ken-n-nancy's 2013 Front Reno - 1 Year Later, 9 Oct 2014

[ken-n-nancy]

Today is the 1-year birthday for our front lawn, which was renovated last year before we found this site. Seed went down very late (too late, really) but we were fortunate to have a very warm October, followed by a very gentle winter on grass here in NH. We received early, deep snow cover which protected the grass all winter from the cold temperatures. The snow didn't melt until April, but it revealed green grass that survived the winter.

In any case, today is exactly 1 year later. Guess it's officially no longer a new lawn.

Two pairs of before and after pictures below for comparison.

Before - Seed Down Day, 9 Oct 2013


After - 1 Year Later, 9 Oct 2014


Before - Trees Not Yet Removed


After - 9 Oct 2014

[turf_toes]

Wow. That's a great transformation!


Sent from my iOS device using the Yard Help App

[HoosierLawnGnome]

[bpgreen]

Looks great!

[JustAGuy]

Nice... looks good.
Did you have the trees professionally removed? Did they dig the roots out or stump grind?
I've still got "hole" where tree were removed and the roots are rotting. I periodically need to fill in with top soil.

[wis99ski]

Nice porch and shutters too, good work.


Sent from my iOS device using the Yard Help App

[ken-n-nancy]

Did you have the trees professionally removed?

We did have the trees professionally removed by Boisvert Bros out of Goffstown. We got lots of quotes. They were both the cheapest and best equipped to handle lots of trees. We had 22 trees removed, including the two 80-foot monsters in the front, and about a dozen huge ones from the back that they just lifted right out over the house.

Another "before" photo that does a better job of showing all the trees.


Removing trees from the back yard right over the top of the house!

Did they dig the roots out or stump grind? I've still got "hole" where tree were removed and the roots are rotting. I periodically need to fill in with top soil.

For the two huge trees in the front yard, we had the landscaping company dig them out as part of the regrading of the front yard. That was probably actually the most time-consuming part of the whole effort -- it amounted to nearly two days of work with a backhoe -- they seriously underestimated how long it would take to do that; good thing we had a fixed price quote! It needed to be done, as we were looking to make the front lawn flat, so we had to not just take the stump out, but lower the grade in that area by over a foot. The "native soil" under the trees was rocks of all sizes, which were all intermingled with the roots, making a very difficult job for removal. We took enough rocks out of the front yard that we could have erected a stone wall along the roadside. (Maybe that's a future project?)

There were about 5 other trees for which we had stumps ground -- some in the back and some along the driveway. Those spots haven't settled for us yet -- we had them go pretty deep on the grinding, but only time will tell.

[tlinden]

WOW looks great! I love the shot of the crane with the tree. It's just amazing
what they can do now. The town was clearing trees near power lines one day and
I didn't know. I looked out and could have sworn I saw a tree moving. When I
went out for errands later I saw all the crews LOL

[JustAGuy]

We did have the trees professionally removed by Boisvert Bros out of Goffstown. We got lots of quotes. They were both the cheapest and best equipped to handle lots of trees. We had 22 trees removed, including the two 80-foot monsters in the front, and about a dozen huge ones from the back that they just lifted right out over the house.

Reading this, all I heard was a cash register chiming in my head "ca-ching ca-ching".
WOW. There was definitely a dramatic change.
My wife had some people in this spring for tree removal quotes, it was thousands for a few trees.

I'm getting my wife's nephew (who is in the business) to take down a few. It'll cost a few buck and some beer. The down side is, he'll do it when he has time.

[ken-n-nancy]

Reading this, all I heard was a cash register chiming in my head "ca-ching ca-ching".

We generally get multiple quotes for work at our house, but in all the times we've sought quotes before, we've never seen as much variation in bids as we did in our tree removal quotes. We were stunned at the variation, and can't believe that anybody pays the prices from our higher bidders.

The highest bid we received was $3880.00 to remove just 3 trees - yes, nearly $1300 per tree! That was over 8 times as expensive as the bid we went with!

We ended up paying less than that to have 22 trees removed; it ended up being an average of $159 per tree!

The price was the same whether we kept the wood or had them haul it away. We ended up having them haul away the wood that wasn't usable for firewood and kept the rest - about 10 cord of wood.

[fun4me2]

We ended up paying less than that to have 22 trees removed; it ended up being an average of $159 per tree!

I paid $3,000. to have a silver maple removed 5 years ago.
I asked if they could take down a rather small birch tree that was on its last leg while they were here. Sure for another $300.
Total $3300. Crew of 3 and were here for about 4 hours.

He told me he couldn't get anything for the wood, yet there were 3 other people here piling the wood on their trucks.
Found out later they sell firewood.

Stump removal was not included, huge divets in my lawn that I was told I had to deal with, and a huge mess to clean up, not to mention ruining a section of my fence that they took down.
To think I agreed to pay cash for the so called "deal".

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BTW your lawn looks great!