After taking down many overgrown, dead & dying trees in our yard we were left with LOTS of ugly tree stumps. Sharing all the tricks & tips of DIY tree stump removal that saves you money while making your yard a more usable & beautiful outdoor space!
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DIY Tree Stump Removal Tips
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When we moved into Lehman Lane our yard had a lot of large pine, spruce trees & big shrubs. A Lot!
Pine trees had been planted around the periphery of the yard long ago for privacy.
Unfortunately, these trees no longer provided privacy.
Many people don’t think about what’s going to happen 20 years down the line. They are just thinking about the privacy they need now.
Over time these rows of trees crowd the yard significantly & crowd each other.
Only the tops of the trees remain green since the bottom half of the trees don’t get any sunlight.
If you are planting trees and shrubs it’s important to think about the mature size when planting and make sure that your landscape will still look good when maturity is reached.
Your future owners will thank you. 🙂
Here’s an example of what the trees looked like underneath them during the time Jason was building our custom cedar privacy fence. Isn’t that ugly?
With 4 kids & a dog, we really wanted a yard our kids & Moose could run around & play. So, we took down rows & rows of trees that were completely dead in the middle with just a few live branches up on the top.
Instructions for How to DIY Tree Stump Removal
Now with all the trees down we have a lot of ugly stumps.
After paying for a tree service to grind out a stump before & it was anywhere from $100-300 a stump depending on the size we decided to do it ourselves!
Cost of Renting a Stump Grinder for DIY Tree Stump Removal
I went online to our local George’s Tool Rental & saw that we could rent a stump grinder for about $180 for a day.
Better yet I found out that if you rent it on a holiday weekend when the store is closed (like July 4th) you can get a special deal.
I picked it up Thursday afternoon & was able to keep it until Monday morning for the cost of one day!
Considering I had about 13 various size stumps to remove this sounded like a good deal.
If you have multiple tree stumps in your yard, I would definitely recommend renting a stump grinder for diy tree stump removal. Our local Home Depot does tool rentals as well.
Transporting & Operating a Stump Grinder
When I picked the stump grinder up I had to rent some loading ramps for $12 to roll it up in the truck bed. It’s not something you can pick up. 🙂
They’ll show you how to work it…it’s fairly simple…like starting a lawn mower.
To be safer you could wear safety googles when doing this!
For your tree stump removal…
When using the stump grinder, just let the grinder do the work moving it back and forth across the stump.
I grinded them to about 3-4 inches below the ground level.
All in all it took about 3 hours on Friday & 3 hours on Saturday to remove our 13 stumps.
2 of these were probably 18″ in diameter, 4-5 were 12″ in diameter, and 5-6 were 6″ in diameter.
Now you can plan your next DIY tree stump removal project!
Below is a before and after picture of what our yard looks like now that we are done taking down the trees and grinding all those pesky stumps. 🙂
*Another tip for removing a stump for your yard would be to cut down your tree stump with a chainsaw down below the soil line and cover it with dirt…which it what we have done with smaller trees rather the rent a stump grinder*
In a few more years the shrubs & trees we planted will start to give us more privacy again without taking away too much lawn space for our kids. I hope this inspires you to give DIY tree stump removal a try!
by Tara Lehman, written with Jason’s help
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