Challenges Faced By Furniture Movers

From navigating tight stairways to ensuring prized, heirloom pieces remain intact, furniture movers face a variety of obstacles. Coming up with a solution to moving your oversized items and getting grandmother’s dinning table out of your old home and safely to your new one is a specialty we’ve developed over the last decade.

At Allegiance Van Lines, we’re committed to making your move, whether long distance or local, as smooth and stress free as possible. We know that moving can be some of the most trying times, especially when it comes to handling heavy or awkward furniture. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of common challenges faced by furniture movers and our expert solutions.

1. Moving Tall Items

Tall furniture items can be anything from filing cabinets and dressers to bookshelves or even particular pieces of artwork. Some items can be too tall or too heavy to fit down the staircase or through the doorway.

Solution: For pieces that are heavy or on the taller side, including items like horizontal shelves, our solution is tried, tested, and proven. First, the best way to navigate through the home with a taller item is to place it on its side and then, using a team of two, carry the item safely to the moving truck. One furniture mover will carry on the low side of the piece while the other uses the high side, ensuring the weight is centered and decreasing the chance of an accidental drop.

2. Taking Chairs Out Through Narrow Doors

What happens when it’s time to move the cozy chair and a half from the den to the moving truck? Or the tufted-back velvet, mid-century modern chair? The doorways in most homes are too narrow to accommodate both the back of a chair and then the feet at the same time, even if the piece is tilted vertically. The option to use the wider garage door can be viable, but usually, getting through the door from the house into the garage presents the same, too-narrow problem.

Solution: The easiest and safest way to move a chair through the door is to do what we call the L-hook method. First, we’ll turn the chair on its side, creating a L-shape. Then, one furniture mover will go through the open door while the other one “hooks” the back of the chair around the door frame. By doing this, the item will move through the frame easily.

3. Moving The Couch

Couches and chairs present the same problem when it’s time to move: how can they fit through the doorway? Because couches are typically longer and thicker from the seat cushions down than they are at the back, the challenge with moving them also becomes the thickness in addition to the shape.

Solution: The L-hook method to the rescue again. Like with chairs, hooking the couch through the doorway is the easiest and best way to move the couch safely and undamaged from the house to the moving truck. In most cases, the cushions are removed beforehand because the frame is easier to maneuver without the excess bulk.

4. Heavy Furniture or Appliances

If you’ve ever tried to move a front-load washing machine or a solid steel gun safe even an inch, you know it’s nearly impossible. Furniture and appliances like this are too heavy to use floor sliders and attempting to lift them can cause severe injury.

Solution: To protect our movers and your heavy furniture and appliances, heavy items are always moved in a two-person team. Using furniture straps, sometimes called a shoulder dolly or simply lifting straps, both movers are able to leverage their body weight against the piece of furniture. The straps are placed under the front-load washing machine, for example, and then the movers can step inside the looped ends, placing the straps on top of their shoulders..

5. Avoiding Damage To Furniture Pieces

Unfortunately, no matter how careful you are when moving any piece of furniture whether it is a large couch or a small table, the risk of scuffs, tears, rips, or other damage is high when moving. A slight miscalculation or misstep can mean destruction.

Solution: A professional, experienced, fully insured team of furniture movers will use special moving and packing materials to avoid damage. For items with soft, but bulky shapes like a couch or recliner, the piece is wrapped in tight-fitting layers of plastic. If the cushions have already been removed, the frame is still wrapped and the cushions are packed in boxes. Some recliner backs can be removed, making it easier to fit through doorways.

For heavy items like dressers or desks, quilted moving blankets are used to provide protection from chipping or scarring the surfaces. Another tactic used to avoid damage to furniture pieces is to remove as much as possible before attempting to wrap, pick up, and place on the truck. Items like couch or bookshelf feet can be removed, too, ensuring that each piece can be moved smoothly.

6. Protecting Floors, Doors, and Walls

When you’re moving, it means an increase in foot traffic through your home, both when packing and loading, and unloading. Carpet, tile, hardwood, and laminate floors are subject to rips, tears, and scuffs from the increase in traffic and the shuffling around of furniture pieces. Door frames and corners, especially in narrow spaces like hallways, laundry rooms, and stairs are susceptible to scratches, scuffs, breakages, and damaged drywall.

Solution: It’s important to choose a moving company that safeguards your belongings and your home. To protect floors, padded moving mats are rolled out across the floor surface before any work begins. Our team will place the mats in all areas they expect to use, including hallways, stairs, and in front of every doorway. For spaces where moving mats may not work or to maneuver a piece around a large open room, protective furniture sliders are used. In some cases, to prevent damage to a door or door frame, the door and the framing are removed and then put back into place once the moving process is complete. Because our standard is to wrap each piece in either plastic or moving blankets, the risk of scratched, scuffed, or torn walls is minimal.

South Florida Furniture Movers

At Allegiance Van Lines, we know a thing or two about the challenges that moving companies can face. With more than 10 years of experience, our professional team of furniture movers comes prepared with all the supplies necessary to make your move as smooth as possible, including specialty tools for navigating the jigsaw puzzle that moving into or out of a home can present.

Whether you’re moving locally or embarking on a nationwide, long distance move, request a free quote and let us do all the heavy lifting.