You learn a lot when you are building and designing a new home...
Lesson #101:
a person should really really listen when someone (in this case my husband) talks about about how many trees and which trees are going to get cut down instead of reading washer and dryer reviews online.
After the big decision of building a new house on our existing lot...the next steps we had to take before we started demolition was figuring out which trees needed to come down.
We had lots of really big gorgeous mature trees on our lot as well a bunch of super tall pines on the side. I really didn't care about the pines but...we had 3 amazing trees in the back that I really wanted to save. Our contractor and the tree experts claimed that these trees had to come down because they thought the tree was either:
- diseased
- close enough to the new basement foundation that the tree would not be able to survive after the roots were cut
- actually inside the footprint of the new house (and trust me...I looked at a design where I would have a tree growing inside my house!)
how amazing is this space? see more of this Brazilian tree integrated home here: casavogue.globo.com
If you have not had the pleasure of having to cut down large trees like this before..I'm just letting you know...the cost is ASTRONOMICAL. In an effort to tell people how much stuff costs on this blog - I like to throw out basic pricing in case someone was going through this same process. So...even though I think we got a pretty good deal on this tree job...cutting down all of these trees was around $15k. Yikes.
So on to the good stuff...here are pics BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER the trees were cut down.
BEFORE
see pic above for my favorite Japanese red maple (the one that my dog Thurgood is peeing next to) and the others that were just big, cool, and made tons of shade
this tree behind the garage was huuuuge
DURING
this is the part when i was thinking to myself...oh nooooo.
On another note...arent these mini chairs cute? :)
up up up...
look ma! one handed
and he keeps going up! i did not envy this guy...
hopefully they pay this guy well because after he took the whole tree down by himself...he had to cut all the branches off as well
AFTER
crap crap crap. it looks like a barren wasteland. but if I had to look on the bright side (haha) at least there is tons of light AND less leaves to rake?
I was really startled by how sad it all looked. But...I'm trying to think positively and think ahead and see it for the bigger picture. I'll just stare at these inspiration images below until I figure out how to get some shade for the new back yard.
by the way...if anyone LOVES their washer and dryer..please comment below!
