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!!!  :)

Day One: Removing the Forest

Well, today marked the official beginning of the newest foreclosure flip.  I acquired the house a week ago Friday but have not been able to work on it due to my other job!  But I was ready to start today!

And I brought the most important purchase:  a brand-new chainsaw.  I picked up a 16-inch Craftsman chainsaw a few days ago for $149.99.  And I was preparing to put this baby through the ringer.

I told Dad to meet me at the house at 9:00 A.M. for a day of chopping down trees.  I arrived at 9:07 A.M. (always late!), and we started tackling the forest.  And I DO mean forest.  This foreclosure is unique so far in the ones I've purchased in that the outside work is possibly more needy than the inside work!  The previous owners simply did not touch ANYTHING outside!  And in the central Midwest, the trees and bushes and brush simply took off!  The decorative bushes were literally over the top of the gutters.  The volunteer trees (weeds) have become 30-foot mainstays.  The cute little berm has become a mess of poison ivy.  I mean, you couldn't even see the house from the road due to the trees!

The mess of trees and brush as viewed from the street.

The side of the house as viewed from the street.

The front landscaping had not been touched in years!

So the plan was simple:  chop almost EVERYTHING down!  But the challenge was real:  another 95-degree heat-index day.  Our spring and now summer has been hovering in the 90's and 100's, and today was to be no exception.  We needed to get trees down, and we needed to get them down fast.

Dad and I started clearing out the mess between two large trees in the front yard.  I'm a big fan of mature trees, and I wanted to keep those two in the yard, but the trees looked like the actually combined into one due to the mess in between.  I actually didn't know there was a berm here until we started clearing out the brush.  I started lopping the bushes due to the one-to-two-inch size branches, but that only lasted about 15-20 minutes.  Once those branches were clear, it was obvious it was time to start the chainsaw.

And she fired up like a beauty!  And she purred like a kitten!  Nothing like an engine that runs properly.  I started cutting, and she ate through the branches like butter.  Perfect!  If only the chain would stay sharp, this was going to be "quick" work!  I cut while Dad loaded the branches into my truck.

The mess of brush between the two front trees is down!

It wasn't long before my truck was full...but the results were instantaneous.  The mess of brush viewed from the street was now two beautiful trees spaced nicely apart.  We had only just begun, and the beauty of the yard was already beginning to show.  This was going to be fun to transform this place.

After clearing out the front yard mess, we decided to tackle the front landscaping mess.  Here is what I could see:  overgrown and un-loved spruce pine, low ground-hanging pine nearly dead, a large bush over the gutter, another low pine bush nearly dead, and another massive bush over the gutter.  What was probably cute landscaping was just disgusting.  Overgrown.  Un-touched.  After a brief consideration for how to tackle it (do we take it all out or leave some?), Dad and I decided to leave the two large decorative bushes...but after giving them a HUGE pruning.  We started with using the loppers on the big bush, but after we completed that, we decided to just use the chainsaw.  It was questionable using the chainsaw on 1/4-inch and 1/2-inch flimsy branches, but the chainsaw ate right through them.  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier than the loppers (plus I re-injured my sore shoulder with the forceful motion of pruning...I was so mad about that).

We trimmed off nearly four feet of branches!!!  I cut out all of the pines (easily), and guess what?!  There was a HOUSE behind all of the mess!!!  Right before our very eyes, the house started to take shape...and be beautiful again!  I'm not kidding when I say you couldn't see the house for the trees!

The overgrown front landscaping.

Pine, small bush, huge bush, and on, and on!

The front landscaping as viewed from the sidewalk.

The landscaping mess is down!!!  (We would later trim up those two bushes even more to bring them down below the windows.)

The front landscaping as viewed from the sidewalk AFTER we chopped everything down!

We were HOT, but we were making huge progress.  So after completing the front of the house, we moved to the south-side landscaping.  Again, with nothing touched in likely 10 years (I counted the rings on the trees I cut), the bushes were massive, and the volunteer trees...well, they had 10 rings!  I can't even begin to say how frustrating it is to think about a homeowner taking a minute of time to use loppers to cut a tiny six-inch weed.  And voila!  Done!  No work, and beautiful landscaping.  But nope, that six-inch weed turned into a foot-tall volunteer tree.  And that volunteer tree then turned into a two-foot, then six-foot (cut it already!), then 30-foot massive foundation-destroying tree.  Seriously, these behemoths were next to the house!!!

Looking down the south side of the house.  SO many trees!

Starting to clear out the trees!  I see a house!

Moreso than I realized, actually.  For as I cleared out the brush and trees, I found two specific trees that were literally up against the foundation walls of the house.  So much so that they actually grew at an angle AWAY from the house.  Sigh.  I didn't even know these trees were there (couldn't know because you couldn't walk through the thick foliage to see them).  But now that the bushes and other trees were clear, it was rather apparent that I had two tricky trees to fell.

Slowly working our way back, taking out the very mature "volunteer" trees.  Notice the two trees in the back against the foundation.

Two trees were literally growing AGAINST the house, creating a lean in their growth.  Tricky to cut behind with the chainsaw.

I was able to fell one exactly where I wanted it (away from the neighbor's playset and away from my wooden privacy fence), but the second one would have to wait for it leaned too much over the fence.  We would have to use rope to direct it away.

The first leaning tree is down!  I would have to wait for rope to cut the second one.

We were HOT.  We finally broke for lunch around 1:30 P.M.  We also realized pretty quickly that we were going to need more than just my truck.  So I called a friend to borrow a trailer, and we enjoyed our half-hour drive in the A/C to pick that up.  Seriously, we were HOT.

But the trees were coming down!!!

The first load is hauled off!

That's not to say that today wasn't without its frustrations.  The "amazing" chainsaw ended up being anything but.  It threw the chain on the front landscaping, and after putting the chain back on, the chain wouldn't spin.  We would (not so quickly) find out that when it threw the chain, the chain ate itself and created burrs on the inner portion of the chain.  These burrs then stopped the chain from going around the bar.  So I had to file down the burrs before it would work again.  We lost probably 45 minutes working on that.  The first time.  Yes, the first time, because it happened AGAIN!!!  All in all, we probably lost between an hour and an hour and a half working on that stupid chainsaw.  It had less than two hours of use, and it was being problematic!  It also leaked out copious amounts of bar chain oil at one point.  I was so frustrated with it...nearly taking it back.  But I needed a chainsaw, and when it did run, it cut beautifully.  But there is nothing more frustrating than being ready and eager to work...and not being able to because of non-working equipment.
So again, today wasn't ALL beautiful.

The rest of the day was more of the same.  Ridiculous sweating, more cutting, and more loading of trees onto the truck and trailer.  We ended up taking two more loads.  We hauled off a load around 4:30 P.M. and the final one at 7:30 P.M.  Yes, 7:30 P.M.  We put in a 10-hour day the first day!!!

I unloaded all five loads of trees and brush off at Mom and Dad's house in the country.  Dad loves to burn, and I was going to give him quite a fire!  That brush-pile was massive, and we were probably only halfway complete!  But what a day.  Such a successful beginning to what is hopefully going to be a great flip!

The mess of trees coming down.

Dad navigates his way through the incredibly thick brush!

I take such joy in this picture!  I started with a junky house this morning.  And tonight I have a beautiful ranch home!  It was work, but the results were totally worth it.

Ten hours ago you couldn't see through these two front trees.  Now you see a cute house!

The front mess is no more!  Notice the trimming we came back and did on these bushes.  They will be growing strong next year!

The front landscaping had not been touched in years!  Before...

And After!

The neighbors are able to see the house from the road for the first time in years.  And we could tell, because we constantly saw people slow down in their cars as they drove by.  How fun!

Notice the dirt marks in the grass.  This is how far these bushes used to extend away from the house.  The grass died, because it didn't receive any sunshine!!!  

The side of the house.  It's still a mess, but we ran out of time today.

I love this picture because one of the bushes is only halfway trimmed.  But it shows you just how much we cut back!!!  We literally more than halved the bushes!

To put it into perspective, on the first day alone, we had THREE neighbors stop by to say thanks in various ways.  "Oh, wow, there is a house behind there!"  "You guys are doing great so far."  "You have your work cut out for you in the backyard...but feel free to let the trees fall onto my property."  "Can we be nosy and ask to see the inside"?

I've said it before, and I'll certainly say it again...one of the most rewarding aspects of foreclosure-flipping is the comments from grateful neighbors.  They have watched the house deteriorate for the last decade, and now they are going to watch it hopefully return to its former glory.  It's old-fashioned hard-work, sweat, blood, and sometimes tears (I only had the sweat today, thankfully), but I just love that an honest day's work can have results like this.  Humans really CAN accomplish much with a good days' worth of work!

All in all, a great day.

My gracious Mom had supper waiting for us at their house (she waited to eat with us until 8:30 P.M.!), and we were thrilled to have that.  Dad and I both agreed to meet tomorrow morning for Round 2.  We still have the next half of brush to clear!

The brush pile at Dad's house.  He is going to have quite a fire!