The process of moving from one home to another offers various challenges to whoever’s about to move out. And if those difficult tasks are to be classified and ranked according to their levels of difficulty, then, non-surprisingly, the physical relocation of furniture pieces will be one of the toughest things to do when moving home.
The majority of furniture pieces are rather bulky – big, heavy, and often delicate despite their sturdy look and feel. To make things even more complicated, some furniture pieces are very valuable because they have sentimental value for their owners, while other pieces can be simply priceless – for example, antique furniture.
Read on to learn how to protect furniture when moving: preparing your furniture for moving (inventory, measure, assess, clean, disassemble), gathering the necessary packing materials for moving furniture, and ending with the best way to protect furniture for moving – that is, packing furniture for moving.
How to prepare furniture for moving
Before you can protect your furniture for moving by wrapping your pieces in protective materials, first you’re going to have to go through several preparation stages. Don’t skip the preparation state because it is vital to the success of your furniture moving operation. You’re not supposed to simply start wrapping a furniture piece with moving blankets unless you’ve made sure it is 100% ready to be moved out, loaded into a moving vehicle and transported to the new address.
The furniture preparation stage consists of 4 major steps you’re recommended to take in succession.
Step 1. Inventory your furniture pieces
Create a detailed list of all the furniture pieces you have in your home: beds, sofas, couches, chairs, tables, nightstands, desks, dressers, wardrobes, cupboards, bookshelves, and so on. Don’t skip a single piece because you will need that inventory checklist to decide what furniture you will be moving to the new home, and then to use as a packing list later on. After the move is over, you will be able to check the delivered furniture pieces against that inventory and make sure all of them have been delivered successfully.
Use a notepad and a pen to complete this inventory, or complete it even faster using your computer, tablet, or smartphone. While inventorying your furniture, mark down their 1) type, 2) number, and 3) current condition. Also, write down any special notes to help you make the right decisions later.
Step 2. Measure your furniture
After investing considerable time into packing your furniture for moving and then investing loads of money into transporting it to the new home, it would be really unfortunate if some of the pieces wouldn’t fit through the doors and hallways of the new home, or they wouldn’t match the interior design of their corresponding destination rooms.
Have a floor plan of the new home to make sure that the above-mentioned misfortunate event never takes place. Measure the width, depth, height and diagonal dimensions of each of your large furniture pieces and take into account those measurements when deciding the fate of your furniture prior to the move.
Step 3. Assess your furniture
This is the most important step when preparing your furniture for moving. The furniture assessment task will serve three equally important purposes:
- Take a closer look at your individual furniture pieces to determine if any of them have pre-existing damage. If that is the case, write down that information in the furniture inventory list and take close-up photos of the damaged areas.
- Judge whether any of the pieces will require professional packing – usually the case when protecting, packing and moving antique furniture.
- Decide which furniture pieces you will actually take with you, and which ones you will leave behind. This is vital – keep in mind that because furniture is usually rather heavy, it will cost you plenty of cash to relocate any of the furniture pieces. Is it worth it? Do not move pieces that are too old, too worn out, too damaged, and too outdated. Also, think twice before paying for having a furniture piece moved only to place it in storage in the new home and never use it again.
Step 4. Clean your furniture
No, you don’t need to clean up thoroughly your pieces, at least not at least the home move is over. This preparation step is all about removing the dust or any accumulated abrasive particles that might scratch the delicate surface of your furniture pieces during the haul.
Take a soft piece of cloth or a duster and remove the dust from your pieces. Do not invest too much time for this step – the idea is to make sure there are no coarse particles, dirt or dust before you start to wrap your furniture for shipping.
0 Comments