We start with the fabric

Why fabric, of all things

Because it is the variable that actually differs here. Within a few miles this district holds timber-framed and tile-hung houses with lime plaster, Georgian townhouses with moulded cornices and slender handrails, solid Victorian villas, interwar semis and entirely modern housing.

They contain much the same furniture and they need completely different care getting it out. A blanket approach to protection is either wasteful on the modern stock or inadequate on the old, and most firms pick one and apply it to everything.

What actually gets damaged

Almost never the furniture — it is nearly always the building. The sharp edge of an architrave. The nosing of a stair. A patch of lime plaster on an external corner. A board scratched by grit carried in on a boot. A gravel drive rutted by a vehicle parked where the base was thin.

Every one of those is predictable and every one is preventable, which is why the damage register is on the home page rather than in a folder. It is useful to a reader whether or not they ever call us, and that seems a fair trade for being the firm that wrote it down.

Making good is the asymmetry

On plasterboard a repair is filler and a coat of paint. On lime plaster, old paint and unsealed timber it is specialist work — slower, dearer and harder to match than the damage ever looks.

That gap is the whole justification for spending the first hour of an old-house move on protection rather than on carrying. It also explains why we say plainly when a house does not need it.

Listed buildings, honestly

There is a great deal of listed fabric in this district and the question comes up on almost every old-house survey. Listing controls alteration of a building rather than the carrying of furniture through it, so a removal needs no consent in itself.

Where it becomes relevant is fitted items that may form part of the building, and anything fixed to the fabric — which is why we fix nothing. Our protection is free-standing or taped to itself. And none of what we publish is legal advice; the conservation officer at the district council is the right person to ask.

How we quote

We survey, then we write a figure down. On this stock a phone estimate is close to meaningless: a call cannot see a lime wall, a gravel drive, a low door head or a staircase with a slender rail.

There are no prices on this site and no transit times on the country pages. Both would be guesses presented as information.

What we will say plainly

That your house may be in the ordinary category, and that this is good news. That fitted joinery is frequently not yours to take. That some drives will not take a full-size vehicle and we will shuttle rather than risk it. That old furniture cares about the conditions it is stored in, and where ours are not right we will tell you. And that we do not value anything and will not offer an opinion on what something is worth.