Caveat emptor

Caveat emptor....is the Latin phrase for Let the buyer beware. It's one of the few things I remember from six years of Latin in high school but it's words rang true this week.

Like everyone else in town we have these massive trees that surround our home and during Storm Irene they were swinging and swaying and some are very near to our roof and porch. My husband stayed up all night watching the trees because he feared the worst....that one would fall on our house while we were sleeping in the upstairs of the house. Luckily we did not get any major damage to the trees, just some big limbs that came down in our driveway and clumps of leaves.

But it left us wondering if we should do some preventive maintenance to our trees. Should we have some of them taken down as a precaution. We decided to call in some experts to give us advice and the results were shocking. One company said two giant trees needed to come down in the back of our property at an estimated $3,600 and one needed to come down in the front for an estimated $2,200...that's a whopping $5,800. My husband was ready to sign on the bottom line until I urged him to get some more quotes. The second one said another tree needed to come down in the front ( a different one from the first company) at a cost of $2,000 and said a tree in the back should come down for another $1,000...for a whopping total of $3,000.

The third guy that came out lives in Oxford and inspected all of our trees. He said only one in the front (not pointed out by the first two) that is closest to our front porch needs to come down because it is rotted. He said the other trees in the front are fine, as are the ones in the back of the house. He quoted us $900 for the job and said he'd also trim one tree near the street for nothing!

So as they say Caveat emptor....always get more than one quote when your're having work done at your home. I'm thankful we met an honest guy to do do the work and we signed a contract with him. He'll be here in about two weeks because he's busy chopping up all the trees that have fallen on people's homes and cars. Let's just hope we don't have another hurricane pass through town.