October 5: Back to Rebecca's in Studio City

Our beach house stay ended Saturday morning on Oct 5. I had already been to Matt's tool garage and loaded up everything I could find. We headed to Studio City to tackle the project list. The list included: finish the garage project, add lattice to the back fence, add artificial ivy panels to the side fence, plug the 10 dry wall holes in her fireplace room and remove a very old electric wall heater from her guest bathroom. One can always hope!


The trip turned out great. After consultation with Linda we determined I could remove the big support beam by supporting it close to the ceiling. The only glitch was I couldn't get close enough to the top of the 2 x 4 studs to cut them out with any power tool available. Made a quick trip to Harbor Freight, bought a reciprocating saw for $29.00, and it worked great. The reciprocating saw also helped me cut the big beam so I could remove it.

I bought some pulleys to let the beam down but it turned out it wasn't that heavy. Project completed and car in the garage.

Next project was the lattice on the back fence to provide privacy from the condo behind the back yard.

We put lattice up that was 2 feet high and decided it wasn't quite high enough. Another trip to Home depot with taller lattice. Successful project in the end.

 Next project was the fence along the side of the house. Again privacy was an issue. Fence was too low. Rebecca found some great artificial ivy lattice that worked great.







That evening I decided to work on the dry wall holes. Rebecca had bought an adjustable hole saw for dry wall. It worked great. I was able to use the dry wall plugs Rebecca cut to fill the holes.

She'll need to do the finish work as it will take some sanding and additional layers of  plaster filler.

By that time I was wiped out. We hadn't gotten to the old electric heater but I was too tired to even think about it. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed the evening.




The traffic is such that we would not want to drive the freeways until at least 10 AM. I woke up early and decided I could get the heater out before we left. In particular, I realized that we had dry wall from the garage destruction project we could use to fill the holes.







I was able to tear it out, (it wasn't pretty). but I got it out and was able to fill the hole with dry wall. Again, Rebecca will finish the project.

While I was working, Linda and Rebecca put some fun lights up in the back yard.

Also, at some point Rebecca and Linda made "Dog cookies". Pumpkin and peanut butter. Think maybe these are two spoiled dogs?





We packed up and headed back to Encinitas. We had decided to go on a 16 day Panama Cruise that will end up in Miami. Great! When we talked to Randy and Cindy, they decided to come on the cruise with us! Much more fun with them along. We picked them up in San Diego and we will all drive up to LA to board the ship October 11th.

What a great plan - no need to fly back to Florida :-)