We cut down a tree and finally got the wood out of the tub and bathroom.

     There was a tree growing about 5 feet from the house and up against our white picket fence. Obviously, it needed to go. I don't know what type of tree it was, but due to its location and size i assume it was not intentionally planted. It is only about 16" at the base where three forks meet that are each 8-10" thick, but it reached higher than my two story house. Apart from personal safety, the most important thing is controlling the fall off the limbs/tree. We had about a 20 degree angle between the house, two power cords, and the neighbors house of which we had to land everything. By notching it the direction i wanted it to fall and having Stephen guide it with a rope, we avoided any property damage and landed every limb in the same spot. I left the stump about 3 feet out of the ground. I am not sure what to do with it now. Uprooting it with a truck would be problematic since it is surrounded by fence, and i'd rather not rot it out because of its proximity to the house and potential pest issues. For now i am happy. It wont continue to push out the fence and hopefully the roots wont get into and pipes or foundation.

     Due to its size, i opted to use a reciprocating saw (sawzall) with a wood cutting blade. I have cut and trimmed many trees in my day and i recommend using a sawzall if the limb is less that 12" thick. A sawzall is lighter, easier to control, safer to use, and battery powered. Since i climbed the tree for the top branches the maneuverability of the saw was quite nice. It was much easier to rest it on my leg or hang it from a branch than a chainsaw would have been. The drawbacks are limited battery life (we went through 2 batteries) and it does not cut as fast as. It probably added 15 minutes to our cut time of 1.25 hours. However, on smaller projects i think that extra cut time is offset by the time saved from chainsaw maintenance. (gas, oil, or power cord)

Now we have a big pile of limbs and branches behind our garage. Cutting that in to firewood will make a nice project in the future when other work gets scarce.

We finally removed all of the lose wood from the bathroom and are now ready to move the cast iron tub. That will be a fun update.
 
Progress will continue to be slow until i get everyone out of the house. Thankfully, one of the renters moved out last week and my wife and i intend to move in to the available unit by the end of this month. We will live in this unit while we fix up the unit we really want. For now, we just need to clean it up and move our stuff over. That is one of the very convenient things about having multiple units.

The only work being done to this unit