Caleb and I spent the weekend finally finishing off removing the last of the tall Eucalyptus tree from the back of our house. We spent the better part of a half day removing all the mulch from where the stump grinder had ground up the remainder of the Eucalyptus trunk. The trunk was probably about 1.5 metres (almost 5-feet) in diameter, so there was a lot of mulch left over from it.

Unfortunately it was not easy finally getting the tree lopping finished off. It took us almost a month of pestering to finally get the tree lopper out to finish the job (check out the original story, Using a Cherry Picker to Cut Down our Tree). They finally came and almost finished the job, but not completely.

It seemed that the tree lopper that we originally hired to cut down the tree had some staffing issues and wasn’t able to complete the job with all of his normal guys. He was lacking a climber to get up the tree and cut down the stuff that the cherry picker could not reach.

It was pretty neat looking at the photos of this guy in action (I was at work at the time, so Tamara took pictures). Because the tree lopper had to hire another company to finish chopping down the tree for him it ended up costing him more money for the extra crew.

Now maybe I am cheap (it is possible) but since we had an agreement already worked out I wanted him to hold to it. In the end he didn’t and I had to hire the stump grinder myself to finish the job. It ended up costing us about $150.00 more then originally planned, which isn’t a huge amount (about 10% of the total job), but it all adds up.

I could add this article to the Renovation Frustrations category, but right now it feels like almost everything fits in there…