About
Built around a borough of split houses
Ealing was laid out as streets of very large villas and a great many of them are now three or four homes. That single fact shapes almost every move we do.
Why we ask which flat, not how many rooms
"Two-bed flat, W5" tells a remover the volume and nothing at all about how it reaches the street. A ground-floor flat with its own door and a top-floor flat up three communal flights are the same volume and completely different days.
So the first question is which part of the house you occupy. Everything else — the stair, the protection, the crew size, whether anything needs to come apart — follows from the answer.
The unglamorous half of the job
Covering a hall that is not yours. Knocking on the other flats. Measuring a half-landing turn instead of a doorway. Applying for a bay suspension because the street is in a controlled zone. Moving a bin store and putting it back.
None of that involves lifting anything, and it is where a conversion move is won or lost.
What we will tell you not to do
Pack a wardrobe that was assembled in the room. Book a date before you have any idea when the parking suspension can start. Assume the freeholder will be reachable if you need a hoist. Leave telling the neighbours until the morning.
We would rather have those conversations at the survey, when they are still cheap.
How we would like to be judged
On whether the communal hall was left exactly as we found it, whether the neighbours were spoken to before rather than after, whether anything was broken, and whether anybody had to be told something on the day that should have been settled weeks earlier.
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.