So, There is A Big Tree That is Way Too Close To The House

In the words of Cher… “If I could tuuuuuuuuurn back tiiiiiiiime. If I could fiiiiiiiiiind a waaaaaaaay. I’d plant this fairly oak tree not on top of the house.”

No doubt it began out a lot smaller, but it grew, and with it grew the danger of it messing with our house. So when the home inspector crawled out from having assessed the roots and their proximity to the foundation, we were sad (but not surprised) to hear him say “this tree has got to go.”

Even if we could somehow do a root-growth-suppression-rain-dance to get them to avoid the house’s foundation, we could not deny that about 50% of the tree’s canopy was precariously suspended right over our house. So even if simply one branch came down in a storm, it would most likely damage our new roof.

And it would be a lot worse than that if the whole thing came down. We have seen some fairly bad storms over the last couple of years here…

We even saw a tree come down on the house right behind ours in Hurricane Irene back in 2011.

So once we knew we needed to remove the deck tree, we seized the opportunity to take a closer look at other trees on the property that we feared were dangerous/dying with the assist of an arborist friend and some notes left by the inspector, which ended up identifying a few other troublesome trees, including three in the front and another one in the back near the deck. Those in particular were too close to the house (and too big) for comfort or had holes/rot in the base or were partially hollow (YIKES!) which meant they could come crashing down a lot more easily than healthy, solid trees could.

We had in fact used this crew way back in 2007 at our first house, where we had a crazy giant split tree that was dead in the middle. They are called Shady Tree Service, and William is the head dude. He’s a truly pleasant guy and I feel like we have watched each other grow up or something. He was not married back then, and now he’s married with two kids. Of course John and I have since tied and knot and had Clara (and Burger) so it was lively to catch up with him.

It is a fairly hardcore job if you ask me. Dude, there is a man up there – even higher than the house. You know, simply swinging a chainsaw around.

Here is William in the bucket, taming the lower portion of the deck tree. There is in fact a whole lot of math going on in tree work (angles, momentum, trajectory, etc) – you know, simply to make sure nothing swings INTO YOUR HOUSE, so it is fairly remarkable to watch.

This was the view out of the guest room window. No zoom here, this is simply how close the tree was (and how careful William had to be).

It was also crazy to see how hollow some of the trees were. This picture does not do this any justice (one Clara and approximately four Burgers could have fit into the hole).

Here is an “after” of the back, now that those two trees are gone. Still leafy, but less tree-on-house action.

And here is a front view when we picked up the house…

… and the front view now that those three are gone. It is a more dramatic difference than I think we were expecting (we were so hoping we could keep at least one of them) but we are glad they are taken care of and we do not have to stress every time we hear that a storm is coming. It has also let more light into the house, should assist us grow more grass to fill in our patchy hair-plug-ish yard, and is going to assist keep our new roof dryer (which lengthens its life) along with discouraging any more rot in our siding and trim (we already have some of that to deal with).

So a few thousand bucks later (ouch), those five trees are gone and we have some pleasant peace of mind. Tree removal costs certainly vary by the size of the tree, how hard it is to get to (will they need a crane, etc), and where you live. But a general range for getting a medium sized oak tree down that is near a house in our area might be between $1K-$2K. If you add others, each additional tree tends to be a lot less since a lot of the cost is simply getting the crew and machinery out to your house. So you could get a $1K quote for one tree, but negotiate a $3K total to get five of them taken care of (especially if a few of them are smaller/easier to wrangle).

Oh and I have a few tree negotiating pointers:

1. get a bunch of estimates if you do not already have a go-to tree guy (we did not get others this time because William’s the best and every friend we recommend him to confirms that his prices are consistently better than the rest)
2. make sure they are licensed and insured (seriously, I would not mess around with this because it is such a dangerous job)
3. if you’ve used the company before, you can score a better price by reminding them you are a repeat customer
4. save competitor coupons (in our area some tree folks put out coupons and most of them will honor someone else’s to get the job themselves)
5. in general whenever I negotiate (John hates that part, so it is all me) I like to smile after they toss out an initial number and say “is that your best price?” (then I simply shut my mouth and listen, which typically results in some amount of money off, free stump grinding, or some other perk)

As far as projects go, this might have been Clara’s go-to to watch. She enjoyed gazing at the wood chipper, seeing the folks up in the trees, and standing on the stumps. This one’s the big deck tree, which she enjoyed most of all. We thought about leaving some of the stump on the deck to create a table base, but the location would put the table a bit too close to the house for it to be functional.

So instead, we chose to “keep” the tree in the form of a few lively little stepping stones that I asked the folks to cut before hauling the rest off to be chipped/recycled as mulch.

Those might look like you could lift them up and place them in that clean little line, but they each weighed a ton and could only be moved with the tractor that the folks had for hauling stuff, so it was lively to watch them shove them all into place with heavy machinery.

And how about this for an epilogue? Remember when John mentioned that we have some deer friends at the new house? Well, apparently they like us, because they enjoy to sneak up on us. Take this shot for example. I was taking after photos of the trees gone and John saw this one hanging out right behind me. I did not even notice.

And then I did, and I took this picture. The editor, wildlife photographer.

Then Burger barked and off it ran. So evidently we live in Fairy Tale Forest. Thank goodness we still have a bunch of leafy trees around to maintain the title…

Anyone else getting trees limbed up, trimmed, or took out? Could not you watch a 24/7 show of people doing it? If HGTV’s wondering what programming to add, I’d totally watch an hour of folks taking giant trees down. Their lever-systems and crazy swinging contraptions are no joke.