The Piano Is Fine: What Actually Gets Damaged in a House Move

Ask anyone what they are worried about the week before a move and they will name the biggest thing in the house. The piano. The oak dresser that came down from a grandparent. The enormous television. Those items nearly always arrive in one piece. The things that turn up chipped, cracked or bent are usually small, usually inexpensive, and usually packed in a rush the night before.

That gap between what people fear and what actually goes wrong is worth knowing about, because it changes where your effort is best spent.

The heavy things travel best, because they get the most attention

A piano gets a plan. Someone measures the doorway, works out the turn at the bottom of the stairs, decides how many pairs of hands are on it and where the straps go. The same is true of a wardrobe, a range cooker or a marble-topped sideboard. Nothing about a heavy item is casual, so nothing about it is left to chance.

Anything that size is wrapped in removal blankets before it leaves the room, then strapped upright against the side of the van so it cannot shift on a corner. Beds and larger flat-pack pieces come apart, and the fixings go into a labelled bag taped to the frame rather than loose in a box. The result is that the pieces you would most hate to lose end up with the most protection around them.

When a large item does get damaged, it is almost always a measuring problem rather than a carrying problem. A sofa that was never going to make the turn, a bed frame nobody realised was built in the room. That is why, where we can, we look at both properties before we price a house removal, rather than working from a room count over the phone.

Most of the damage happens in the last hour

The breakages we see come out of boxes packed right at the end, when the plan has run out and the leftover objects do not belong to any particular room. The bathroom cabinet. The junk drawer. The shelf of odds and ends by the back door.

Two things go wrong there. Boxes get filled too full, so the flaps bow outwards and anything stacked on top presses straight down into the contents. Or they get filled too loosely, and everything inside slides about for the whole journey. A half-empty box is more dangerous than a heavy one.

• Fill each box to the top, then pad the gaps with tea towels, jumpers or scrunched paper so nothing can move.
• Keep boxes liftable. Books and crockery go in small boxes, bedding and cushions in the big ones.
• Tape the base along the seam and again across it. Boxes that fail nearly always fail at the bottom.
• Write the room on the side of the box, not the lid, so it can still be read in a stack.

Glass and ceramics account for most of it

If we had to name one category that suffers more than any other, it is crockery and glassware. The reason is simple. People pack plates the way plates sit in a cupboard, which is flat. A flat stack puts the weight of every plate above on the bottom edge of the one below, and a single firm knock travels through all of them.

Plates travel far better standing on their edge, like records in a rack, each one wrapped on its own and packed into a small box with paper above and below. Glasses go upright with paper inside the bowl as well as around the outside. Lampshades should never carry weight, so they ride on top of a load and nowhere else. Mirrors and framed pictures go on their edge, face to face, with something soft between them.

It is slow, unglamorous work, and it is the single part of a move most worth handing over. Our packing service is an add-on to a removal rather than a job of its own, and the fragile hour is where it earns its place. If you would rather do it yourself, our room-by-room walkthrough on how to pack for a house move covers the order to work in.

The thing nobody plans for is the house itself

Furniture is only half of the risk. Door frames, bannister spindles, radiator valves, wooden floors and freshly painted walls all take a beating on moving day. In a period cottage around Shaftesbury with a narrow staircase and a low beam, the building is often tighter than anything you are carrying through it.

So the floors get covered, the frames get padded and the corners get guarded before a single box moves. It is also why we carry public liability cover of £2.5m alongside our goods in transit cover. One protects your belongings, the other protects the two buildings, including the one you have just sold and no longer control.

The safest item in the van is usually the one everybody was worried about.

Electronics travel upright, and they travel last

Televisions ride on their edge rather than flat, because a large panel laid down flexes across the middle under its own weight. Keep the original box if you still have it in the loft. If you do not, wrap the screen in a blanket, stand it between two soft items and tell the crew which one it is before the van doors close.

Photograph the back of anything with more than two cables before you unplug it. It takes a minute and saves an evening at the other end.

What we would actually protect first

If you want a short list of where to concentrate, it is not the furniture.

1. Crockery, glassware and anything ceramic.
2. Lamps, shades, mirrors and framed pictures.
3. Small electrical items with trailing cables and loose parts.
4. Anything sentimental or irreplaceable, which is better off travelling in your own car.
5. Paperwork, keys, chargers and medication, in one box that stays with you all day.

The rest of it, the sofas and the beds and yes, the piano, is our problem rather than yours. Genuinely awkward items such as pianos, large antiques and artwork come under specialist removals, where the plan is made at the survey rather than on the driveway. Larger pieces that need taking apart are covered in our guide to preparing large furniture for a move.

How this shows up in a quote

Most jobs are surveyed before we price them, so the wrapping, the access at both ends and the size of the crew are settled before the day rather than on it. The same crew then handles it from that survey through to the last box in the new house, which means nobody arrives on the morning without knowing what is in the property. Goods in transit cover of up to £50,000 per load is included as standard rather than sold on as an extra, and what it does and does not cover is set out on our removals insurance page.

If you are moving anywhere in Dorset, Somerset or Wiltshire, tell us what is going and where it is going to. The survey is free, the price we put in writing is the price you pay, and you will have it within the hour. Get your quote.