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.

Some of my favorite jobs are the kitchen and bathroom tear-outs. the kitchens are my favorite of the two, particularly if there is ceramic floor tile to be removed. The cabinets come out quickly if you know what your doing and so does the tile on the floor. I’ve had kitchen and bath demolition jobs in the Hollywood Hills, the San Gabriel Vally and the San fernando Valley, as well as in Santa Clarita, Valencia and all over the West side, from Culver City and Santa Monica to west Hollywood.

Recently I did a job for a realtor, working on her own property in Alhambra. I demolished a bathroom, tore out the carpet, wall panel, pulled up the kitchen and dining room linoleum and wood flooring, and removed the kitchen cabinetry from her two bedroom duplex. She was in a hurry to move in and I had the job done within the same week she approached me. I met her at the Glendale realtor’s association meeting, which I am a member of. I do a lot of work for realtors, removing things left at the properties they are selling, as well as working for them personally.

On this job the first thing we did was break up all the kitchen cabinets and load it all into the truck. Next the linoleum flooring had to come up, the problem I didn’t foresee was that it had been glued to a thin wood sheeting which had been tacked over the original floor. It is not uncommon to have multiple flooring materials in homes over thirty years old. It took hours and a lot of work to chisel, pry and pull off the last two layers of flooring material. Next we pulled up the carpet and padding in the two bedrooms, closets and hall, and then cut it into pieces enabling me to pack it better in the truck. Then I pulled off the wood wall paneling in the living room.

The bathroom tear-out was typical, first the sink had to be disconnected, the cabinet removed, then the medicine cabinet and toilet. Next I chipped away the tile on the walls around the bathtub, then the plaster and chicken wire holding it had to be broken through and pulled off the studs, that’s the hardest part. Then the tub had to be removed, in this case I broke it into pieces with a sledge hammer. It was cast iron and not easily broken. Finally I pulled up the vinyl flooring. Once that was all loaded, we took up the carpet in the living room along with the padding as before. the whole job took two days and I packed the entire contents of that two bedroom duplex in about half of my truck.

I remember a job I did in Glendale, where I had a two apartment tear-out. The worst was a single that we pulled up the carpet and padding and vinyl flooring in the bathroom and remove the refrigerator. The other one was upstairs and a one bedroom, with the carpet in the bedroom, hall, closets and living room, along with the padding to go. I tore up the flooring in the bathroom and kitchen, as well as demolished the entire kitchen cabinets, took out the stove, and sink. I did the whole kitchen in about forty five minutes. We did both apartments in about seven hours, that’s demo, removal and loaded.

There was a house in San Gabriel where the kitchen was all metal. All the cabinets were metal ! there was a lot of other trash and garbage of all kinds around the house as well as in the garage. It was the usual stuff like furniture, appliances, clothing children’s toys and beds. it was not easy getting the metal cabinets off the walls without damaging the walls, but I did, it just took more time.

Probably more than any other type, I get calls to remove various kinds of junk from peoples garages, back yards, and the area surrounding the home. The second most common trash removal call is taking furniture, such as an old couch, chair or dresser from inside the house. Often the person or family will have just moved and need all the moving boxes and packing material removed. When they have unpacked the boxes the garage or driveway is full of boxes with the packing paper in them. I consolidate the paper and cut the boxes up so the cardboard is flat. When I’m done there are far fewer boxes which now are stuffed full with the packing paper and bubble wrap, and the rest of the cardboard is stacked carefully. The customers can’t believe the difference when I am done.

The kinds of garbage I’ll be picking up from around the side of the house and back yard consists of tires, scrap metal such as old bumpers from a car, pieces of wooden fences, broken chunks of concrete, brick and cement blocks, children’s toys, potted plants, old refrigerators, washers, dryers and the contents of wood and metal in storage sheds. I also take away a lot of bicycles, broken wood and metal tables and torn mattresses.

There was a property in Monrovia in which I cleaned out two houses, a garage, the surrounding grounds and demolished a camper. I cut the camper up with a sawzall in about three hours but the rest of the job took considerable longer. It was one of those places where no one had lived for many years and full of every kind of filthy trash you can imaging. The walls in the houses were black with dirt. The stoves, refrigerators and washer and dryer were just as black. As usual on these hoarding, trash removal jobs, clothes were all over the floors along with boxes of books, magazines, toys and a million other things. The mattresses were torn, the box springs were broken, book cases broken too. There was nothing I could take to the Goodwill, not a sofa, chair, coffee table, not a dining table, not even a night stand, nothing !!! The garage was just as bad with old broken tools, wood and metal cabinets and chests. Around the houses were tires, broken pieces of furniture, metal and wood. It was a mess and took two days to complete.

When I get a call for a house or garage clean-out I never know what to expect. Sometime a relative has passed away and the children or other family members need to empty the property of whatever is there. It could be old tools and tires in a storage shed, and often demolishing the wood or metal shed as well, clearing out the back yard of old rusted car parts and broken wood fencing, and pulling out all kinds of junk from under the house. Inside the home there are often pieces of furniture and boxes of books and magazines and old wood doors. Down stairs the house is often full of furniture, with beds that must be removed, a refrigerator, sometimes stove, clothes and kitchen utensils. In the garage there may be a washer and dryer as well as a lawn mower, old metal bed frames, wooden slats and various tools and gardening equipment and rolled up carpet.

I get a lot of calls from realtors to remove various kinds of trash from garages. When their client is preparing to sell their home, there are often things such as ping pong tables, wooden chests, old pieces of wood, metal and things they just don’t use anymore, and get rid of for the house to be shown for sale. Other times the realtors will call me to take away trash from a house that was left by the previous tenant and it’s got to go in a hurry. This is what I am so well known for, getting to the job, the same day they call. and doing what it takes to remove whatever needs to go, from a wood hutch, dresser, couch or a metal storage shed full of garbage, they know they can count on me to get the job done.

In Chatsworth I cleaned out a former encampment of homeless people. It was a hoarding situation with trash, clothes and small pieces of furniture. There was garbage they had stored down in the L.A. aqueduct which required a ladder to remove. there was debris of all kinds. What most people would consider junk, they collected and thought valuable.

I have done many hoarding trash-outs. In Canyon Country, the entire house was filled with every type of trash, from old, dirty clothes and kitchen ware to mattresses and furniture, computers, T.V.’s, appliances, books and magazines. On that job I tore out rooms with carpets and padding that were filthy, kitchen floor tile, wall panels and toilets. Sometimes the kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets and the bathroom tub and shower enclosures need to be demolished because the tile and bath tubs were too dirty to clean. On hoarding jobs like these you never know what to expect, often there will be broken boxes of old clothes, furniture and televisions in crawl spaces and under the homes which need to be pulled out. The garages will also usually be filled with refrigerators, broken furniture, toys, and boxes of books and magazines that are infested with rats.

I cleared out a two story home in Los Angeles which had several refrigerators, sofa beds, recliners, multiple beds, book cases and dressers. Before I could take any of the furniture out I had to clear the floors of all the clothing and broken boxes of garbage. The bedrooms had night stands, big chests and magazines thrown everywhere. In the back yard was a storage shed that was full of old tools, metal, wood and boxes full of all kinds of junk.

Another time I used a big dumpster was on a commercial property in Vernon. A cabinet making company had gone out of business and had left huge display cabinets, counters and all kinds of furnishings. Most all the cabinets and display cases had to be broken apart and carried through the giant airplane hanger the worked out of. There was wood, metal and massive pallets, plastic, tile and many sheets of wood paneling. It took about fifteen hours to fill that dumpster.

I did a hoarding trash-out in a 2 story condo that was so bad even the plumber was holding his nose and had to leave. As I opened the front door cock roaches fell from the top of the door to the floor where countless more were swarming. There was no pathway to walk as the floor was covered with clothing, broken furniture and other debris. The garage was so full of trash that I couldn’t open the door fully. There were mattresses lawn chairs, patio tables, a pool table, clothing, a dryer and washer full of water.

The realtor called me on a Thursday afternoon and I was there pulling the junk out by 5 PM that evening. We started with the living room which had such a volume of clothing on the floor that we had to clear it out as we walked. There were broken wooden chairs, a torn-up sofa, toys, cabinets and a T.V. The three bedrooms upstairs had torn mattresses and broken box springs, another ripped up sofa bed, more clothes, pieces of broken furniture and every kind of garbage you can think of. In the kitchen we took away a side by side refrigerator full of more live, swarming cock roaches. As we were taking all the trash and furniture to the truck, neighbors from the complex were commenting that they couldn’t believe how much garbage was in the condo.

The electricity was shut off and we were working in dark much of the time since we ended up going late into the night for the five days on this hoarding job.The garage door was broken and we fought to get it open and closed repeatedly, as there was no light down there at all. We worked in almost total darkness, dealing with the broken sofa beds, the pool table, beds, dressers, pieces of metal and wood, tripping over clothes the whole time with the cock roaches running throughout everything.

I donate the serviceable items, removing furniture and other household items and delivering them to Goodwill. Broken items are taken to the dump

And this is what it looks when I am done…

From Beverly Hills to South Central, I’m up and down stairs, with broken sofa beds, and refrigerators, under bridges, dragging wet, carpets to my truck, on roof tops, taking out swamp coolers, cutting apart old garages and back hoses, wading through the ocean with pieces of rusty iron stair cases that have broken away from beach-front homes, in dirt-filled crawlspaces and sweltering attics pulling out old, broken furniture, breaking up Jacuzzis sunken beneath decks that are suspended over cliffs, and a million other things that other haulers don’t do.

It’s 7 PM on a Saturday night and I’m at a condo on Wilshire Blvd in Westwood, picking up a couch and pinball machine, as I’m leaving I get a call to go to Huntington Beach, where it’s raining, to get some mattresses. By 9 I’m at the beach in the pouring rain fighting the queen size beds, getting them to my truck which is a block away…tough parking there on Saturday nights.

The next day, I’m in Highland Park, at a home built in 1887, removing 80 years of hoarded debris from a crawl space and carrying old broken furniture up 60 steps on the hill.

Another day I’m in Santa Clarita, doing a bathroom demolition and removing three rooms of carpet, later that night, at the dump in Sun Valley, throwing off 10,000 lbs of wood and concrete in the rain.

In Palos Verdes, tearing out the remainder of a block wall and removing old, broken wood fencing, then back up to West Hills in the valley, for 7 hours of digging and cutting out a Jacuzzi that was built into the side of a mountain.

At the Malibu Villas, transporting furniture to a home down the street, then in South Central, taking away two generations of hoarding that other haulers have turned down doing.

In Glendale, tearing out the carpet from two apartments, removing the appliances and taking out the the two bathrooms, a closet and kitchen, all packed neatly on my truck — all within 6 hours. The next day, doing a household move in Beverly Hills.

Over the years I’ve had many different types of junk removal jobs, where I have removed all types of trash, furniture, clothing, kitchen ware, appliances, wood, concrete, asphalt, and many other types of debris. When I get to a job I never know what to expect, it could be a bed and dresser I was called to take away and end up removing sofas, boxes, clothing and carpet. If it’s a hoarding situation there could be almost anything, from refrigerators, stoves and recliner chairs, to desks, children’s toys, T.V.’s, all types of electronics and dining tables.

Often times storage sheds will need to be removed and demolished and the contents removed. I get a lot of calls to remove jacuzzis, which have to be cut into sections. I’ve taken away broken wooden fences, block and brick walls, and brick patio fireplaces. Occasionally I get a call to tear out a concrete patio or asphalt driveway. I remember I did an asphalt driveway in La Crescenta. We tore out and removed 27,000 LBS. in two days. Those are my favorite jobs.

One of the jobs I remember well was a junk removal job in Eco Park, in Los Angeles. We were removing all kinds of things from an old home. It was on a hill and it was about fifty yards to get to the sixty steps that led up to the street where my truck was parked. It was summer and during a heat wave. We carried all kinds of furniture, dining tables, end tables and coffee tables, wooden crates, boxes, cloths, electronics, chunks of cement, old bricks, plastic containers, tires, wood from a broken fence, and every other kind of debris you can think of up those stairs.

Another junk removal job that stands out was for a Dr.’s office near U.S.C. Medical center in Los Angeles. We took out medical examination chairs and tables, as well as desks, end tables, book cases and boxes. Over the years I’ve removed many record keeping cabinets, both metal and wood. Law offices are much the same in that I will be removing much of the same items. They tend to be more on the order of wood and metal file cabinets, credenzas, desks, coffee and end tables, chairs, both sectional and single piece desks, and book cases. Sometime a few couches are thrown in to be removed.

Another thing I am asked to remove from offices are the metal and fabric cubicles. There is a lot of time in disassembling them, but they stack well.

One of the factors in bidding office moves and clean-outs is the time spent in getting the furniture and other items to the truck. It is often a long carry through halls and waiting for elevators, while other are using them. There are always things that take time you don’t expect.

I get a large percentage of calls for the removal of boxes and the packing materials, such as paper and plastic bubble wrap, which are left over from a move. I break all the boxes down to flats and consolidate the packing materials into as few boxes as possible. It takes time but saves the customer money because they are paying for how much space is taken in the truck.

I’ll never forget the night I removed an iron railing on the coast in Malibu. I received a call around 4 in the afternoon on a Friday. An iron railing had disconnected from a home on the coast in Malibu, and washed in large sections down the beach about 100 yards. I was out there by 9 PM running my extension cords from the house over a cliff and wall down to the surf in order to cut the sections into manageable pieces to carry. It took several cuts with my Sawsall to bring the iron railing and bannister into several sections weighing about 100 LBS. each. The carry back to the house they had broken free from was difficult and dangerous due to having to walk on the stones and rocks of different shapes and sizes, with the tide coming in covering them, making it impossible to see where to step. Very easy to twist or break an ankle. When we got to the house there was a cliff and wall, the pieces of railing had to be lifted over, another difficult task given the weight of the steel and height to be lifted.