How to Disassemble Furniture When Moving

Are you trying to spend as little money on moving as you can? Are you thinking about disassembling your furniture by yourself? Have you heard that it’s a difficult and tiring task? And you have no idea where to start? Well, then you’ve come to the right place. Continue reading to learn how to disassemble furniture when moving.

Take all the help you can get

Dismantling furniture when moving is a job for more than one person. So if you thought to do all by yourself you’d better reconsider. You are going to need help if you want to avoid injuries and if you want everything to go smoothly. So be prepared to ask your friends or family for help. Let them know in time that you’re going to need their help. Think about doing it on Sunday so that you can all hang out after you’ve finished dismantling your furniture. Buy beer and pizza to show your gratitude and just have fun with your friends or family.

Not all the furniture needs to be disassembled when moving

Have you decided exactly what furniture you’ll take to your new home? If not, now is the time to make a list of all the things you’re bringing with you. And then take a tape measure and measure every piece of furniture you think may not fit through doors, narrow hallways and corners. Then measure doorways, narrow hallways and corners. You’ll be surprised that even some bulky furniture doesn’t have to be disassembled when moving. Write down on that list you’ve made what needs to be disassembled.

Don’t forget that all the furniture needs to go out of your old home and into your new home. This means that you’ll also have to take all the tricky spots in your new home into consideration. So when you’re taking measures go to your new home as well. It’s possible that even though some furniture can fit through your old home it can’t fit in your new home and has to be disassembled nonetheless.

Preparations are crucial if you want to easily disassemble furniture when moving

I hope you didn’t throw away instruction manuals for your furniture. Because they can make it a piece of cake to disassemble furniture when moving. In instruction manuals, you can find useful information about what kind of tools you are going to need, what parts that piece is made of, etc. Furthermore, you can find a guide on how to disassemble furniture. That’s right! Just find the steps on how to disassemble furniture and follow them. And if they don’t exist in the instruction manual, try finding steps on how to assemble furniture and follow them in reverse order. Finding these instruction manuals is crucial if you need to disassemble furniture like a pool table when moving.

If you did throw away instruction manuals for your furniture there are other ways to get hold of them. You can always look for them on the Internet. There’s a chance that you’ll find them there. But if you don’t, you can call the furniture store where you’ve bought a piece of furniture and ask them to give an instruction manual to you. If none of this works, you can browse YouTube for a video in which a similar piece of furniture is being disassembled to get an idea of what you need to do.

Think ahead about what you’re going to need

Imagine that you’re in the middle of dismantling a piece of furniture. Your friend is holding a part of it so it doesn’t fall on you. And you’re about to unscrew the last screws only to find out that you need another type of a screwdriver. And to make matters worse, it’s in a clutter in your basement that needs organizing. I bet you wouldn’t want that scenario actually happening to you, would you? Don’t worry, you can easily avoid this.

You just need to make sure that you prepare every kind of tool you’ll need. You can see in instruction manuals what kind of tools you’ll need. Or if you don’t have instruction manuals you can examine the furniture and try if the tools you have are right for it before you start to disassemble furniture. Do this on time so that you can borrow from someone tools that you lack or buy them if you need to.

A universal step-by-step guide to disassemble furniture when moving

You won’t be able to disassemble all the furniture in the same way. But there are some steps that you can apply when you disassemble furniture when moving:

1. Start with disassembling the furniture that takes up the least space. This way you’ll have enough room to disassemble the one that takes up the most space
2. Clear the space around it. Make as much place in the room you can. It’ll make it easier to maneuver all the parts when disassembling and packing.
3. Clear the furniture itself. This one is obvious – if you clear out all the shelves, drawers, etc. you will disassemble furniture when moving much easier. You won’t be worrying about something breakable falling and shattering. And the said piece of furniture will be lighter and therefore easier to carry and move.
4. Take out all the drawers and shelves and detach all the glass elements if there are any
5. Dismantle that piece of furniture to as many parts as you can. Follow the instruction from the instruction manual.
6. Wrap all the parts of the furniture in packing paper/bubble wrap/moving blankets.

Be very careful when you pack the dismantled parts

After you’ve dismantled all the parts of a certain piece of furniture comes the most important part – packing. I can’t stress enough how important it is to pack everything in the right way. If you do so, you’ll unpack stress-free after the move. First of all, you need to secure all the parts from damage that may occur during transportation. Be especially careful about all the breakable parts like glass, porcelain, etc. Don’t save on wrapping material. Use as much as you need to so that you warp all the parts entirely. Be especially alert when you pack the smallest parts. In particular when you are packing screws because they can get lost easily. You can put them all in a plastic bag, close it and attach it to the inside of the box. And lastly, when you disassemble furniture when moving pay attention not to mix the disassembled parts.