Don't try this at home !

The first picture is a load of lumber we bought at a local auction. It is "seconds" meaning some pieces have minor damage, bark, or are curved. I priced long lumber for rafters at the home stores. Once you get past 10-12 feet it gets really expensive. Our estimate at the home store was nearly $800 before sales tax. We paid $245. for this load.  We can work around the blemishes, and we won't be doing finish grade stuff with it anyway.

The next bunch of pictures are tree removal (duh !). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this was SCARY AS HELL and I'll never do it ourselves again if I can talk him out of it. I know my husband was raised to be independant and self reliant. He just doesn't remember that he doesn't have his dad, uncles or cousins helping him; just his 5'1" tall 53 year old wife.

The sound of a large tree splitting is frightening, the thump of it hitting the ground is terrifying. My job was to back the tractor up to keep tension on the ropes to guide the fall. I am so short I can only reach the pedals if I teeter on the front of the seat and I need both feet to stomp the breaks hard enough to stop the thing.   Holy crap, have I mentioned I was scared ??

I know I am going to hear from the tree people who object to removing big trees. Well, me too. HOWEVER these are what the locals call "piss elms" and they are weak trees that grow fast. These are dropping major limbs in every wind storm. I call them widow makers. They also make millions of seeds, which blow in the wind, hit the roofs, slide down and drop to the ground and germinate. Which is why they are so close to buildings. No one in their right mind would plant one on purpose, especially right next to a building.

It seems like for weeks all we did was destroy things, when were we ever going to build anything ?