0 Lower ground floor, or the basement

The garden flat

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.

What this position in the house does to a move

A garden flat is reached by external steps into a light well, and the light well is frequently narrower than the door it serves. That combination — a turn at the bottom of a flight, in a confined space, going down — is genuinely the most demanding carry in ordinary residential removals.

The rooms themselves are often the most generous in the building, with high ceilings and the original kitchen and scullery layout. So the furniture tends to be large and the route to it is the tightest.

Steps are also frequently the original stone or tile, and they are slippery in rain. A crew will slow down for that and they should.

Our part

What we bring to this one

1 The light well measured as carefully as the door, because it is usually the binding constraint
2 Non-slip matting on external steps and full protection on the treads
3 Crewing for a controlled descent rather than for the volume
4 Honest advice at survey about anything that will not make the turn at the bottom

Not you?

The other four

1 The ground-floor flat The front path, the bins, sometimes the hall 2 The upper maisonette The front door, the hall, the main stair 3 The top-floor flat The front door, the hall, every stair below you — The whole house Nothing. It is all yours.

Moving to or from the garden flat?

Tell us both addresses and which flat you are. If you can, photograph the communal stair from below and from the landing above — that is what decides the day.

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