The guide
Moving a Single Item in London: Sofas, Mattresses and Marketplace Buys in full
How a single-item booking works
You send us the item, the collection address and the delivery address. We quote a fixed price rather than an hourly rate, because the job has a known shape: load, drive, carry in.
For marketplace buys we can collect from the seller directly, including paying them on collection by prior arrangement. You get a message when the item is in the van and again when it is on its way to you.
Measure three things before you buy
The item is the easy measurement. The two that catch people out are the narrowest doorway on the route and the turn at the top or bottom of the stairs — particularly in Victorian conversions, where the return is often narrower than the door.
Write down width, height and depth for the item, then the door width, the hallway width and the stairwell turn. If the item's smallest dimension is bigger than the narrowest point, it does not go in, and no amount of angling changes that.
- Item: width, height, depth — and diagonal depth for a sofa
- Narrowest doorway on the route, including the communal front door
- Stairwell: width and the turn radius at each half-landing
- Lift: internal depth and door width, if there is one
What we move most often
Sofas and armchairs, mattresses and bed frames, wardrobes and chests of drawers, fridge freezers and washing machines, desks, bookcases, pianos on request, bikes, and the enormous mirror that will not fit in a taxi.
Everything travels blanket-wrapped and strapped. Flat-pack collected from a store stays boxed; second-hand furniture is wrapped before it goes in the van, not after it has rubbed against something.
When a sofa genuinely will not fit
It happens, and the honest answer matters more than the optimistic one. Most sofas can be brought in with the feet off and the item on its end. Some cannot, and then the choices are a specialist hoist, a window removal, or returning the item.
Send us photos of the item and the entrance before you commit to buying. Two minutes of measuring at that stage is worth more than any amount of problem-solving on the doorstep.
Dismantling, disposal and the old sofa
We can dismantle and reassemble beds, wardrobes and flat-pack at £25 an item, added to a single-item booking without changing it into an hourly job.
What we cannot do on a van booking is take the old item away as waste — that needs a licensed waste carrier. Our clearance team handles it and can often attend the same day, so the new sofa arrives and the old one leaves within a couple of hours of each other.