There are small jobs.
There are large jobs.
And, in my family, there are the infamous “ten minute” jobs.
“Ten minute” jobs always – always – morph into something much larger, more time consuming and gigantic than anyone was expecting. A “Ten Minute” job is the one that ends up taking two trips to a hardware store, and finds problems inside of problems. In my family the words “I just need help on a quick ten minute job” have been met with dread and fear. I’m not sure why any of us even think it’s possible to do a job in ten minutes. I certainly should have known better…
My dad came to my house with a Kaboda equipped with a winch, a rusty cable, a three-hundred pound lead weight and a plan and told me it would just take ten minutes to get the unwanted willow branch onto the ground.
So deceptively small looking. So very heavy.
…I should have known…
We enacted the plan.
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- Tie the winch to the rope swing.
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- Pull the rope swing over the branch.
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- Remove the rope swing and attach rusty cable and lead weight to winch.
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- And then drive the Kaboda back and forth to saw the branch down.
And then there was the part where the 300 pound weight went up in the tree and stayed there instead of coming back down so the old rusty cable could start to cut the branch. More weight was added, different angles were tried…
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- And then there was the part where the lead weight didn’t go up in the tree.
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- And the part where the Kaboda wasn’t heavy enough so we had to fill it with wood.
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- And when the first three additional cinder blocks weren’t heavy enough so we added three more.
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- And the part where the rope broke and we had to use a chain instead.
Hours later the plan was working. We might not have been “sawing” the branch off, but we were certainly “sanding” our way through it.
Look at that sawdust fly!
My dad and I are long on stubborn. The branch was going to come down and with a bit of extra rope and planning…
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- Rope to pull on the tip.
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- Pulling on the tip with real force.
It did.
Down it comes, nice and slow and just in the right spot!
Five and half hours after we started it was all sawed up and hauled off.
Around here, as I should have known, that’s just your typical “ten minute” job.
Behind the Willows 
I know all about the so called 10 minute jobs. There is no such thing. I won’t go into details!!
I can imagine! 😀
Hilarious. Especially because I do stuff like this at least once a week.
I thought you might relate! 😉
Hilarious! I love the fact that you were so certain this would be another drawn-out, nothing-goes-right situation that you took pictures at every step! I’m glad we aren’t alone with our “10 minute” projects.
Nope, not alone! 😀 😉
Hilarious!!! 😀 … no-one had a ladder and a chainsaw, right? 🙂
Nope, too high and too unstable for any ladder or climbing. The rest of the tree will come down this fall when we can get it down without damaging near by trees if it doesn’t fall down before then… which it might.
Ahh … poor tree.
Yeah, 2/3’rds of it is already down. It was the rope swing tree and shaded half the yard- changing the look of things out back without it!
Don’t get me started…..just remember what your last name is….enough said.
I’m just going to say that sometimes all my projects seem like this…