SMUD had a tree-trimming crew come by our house over the last two days. They spent the first day clearing all the “bushes” (which were nearly tall enough to reach the power lines!). Yesterday they finished the job by taking down a ~50 year old zelkova that was planted right under the power lines. Check out the “before” and “after” pictures:
(Sorry about the poor image quality on the “before” pic. I didn’t think a tripod was needed, and I had no idea that I was supposed to disable automatic exposure control for panorama pictures. Lesson(s) learned on the “after” pic though!)
Now that SMUD has taken care of most of the junk “trees”, we need to get some bids on removal of the last three problems: the skinny maple near the center of the fence, the clump of privet in the right corner, and a palm tree that’s off the right of the frame in the “after” picture. We’re going to use this (southern) edge of our property for our garden, so we need to get maximum sunlight in this area. (This was the main reason we used chainlink when we replaced our south fence.) The palm tree (out of frame) needs to come out to make room for Barb’s quilt studio.
Update: I shot another panorama this morning, with the sun angle about the same as my “Before” picture. This should give a better comparison:
Also, this new “After” picture shows the palm tree I mentioned in the article.
A few weeks ago, we had a bit of a wind storm here in Sacramento. Afterwards we discovered that nearly all the posts of our back fence had failed.
I was hoping to avoid replacing the fence until after we ran new water and sewer pipes for our remodeling project. In fact, I wouldn’t have worried about the fence at all right now were it not for the fact that one of my neighbors (the one without a fence, of course) has a dog. Oh well…
I called around and got several verbal quotes yesterday. I needed about 75 linear feet of fencing installed, and most places were quoting me $1,000 to $1,500 for 4-foot high chain link fencing, not including removal of the old fence. One of the places I called, All Fence Design aka All Steel Fence Design, was just finishing a job and offered to drop by my house to do a written quote, since it was right on their way. They quoted me $1,150 — not the cheapest, but far from the most expensive. They were using the same high-grade materials that the expensive places were quoting me, and they were willing to haul away the old fence! To top it all off, they’d had a job fall through so they were available the very next day. It sounded good to me, so I gave them a deposit on the spot, with work scheduled to begin at 7:00 am the next morning.
They arrived about ten minutes early this morning and got right to work. After making sure they had everything they needed, I went off to my own job. I came home a bit early and they were just finishing up.
Casey (between the open gate and the telephone pole above, with his back to the camera) and his crew did a great job. They got the fence installed in one day, including hauling away the old fence. Galvanized chainlink fencing isn’t a particularly aesthetic material, but these guys made it look great in spite of that. It was good workmanship, quality materials, and a fair price — you can’t ask for better than that! If you need fence work done in the Sacramento area, I strongly recommend that you get a quote from All Fence Design.
