I get quite a number of jobs tearing out carpet, sometimes with the padding and sometimes just the carpet by it’s self. Occasionally the padding under the carpet will be stuck to the wood or concrete floor and will require a lot of scraping to remove. It also takes a great deal of time to remove the tack strips which the carpet is adhered to. Not only do I take up the wood strips but I remove all the tiny nails holding it to the wood or concrete floor. Unlike other haulers I cut the carpet into sections which enables me to pack it more efficiently in my truck. It’s amazing how much carpet can be packed into a space when cut and packed correctly.

I’ve gotten calls to pic up a couple of rooms of carpet that the city’s bulky item pick up wouldn’t take and it’s on the curb. The customer has to get rid of it in a hurry, so when I get a call at seven at night, after they get home from work and discover that the carpet is still on the curb, I get right to it, cutting up all the carpet and padding. People really appreciate the fact that I am on call seven days and nights to remove their trash.

Sometimes the customer will have me demo out the floor tile in the entrance, kitchen and bathroom of the house, condominium or apartment. Removing ceramic and clay tile is some of my favorite work. I also get jobs where the carpet and tile has already been torn out and I simply load it on my truck and haul it away. There are different types of tile and all tile isn’t laid down on the floor the same way. Ceramic floor tile sometimes pops right up with a chisel, and sometimes it comes up in pieces and can require a great deal of work to break with a sledge hammer and chisel with a tile scraper. There are times when linoleum has been laminated over a previous wood or tile flooring and the glue that was used will require all the layers of flooring to come up. This can be an extremely time consuming task. I’ve taken up flooring that took an hour per each five square feet, kitchen floor taking two to three hours, and sometimes more. It usually happens in homes which are over forty years old.

Bathroom floor tile is usually easier and the shower tile generally pops right off. The hard ones are the slate floor tile, they require a lot more work to remove because the material breaks off in pieces and layers and is hard to get under with the chisel. Often a sledge hammer is necessarily to break the slate tile into sections. It’s just a lot of work from different angels with more than one tool. Sometimes the slate floor tile wont come up leaving the surface beneath smooth enough to lay new tile or flooring, and must be left in place. in these cases the new flooring will be laid over it, but that only works if it is some kind of heavy tile that can be floated with something that will take up the irregularities in the surface of the existing tile.

I get a lot of moving jobs where I will transport the furniture and other household items from one location to another, sometimes from the customer’s previous home to the one they have just purchased, other times from house or office to a storage facility or Goodwill. The moving jobs consist of mostly the same items to be re-located, furniture, such as sofas, beds, coffee and end tables, wooden book cases and dressers, night stands, wood cabinets, electronics (computers, TVs), boxes of dishes and clothing. the moves are all within the Los Angeles and Orange County areas and are mostly withing a few miles from the point of origin to destination.

A typical moving job will consist of transporting just a few items of furniture such as a heavy wood book case, cabinet, armoire or couch. Sometimes there will be a refrigerator or washer and dryer to be moved. I’ve moved some extremely heavy pieces of furniture that required a great deal of care and patience, often involving stairs or elevators. It may be four in the afternoon and I’ll get a call from a realtor who needs a sofa or entertainment center removed from a house their client has just purchased. If the furniture is in good enough condition I take it to the Goodwill.

I get household moves where I take some things to the new home of the customer, and others to a storage facility. I’ve had people hire me to re-pack their storage units after seeing how well I pack their junk or load their furniture for a move. I have a gift for organizing and have actually enabled clients to downsize from two storage units, down to one—with room in the unit left over. These are some of my favorite jobs. They are clean and organizing is something I do very well and just comes naturally. On some of my moving jobs the customer has me transport some of the contents in the storage unit to their home or office, and occasionally they will have me empty out the storage space. I get call from people who have been referred to me by the managers of storage facilities. That’s always a good feeling.

Recently we moved three armoires from a house the client had just sold in Topanga Canyon to a home they purchased in West Hills. These pieces of furniture were extremely heavy. There were only two of us on the move and home the armoires were coming out of had steps at the back porch and in the front of the house leading up to the front door. The armoires were made of old wood and had to be carried at points between using the dolly. The armoires barely fit through the door ways and there were tight corners to negotiate as well. Once at the new house we had to move the armoires several times before the customer was pleased with the placements.

Some household moving jobs go faster than others. We moved a family that moved from a house that was almost twice the square footage than the one we moved their things into. The sofabed wouldn’t fit where they had intended it to go, the refrigerator had to be placed in a different part of the kitchen than they had expected and the washer and dryer needed to be put outside. There was a piece of exercise equipment that was too big for a room they wanted it in and I had to take a new bunk bed set they had spent a great deal of money for, to the Goodwill because it was much too large to get into the child’s new bedroom. There have been times when a couch was too big to get through a doorway and had to be discarded. In that case I always take a sofa to The Salvation Army or Goodwill.

The dump or land fill is unlike any other place, it has sea gulls, a constant breeze and so many different smells—all at once. it is a place where you will see every kind of junk, from furniture, clothing, appliances, wood, drywall, food trash, toys, metal, steel, and just about any garbage you can imagine. What is so interesting looking at it all is that every single thing there was once new and payed for with money people thought enough of to work to buy it. All the old, torn, dirty clothing, the torn and broken mattresses and box springs which at one time cost thousands of dollars [ I know because I’ve picked them up from mansions. It is truly amazing just how much is thrown away in this country…every day.

When I get a call to pick up someone’s junk, or what they just don’t want anymore, I take what I can that is still of some value to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. If the things are too far gone they go to the dump or land fill. I’ve taken the entire contents of homes to the dump. From the carpet I tore out, dressers, book cases, cabinets, dining tables, coffee tables and end tables, refrigerators, washers, dryers and electronics. When I get a house that is a hoarding situation there is no telling what kind of trash I will be bringing here.

When you first enter you are amazed at the sheer volume of garbage that is there. As you throw off your load of various kinds of junk, you feel the Earth shake as the monstrous machines move around you, at sometimes uncomfortably close proximity. They are the artificial dinosaurs that scoop and pick up and smash and carry every kind of trash from one giant fifty foot tall mountain, to another.

15 foot tall Bulldozers thunder just a few feet past as I’m throwing off a couch, pushing ten thousand pounds of debris as if it were a few pieces of paper. Giant Caterpillars on 100 feet up on top of a mountain of garbage, picking up and transferring a thousand pounds at a time of what seems to be as only a milk carton. there are so many things happening all at once at this place. To your left a 30 foot tall Caterpillar picks up an 8 foot sofa bed like it is a twig, on your right, a Bulldozer pushes thousands of pounds past you, the six foot high tires rolling only a few feet away.

The dump is a place where you need very much to have your wits about you. It can be dangerous if you aren’t aware of what is going on around you. You will have people on ether side of you throwing off everything from tables, dressers, lumber and all kinds of junk that can do a lot of damage if you get in the way. it is a place where you are not asleep. There are specific areas designated for wood, green wast, rock and concrete, and general household wast such as couches, beds, cabinets, metal, steel, roofing material and food trash. It’s a place you want to get in and out of as quickly as possible.

In the afternoon there can be a long wait to get in. I’ve seen many times when it took 30 minutes to get to the scales. After your truck has been weighed and you have payed it’s time to go to the place designated for you to off load your junk. I like to go at night because it is much quieter, the later it is, the fewer other trucks, just the giant machines moving around, scooping and picking up all the debris. I’ve been at the dump in Sun Valley witch is open 24 / 7 at all hours of the day and night throwing off furniture and garbage of all kinds. I have been there pulling off loads of trash at 2, 3, 4 and 5 AM, when I worked all night trash-out jobs. No other dump I know of In Los Angeles is open these hours.

Everyone should make a field trip at least once to the dump, it is an experience not easily forgotten.

Some of the most time consuming junk removal jobs are those where I remove construction debris. Wood, metal, carpet, concrete, boxes and drywall, all mixed together in one or two big heaps. You need to be very careful while picking through the mess because there are nails sticking out of the wood pieces.

It’s always better if I can get my truck close enough to it so I can throw all the trash in the truck without having to carry it a long distance, however often it is unavoidable. In cases when I have to transport the debris to the truck, I use a trash can with wheels. I stuff the wood, drywall, metal and all the rest of the junk in the cans and then have to load it again into the truck. It takes a lot longer this way and I charge accordingly.

There are jobs that require picking up the debris from around the property and this can take a great deal of time as well, especially if the wood and drywall is on a hillside. Most of the time when I pick up construction debris it’s from a remodel job on the house, not new construction. With new construction the contractors

I get a lot of calls to remove wood, drywall cabinets, sinks, toilets and cement mixed with plaster from jobs where the customer’s kitchen, bathroom and other parts of their home were remodeled. The contractors just left all the debris for the customer to get rid of, so there I am, loading all the pieces of plywood, two by fours, plaster, cement and metal into my truck. The home owner’s are usually frustrated, with all the garbage sitting in their driveway on in the back yard, so when I get there they are quite happy to see me and so grateful when it’s all gone.

Sometimes roofing materials are mixed in with the rest of all the remodel trash. It’s usually all thrown into one big pile of rubbish and has to be picked through piece of wood and drywall by piece of concrete and metal. Sometimes there are stairs and I have to pull the trash cans full of wood, sheet, rock, metal and bricks up to the street. I’ve had jobs where I had to carry many thousands of pounds of all kinds of construction debris up as many as one hundred steps and up the sides of hill sides in the heat waves.

I’ve done a lot of office clean – outs where I remove various types of furniture such as desks, credenzas, wood coffee tables, end tables, wood and metal filing cabinets, Sometimes they are in downtown Los Angeles, sometimes in the San Fernando Valley. I’ve cleaned out commercial offices from Santa Clarita to Torrance, and Moorepark to Covina and La Habra. Removing the furniture from commercial offices is one of my favorite jobs. It’s clean work and just basically moving of furniture. Often though the desks, and wood cabinets need to be broken down and that is where the work is. Some of the offices that are down town have long distances to transport the book cases, credenzas and desks. Often times the office I am removing the things from is up several floors and there is a long carry to the elevators, which are usually very busy, so there is a wait. Parking can also be very difficult in these cases and make things very problematic.

On some office clean – outs I de construct the metal and fabric cubicles which again takes time. They are flat so they load fast and pack well. I’ve removed the metal file cabinets from medical offices when they went paperless, cabinets that cost thousands of dollars, along with beautiful wood desks that were even more expensive. Some of the desks and computer module stations were so big that I had to disassemble them and take the pieces to the dump because they were too large for the Salvation Army or Goodwill to take. I try to donate as much as I can but they won’t take everything.

Commercial office clearing generally pays very well and is pretty straight-forward. Usually all I need is my drill to de-construct the desk units, partitions and wall units which are wood and metal book cases and cabinets. When I get it all down to the truck I use my mini sledge hammer to break it all to flats. It’s amazing how many desks you can get in a space when they are broken down. I often can’t donate desks, book cases and other pieces of good furniture to the Good will or Salvation Army because the client is in a hurry to have the office space cleared and it would just take too much time going back and forth with all the furniture. I remember removing all the furniture from an office in Santa Monica which was just down the street from the Goodwill on Wilshire Blvd. had couches, coffee tables, credenzas, book cases, chairs and tables. Each load only took about thirty minutes round trip. That was one of the best jobs I’ve had.