She said she wanted it cut back more but he cut the bottom edges off around the outside edge but didn't cut all the over hang off back to the edge of the deck and arbor wood. I contacted my brother as he was, at that time, pruning his father-in-laws trees, so I asked if he could come and just prune back the vines on the OUTSIDE edges of the arbor for her.
He came while we were out and did one side of the arbor and when we talked to them later, he shared that even using an industrial hedge trimmer, they couldn't get through the thick vines and so much black dirt was falling on them, they got filthy and had to use eye protection and a mask and weren't getting very far so they pulled out a chainsaw but that isn't the best tool on small things as it bucks each time you start cutting into a new item, so he said there was NO way to do it as holding their arms up for that length of time with the heavy tools and all the "stuff" (not the word he used) falling down on their faces, he couldn't do it and suggested paying his son to come again with his landscaping crew to take it down. We were going to leave it at that due to other projects she wanted help with until I went out and heard somethings nesting inside of the vines over my head. I told her I thought there were some birds nesting in the vines and she said it was too late for bird nests. I told her that I heard something burrowing in the vines in two spots over my head.
Shortly after our conversations, and my brother having been there, I found a dead rodent (I think it was a small rat as it looked really big for a mouse) dead just below where they had cut the vines. I think they had trimmed off the vines the rats had used to get in and out of the nest and had fallen to its death. This made me nervous and I felt like I needed to deal with it sooner than my nephew could get to it. I also knew the tools he had and that they would struggle with the situation and I felt I could use my knowledge to make it easier. I have been pruning all sorts of things for more than 20 years. I have many posts of pruning of my trees. Here is one about my fruit trees. Here is one about the large tree in my yard. Here is a post about my front trees. You can type in "prune" into the search box for MANY more posts on pruning. I use my reciprocating saw so much that I had to purchase another one within two years of use because I used it to death! I just bought a new one, but since I wasn't near my home, I had my sister pick one up at the store and asked her to get me a "PRUNING" blade.
Recip
rocating saws are a finicky thing. You have to be using the right type of blade for your project or it won't go well. She purchased a "wood with nails" blade which has tiny hook teeth on it. A pruning blade has long triangle teeth which are more like fangs. They are VERY different things. There was an all purposed blade that came with the saw but it was a six inch blade and we needed a 12 inch blade. I showed my "mom" that neither of those blades would work well on the project.
We went and purchased a three pack of 12 inch pruning blades for the saw. We dug into cutting out the vines between the 4x4 posts on the arbor. The first seven sections went fairly quickly even though we kept running into chicken wire at the one end that we didn't know the previous owners had placed there. The pruning blade doesn't do wire and pulled it towards the motor so I knew when I felt resistance to stop sawing and pull out the blade and use a wire cutting blade to get through those areas of metal. Also, after each cut, the air intake on the motor would be full of mulching black dirt. It was horrible! I had to get a little scrubber from the kitchen and brush out the debris after each swipe of the saw. 
The further we got to the one side of the arbor with the thicker vines, the more black mulchy stuff we hit, and it was falling so thick and fast as I would cut I couldn't look up even with mask and eye protection. I was covered after the first cut with black mulchy dirt. I had my arms above my head for about five hour cutting vines and I called my brother to bring me a trailer so I could haul away the vines but he was a trooper and saint to stay and help me until it was all down and a full trailer load was finished. He missed his Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice to help me get the thickest vines down in a better way as I couldn't get through the three feet of vines above the arbor and the foot to 18 inches of black mulched dirt mixed in! 
My hand started to cramp and freeze in a claw manner for the last hour of working as I had been holding the saw over my head and squeezing the power bar for so long. I have never had that happen in all the years I have pruned. I kept having to cut deeper and deeper and try and pull the cut vines out to get to the higher stuff. In this pictures, I pushed the pitch fork to the top of the growth extending my arm to full length and the fork is just above the growth. You can see my brother is six foot four inches, if I remember right, and he had his arm extended with the rake and it was only about a foot over the top of the vines new growth in one area.
I kept cutting more and more trying to free the vines from the top of the arbor and then we had to push the black soil off as the roots had taken hold in the dirt and had grown into the cracks of the boards so we had to force them out or break them off.
I am guessing, had someone else come, they would have taken the entire thing down. There was so much weight on top that the cross beams had been pushing out and one had already fallen out. We need to replace a few rotted out boards, but for the most part, it is still functional, but she wants to start over with twine rather than chicken wire as that was what caused all the mulch to build up.
It is amazing how much light gets into the house without all that growth there, but they will miss the shade until the new vines grow ,but that is a quick thing so it shouldn't take long to get some good coverage. Here is a recap to cutting vines that are thick. Hedge trimmer works best for thin vines. Thick vines need a PRUNING blade on a reciprocating saw! If there is metal, you need a metal blade. Get familiar with the blade types for the saws as using the right blade for the job makes life so much easier and enjoyable. The jobs go quickly!
The next day we worked on using the dark mulch material to scatter in the garden beds as it was really nice mulch. While working, we found another dead rodent that fell to its death, most likely while we were pruning and we didn't notice it because it crawled away from the vines, so we found it while working on the sprinklers and mulch the next day. I shook out my pants outside and turned out the pockets because I had so much fine black dirt all over me. I washed and dried the clothes alone and when I pulled them out of the dryer, black dirt fell out into the dryer and the little dryer screen dumped lots when I took it out to clean it. So wiped it all out and washed the load again and dried it again but that black dust just doesn't seem to want to get out.
I only had one pair of shoes with me and was wearing my Birkenstocks to work. Every time I put them on, I get black lines all over my feet. I wiped them down with a damp paper towel, have stomped them out, I put on some white footie socks to spray some bug poison as we were getting some spiders in from the vines being taken down, and my socks got black stripes on them. I can't get rid of all the black dust from the mulching debris. I am glad we could help her take care of that and get rid of the rodent nest before they found their way inside!
Have a blessed, rodent and dirt free day!
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