Dead as a doornail

One thing we love about old neighborhoods (and hate about most new neighborhoods) is the trees. Lots and lots of big, old, beautiful trees. They make a neighborhood.

SIX TWELVE had two huge trees in the front yard. Two huge, dead trees.

One was beyond salvage. We're talking dead as a doornail.

The other was dying and rotting from the inside out. There were still some viable branches showing, but after having a certified arborist look at it, it was determined that it was also not salvageable.

A couple of quotes later (we're obsessive about multiple quotes, can you tell?) we hired the lowest bidder to take down both trees and to grind the stumps.

As it turns out, insuring your workers above a certain height becomes insanely expensive for landscape companies. Some companies do not want to pay the higher insurance rates and therefore won't even take certain jobs if they are above a certain height. Our trees were slightly on the large side. One of the quotes was close to $3,000.

The lowest was less than half of that.

I'm going to bet that the guy we hired doesn't insure his employees at the higher elevation rate but does the work anyways.

We didn't know about this insurance until after the work had been completed mind you.

You also get what you pay for. While the tree removal service was great and I'm thoroughly impressed with the results of the work for the money, the crew broke our two very large and gorgeous glazed pots. While I know accidents happen, the crew wasn't real concerned about where the falling branches were landing and could have taken steps to either move them or be on the watch for falling limbs. I had considered leaving them at the old house since they looked so great against the green/yellow walls and the blue front door but decided to take them with us in case the new homeowners didn't want to have to deal with getting rid of them if they weren't a fan of them. And now they're broken, in the garbage. We didn't spend a ton of money on them (we got them at Garden Ridge) and this gives me the opportunity to buy something to coordinate well with the new house, but it was still sad to see such pretty items go.

We've already learned a lot about how to handle these types of situations. Amazing what just a few short weeks of project management can do to ya!

But both trees are gone, the stumps are gone and now it's time to rake up and start planning for new trees, pots and landscape. The house is more prominent but also a little too exposed. Lots to consider.