimmed!!!  And the forest was gone!!!  And all of a sudden, in just two days, we had a very beautiful house in front of us.  I mean, it was there all the time.  But it just needed someone to allow it to shine.  I was more than happy to be that person.  What a difference.  I was thrilled for in just two days we had completed what I had expected us to take four days!!!

I mean, we worked our tails off.  Yesterday alone I lost five pounds (literally).  I couldn't tell you what it was today, but Dad and I sweated.  Wow, did we sweat.  We were in a constant state of wet the entire day.  So much so that we literally put our clothes in the dryer as we ate lunch!!!  Part of that was rain, but most of it was sweat!

But what a successful and encouraging two days!!!  The house was so cute from the road now!  You could see actually see it!  Plus I have a new working thermostat, a house which is cooling beautifully, and a yard which one can eventually be proud of (it needs a lot of grass to come in in those bare spots that can finally see the sun for the first time in years)!

We left earlier tonight...around 7:10 P.M.  Fine by us.

At supper tonight (thanks again, Ma!), we were talking, and I said, "You know, if I didn't plan on keeping this, I could probably get $20,000 more than I paid for it already...in less than two weeks."  And that is true.  I would imagine someone would pay $100,000 for this house...knowing that it is worth $125,000 in good condition.  They get a deal ($25,000 to fix up the inside which won't take all of that), and I get a deal ($20,000 for two days' worth of work).  But, alas, that is not the plan.

But it's so encouraging to see a plan come together.  I still plan to keep it and do the repairs myself (some of those with a contractor).  But it's so fun to see hard work pay off.  I'm guessing we just saved at least $3000 by doing the tree-cutting and brushwork ourselves.  Not bad for two days.

You see, Pa?  I don't mind buying you lunch both days!!!  :)