Every shared part surveyed
The gate, the path, the hall, the stair, the bins and the street — not just the rooms you are moving out of.
Removals across the London Borough of Ealing
Most Ealing addresses
are part of a house.
The borough was built as streets of very large villas, and a great many of them have since been split into flats. So the question that decides your move is not which room count you have — it is which part of the house you occupy, which stair you share, and who you have to ask.
- 1 The ground-floor flat
- 2 The upper maisonette
- 3 The top-floor flat
- 0 The garden flat
- — The whole house
Pick the one that is yours.
The five
Which part of the house are you?
A ground-floor flat and a top-floor flat in the same villa are genuinely different jobs. Find yours and the rest of the plan follows from it.
- 1 The ground-floor flat Often sold with the garden Shares The front path, the bins, sometimes the hall The easiest move in the borough and the one people most often under-plan, because level access makes everything look simple from the kerb.
- 2 The upper maisonette First and second floor, one flat Shares The front door, the hall, the main stair The classic Ealing address, and the one that defeats furniture. Two staircases between the street and your bedroom, and the first one belongs to everybody.
- 3 The top-floor flat Often a later loft conversion Shares The front door, the hall, every stair below you Every floor below you is part of your move, and the last flight is almost always the worst one.
- 0 The garden flat Lower ground floor, or the basement Shares The front steps, the light well, the path Down rather than up, which sounds easier and is not. Descending a loaded item on wet external steps is the most careful part of any move we do.
- — The whole house Un-converted, or converted back Shares Nothing. It is all yours. Increasingly rare in this borough and increasingly valuable. No shared parts, nobody to ask — and three or four floors of accumulated volume.
The difference
No manager, no rulebook
A managed block sounds harder and is usually easier, because somebody is in charge and the rules are written down. An unmanaged conversion has no rulebook, which means nothing is forbidden and nothing is arranged either. What replaces the rulebook is knocking on doors in good time — and that is a job we would rather do than leave to you on the morning.
A managed block has
A converted house has
A managing agent you can write to
A freeholder who may live in Flat 1, may live abroad, or may be a company nobody has spoken to in years
Permitted hours set out in writing
No written hours at all — just whether the neighbours mind, which nobody has ever asked
A lift, booked in advance
One domestic staircase, shared, with a turn at the half-landing
A porter to let the crew in
An entryphone, and whoever is at home
A deposit held against communal damage
No deposit, and a much more awkward conversation if the hall gets marked
Someone whose job it is to say yes
Nobody whose job it is at all — so permission is social rather than procedural
Included as standard
What every quote covers
Full communal protection
Hall floor, walls, banister, newel and every flight we pass through. It is not your paintwork and we treat it that way.
Parking suspensions applied for
At both ends where both are in a controlled zone, in good time rather than at the last minute.
Dismantling and reassembly
Beds, wardrobes and anything assembled in the room, with fixings bagged and labelled to the item.
A word with the neighbours
We will knock and explain what is happening and when. It costs nothing and it prevents almost every problem a conversion move has.
Bins moved and put back
Because they are always in the way and it is nobody else’s job.
Customers
What people said
They knocked on the other two flats well before the day and explained what was happening. Both of them moved their bikes out of the hall without being asked twice. I would never have thought to do that.
Told us at the survey that the wardrobe would not clear the turn on the communal stair. It had been built in the room by the previous owner. We sold it rather than paying to discover that ourselves.
Ours is down the side passage and there is a drainpipe halfway along it that nobody notices until they are carrying something. They noticed at the survey.
The hall was papered by the freeholder last year and I had visions of a row. They covered every inch of it, and the walls, and the banister. Not a mark.
Garden flat, steps down, raining. They put matting on the treads and took it slowly and I stopped watching after a while because it was clearly fine.
Whole house, three floors, cellar and a loft full of things my father put there. They surveyed all of it instead of the rooms we actually use, which is why the van was the right size.
Why does it matter which flat in the house we are?
Because it decides the stair, the front door, which parts you share and who you have to ask. A ground-floor flat and a top-floor flat in the same Ealing villa are genuinely different jobs.
It is also the question most firms do not ask. "Two-bed flat, W5" tells them the volume and nothing about how it gets to the street.
Will our sofa come down the communal stair?
Often, and where it will not we say so at survey rather than finding out with it wedged on a half-landing that three other households need to use.
The measurement that matters is the diagonal through the half-landing turn, not the stair width. A later handrail — added to many Ealing conversions for building-regulations reasons — narrows that turn considerably.
There is no managing agent. Who do we ask?
Usually nobody officially, which is the whole difficulty. An unmanaged conversion has no rulebook, so nothing is forbidden and nothing is arranged either.
In practice what replaces it is knocking on doors in good time. We do that as part of the job — explaining to the other flats what is happening and when, so nobody is surprised by a hall full of boxes.
What about parking?
Most of central Ealing is in a controlled parking zone, so a removal vehicle needs a bay formally suspended rather than hopefully empty. We apply to the council at both ends where both are controlled.
The notice period is the real constraint. Tell us your likely date as soon as you have one, even an uncertain one.
Tell us which part of the house you are
Both addresses, roughly how much there is, and which flat — ground, upper, top or garden. That one word tells us more about the job than the room count does.