7 Tips for Preventing Damage to Furniture During a Move

Moving furniture is a tough job. While you’re carrying a heavy piece of furniture, you also need to be careful to not damage it. Fortunately, there are a handful of steps you can take to protect your tables, couches, desks, and more from harm.

Hire Professional Movers

The easiest thing you can do to protect your furniture from damage is to hire a professional moving company with trained movers. A few weeks before moving day, call several companies and ask for a quote. They should come by your home and give you as accurate an estimate as possible.

Disassemble What You Can

Some furniture can be disassembled before moving it. Tables, dressers, and similar items are easy to move in parts. You’ll need the proper tools to take them apart, such as screwdrivers or wrenches, zip-top plastic bags, bubble wrap, and strong moving tape.

If you still have the manuals for the furniture in question, they should explain disassembly. If not, search the website of the company that made your furniture and look for instructions. Put connecting pieces, such as bolts and screws, for each item into a plastic bag and tape it to the main body. Wrap legs and tabletops in bubble wrap and tape it to itself to keep the pieces together. Put the pieces near each other in the moving truck.

For tables, you’ll remove the legs and the interior leaf. For dressers, you can simply remove the drawers. How bed frames and other items come apart will vary depending on design.

Use Proper Padding

We mentioned using bubble wrap as padding, which is especially good for smaller pieces. For large items, especially those that don’t come apart, moving blankets can provide protection. You can tape these to various items. We recommend taping the edges of blankets to the bottom or back of things like dressers and desks so that if the tape leaves any residue or causes some damage to the finish, it won’t be noticeable. For upholstered furniture like couches and reclining chairs, use plastic sofa covers or bubble wrap. Corrugated cardboard can slide between wooden pieces for extra protection.

Practice Proper Lifting

Proper lifting, which basically means bending your knees to lift instead of bending over, and lifting with your leg muscles, can not only prevent injury to you, it can help you protect your furniture from damage. Lift improperly, and you’re much more likely to drop the item in question, potentially cracking or denting it.

As you make your way to or from the truck, it’s fine to set the item down when you need a rest, rather than power through the move and risk dropping the sofa or dresser.

Measure Furniture and Passageways

Before you move a big item from your home to the truck, through various halls and doors, take some measurements. Will that couch to through upright, or will you need to turn it on its end? You may  not be able to tell completely simply by measuring doors, hallways, and pieces of furniture, but this should give you an idea of what to expect.

Use a Spotter

As mentioned, unless you’ve hired movers, you’ll need helpers. When moving large things, one should act as a spotter. He or she can make sure that sofa or desk isn’t going to bump into a wall or scrape against a door frame.

The spotter doesn’t have to be especially strong, but they should have a good eye for space and some experience moving. For example, maybe your grandfather isn’t up for heavy lifting anymore, but has lots of experience moving and can guide you and your friends.

Protect The Buildings, Too

So far, this has all been about protecting furniture, but it’s important to protect the buildings as well. One misstep and the edge of a desk can puncture a hole in a hallway wall. Careful moving, and padding on the furniture, should prevent this, but you may want to tape blankets to hallway walls as well, and tape corrugated cardboard firmly to floors in case an item slips and falls. Also, don’t slide your furniture along the floor. Make sure you’ve lifted the item before you move it.

With these precautions, you should be able to move your furniture with little trouble. Yes, it will be a lot of work, but we know you can do it, and we wish you a safe, efficient move.