Moving!

[Terry Fields]

Sorry about this, but...Get Someone In.

We hadn't moved for 35 years.

We took 35 car loads to the dump, and another 35 loads to the local charity shop (and I mean cars ). We were such frequent visitors we were allowed to use their allocated parking space, and bring stuff straight in by their service door. That emptied the loft and some of the garage.

This is what we had stored in the garage:

72 x 32 litre crates 14 x 60 litre crates 7 x underbed storage boxes 20 approx cardboard boxes (various sizes) 1 x desk 1 x table (dismantled) 1 x folding steps (5 tread) 1 x bucket 1 x Vax cleaner 1 x 25m cable reel 1 x electric hedge trimmer 1 x 20 litre jerry can (empty) 1 x 5 litre petrol can (empty)

1 x 250cc motorcycle (petrol tank emptied)

In the house we had 20 x 2' 6" boxes with household stuff. Then there was the furniture including piano, TV, etc. The car was loaded with all our valuable stuff, clothes for a few days, vital paperwork, cleaning stuff, 'attractive' items, and the vital tea-making equipment.

It monsooned for the three hours of the actual moving in, and left everything damp. We spent 4 days unloading the damp-smelling cardboard boxes. Afterwards there was an enormous pile of flattened cardboard boxes, bubble-wrap, and chippings when the bin-men arrived.

We were extremely grateful that daughter and son-in-law turned up with all their own stuff and cooked a meal for us.

I wouldn't use 32-litre crates again as they are quite flimsy, but pay extra to have the more substantial 60-litre ones (which you'll need less of anyway).

My view was it was well worth getting in people who knew what they were doing, with a good foreman who kept things on an even keel. They laid blanket-like stuff all over the ground floor carpets, up the stairs and on the landing.

When I survey the garage stuff that's left, I wonder why ever I brought most of it...and that was after what I thought was a good clear-out before moving....

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Terry Fields

[Owain]

Remove personal possessions and Treasures from old house.

Leave chip pan on.

Buy shiny new stuff and get it delivered straight to new house.

Enjoy 3 weeks' holiday in Eyebitza while the insurance sorts it out.

Owain

[Nightjar]

Agreed. When I last moved, more than a decade ago, it cost me £600 for two men and a van from a professional mover.

Colin Bignell

[docholliday93]

The sooner you start packing the more of the stuff you can sell on eBay, give to frinds or charity shops rather than just dumping it in the skip because there's no time to do anything else...

[docholliday93]

My last move but one (company funded relocation, so no incentive to D-I-Y) = I somehow had enough to require two removal lorries - may have been the wei= ght of the wine from the cellar - and so we arrived at the new house in con= voy to discover that the local town carnival was due in a few hours and my = house was on its route. I was amazed how fast they got everything unloaded.

When I left that house a few years later I had a different firm - I wasn't = very pleased to discover at the other end that while they'd left enough stu= ff behind to require me to hire a transit to collect it they *had* packed t= he bag of rubbish (including food waste) from the wheely bin. that leads on to a top tip if you're using removers - make sure there's som= eone to supervise them and make sure they've packed everything! My plans to= do this got messed up by my solicitor, who discovered at the last moment t= hat there was another document requiring signature, forcing me to rush off = before the packing was all done.

[F Murtz]

You lot all have no stuff, I just moved and I took three months to move

70 years of stuff (three generations worth)out of a house that had never been sold before,I bought a small pantechnicon just for the purpose which I still own till I sell it.

[Chris J Dixon]

If you really insist on DIY, many of those who have tried it wished they had had a van with tail lift. Proper removals vans tend to have a ramp, so they don't need one.

Our removals van was late on the day, BT had already changed the number and wouldn't tell me what it was (ex-directory), so nobody could ring back to explain what was (not) happening. Eventually it arrived, accompanied by a breakdown truck.

We were only about half out when the new owners arrived. Two vans and crews, the HGV breakdown truck, the incomers, all milling around - time for a brew.

Our stuff was going out of one door whilst theirs went into the other. To help speed unloading they sent a second crew, and we got everything in by teatime, though it was unloaded so fast that it was difficult to make sure everything ended up in the right place.

Then we realised that our allocation of sitting room and dining room really didn't work, and spent the evening shifting the piano...

Chris

[Frank Erskine]

Make sure the fridge is the first item to be unloaded at the new house, so as to get your beer cans/bottles chilled nicely ASAP.

[Jules Richardson]

When we moved a few years ago (about ten miles), we borrowed a car trailer (i.e. a trailer for moving cars) for the bigger stuff - and thankfully it wasn't raining.

[Dave Liquorice]

Aren't you supposed to let fridges and/or freezers stand for 24hrs after moving for the liquid/gas to sort itself out?

[Chris J Dixon]

Well, basically because the way the legal stuff works, unless you go to considerable extra expense, you don't own the new place until the solicitors do whatever magic stuff they have to do on the day.

If it falls apart, you have all your worldly possessions on a van, and nowhere to put it.

Chris

[Huge]

Not if you move them upright.

[Clive George]

+1 on tail lift.

Though don't do what my wife did and run it without the engine, because the battery will go flat :-)

(fortunately second battery, so start the van and all is fine again)

[RJH]

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Yes, sorry, memory lapse. It was more like £220:

that was a good 6 hours, two men, van and fuel, and two trips of 15 miles each way. Just me, but I don't exactly travel light - my 3 bed house was pretty full.

My point being that it can be a good middle ground.

Rob

[Alan Braggins]

A mate of mine had booked a Luton with a tail lift, but when he turned up to collect it from the hire place, it was out of action.

Made getting his motorbike into the van, er, interesting. We managed though.

[Tim Streater]

No. In our case exchange of contracts happened the week before, at which point ownership of the various houses shifted. Completion (transfer of cash and moving) was therefore bound to occur.

Normally in the UK, for some reason, exchange and completion seem to happen on the same day, unlike in the US where exchange happens more or less at the beginning of the process. But AIUI, there is no actual reason for exchange to happen on completion day - and in our case it didn't. But then IANAL.

[Dave Liquorice]

There is nothing to stop you owning both places at the same time and move at your leisure.

It's only a case of how you tell your solicitor how you want to do things, exchnage of contracts does not have to happen at the same time as completion or the shifting of monies. I guess it's the last one that bogs most people down into the having to exchnage/complete/transfer money all at the same time.

[Nick Odell]

When we bought our first house, many, many years ago, our solicitor wrote to us a few days after completion saying, "Sorry, it hasn't gone through - can you move out again please?" Fortunately we were still living in our rented place and had planned to do some of the fixing up before we moved in so we weren't over-inconvenienced. Since then I've sold, moved into a rental, then bought again each time. It possibly costs more than doing it in a single step (I say possibly because when under pressure of deadlines you can end up spending much more than you intended) but it takes all the strain and stress out of the process.

Right now I'm in a rental and looking for somewhere to purchase but not being helped in making a decision by seeing prices continue to tumble. I'm saving more than the rental by not buying yet.

Nick

[Bob Eager]

My understanding is that exchange happens quite a while before completion in the UK. But the final payments are made on completion, so until you've paid, you don't get the keys. And the others in the chain all have to move at the same time unless you borrow the house payment for a day or more.

[Huge]

Not the first 2 times we moved. Have things changed in 20 years? (We haven't moved house for that long.)