House removals in Fulham, planned around the stairs

Most of the housing stock between the New King's Road and the Lillie Road went up between about 1880 and 1910, and it has a lot in common. Two or three storeys, a bay at the front, a return at the back that someone has since extended into a kitchen, and a staircase built for people who owned considerably less furniture than you do. A house move in Fulham is rarely about the volume. It is about getting the volume out of the door.

So the first thing we do is come and look. Not a five-minute glance — a proper walk through the route every piece of furniture has to take, from the back bedroom to the kerb. We measure the turn at the half-landing. We check whether the sash at the front opens far enough to take something out on a strop if it comes to that. We look at where the van can actually stand, and whether that street needs a bay suspension from Hammersmith & Fulham or whether a sensible loading point will do.

What a full house removal includes

Everything below is part of the standard job rather than a list of extras. What varies between quotes is the amount of packing you want us to take on and how much crew and vehicle the access demands.

Packing: all of it, some of it, or none

Full packing means we arrive with the materials and do the lot, usually the day before. Part-packing is the common choice for a Fulham family house — we take the kitchen, the china, the glassware and the artwork, and you do the clothes, the books and the children's rooms in your own time. Materials-only means we drop boxes, paper, tape and wardrobe cartons off ahead of the move and leave you to it.

One honest piece of advice: people always underestimate the kitchen and always underestimate books. If you are packing yourself, order more than you think you need and start with the things you will not miss.

The streets that need a bit more thought

Some parts of SW6 are straightforward. The wider stucco-fronted terraces around the Sulivan grid and Peterborough Road usually give you a front garden to stage in and a hall you can actually turn in. Others are less forgiving. The narrower houses off Munster Road and Bishops Road have halls you cannot pass someone in, and the conversions above the shops on the North End Road can mean a shuttle from the door down to wherever the van has managed to stop.

The other local factor is the football. Streets around Stamford Bridge close on match days, and a move booked without checking the fixture list is a move that spends its morning sitting in traffic on the Fulham Road. We check.

Moving out of Fulham, or within it

Plenty of our house moves are SW6 to SW6 — upsizing from a flat near the Broadway to a terrace off Studdridge Street, or the other way round once the children have gone. Those are short-distance moves with two sets of access problems rather than one, and they are often best done across a morning and an afternoon rather than crammed into a single run.

Then there are the moves out: to Wandsworth, Richmond, Surrey, the south coast, or further. Those are the same process with a longer drive in the middle. And some go further still — if the house is moving to France, Spain, Italy or Portugal, the packing standard goes up and the paperwork starts earlier.

Getting a figure

Volume, distance, access and packing. Those four things decide it, and access is the one that swings hardest in Fulham. We quote in writing after the survey, itemised, with the crew and vehicle stated and a plain note of what would change it. Nothing gets added afterwards for something we could have seen on the day we walked round.

If your house is a flat or a mansion flat rather than a whole house, the flat removals page covers the lift, the porter and the managing agent side of it. If you only need a room moving, look at man and van instead.