House Clearance in Old Basford

House Clearance for Old Basford homes

The volume nobody counts here is the cellar. Whatever went down went down in pieces, and it has stood on a brick floor with nothing under it, so most of it is coming back up in bags rather than as furniture.

Clearances here divide by tenure. The postwar semis are the probate and downsizing jobs, because people have held them for decades and the contents have had that long to gather, with a shed and an outhouse in the count. The let terraces are voids, emptied quickly between tenants, where the problem is not sentiment but volume of the wrong kind: part filled boxes, a broken bed frame, and whatever the last three tenancies each left behind. What both share is the route out. There is no drive, the front door opens onto the pavement, and every wardrobe, mattress and bag of loose goods leaves through it and up the street to wherever the van could stop.

Old Basford sits in NG6, under Nottingham City Council. A lot of the older houses had the outside toilet and coal store swallowed by a back kitchen at some point, which leaves a cold single-skin room at the rear holding the washing machine, the freezer and the muddy boots. It is routinely the room that costs the most time.

What we run into on Old Basford house clearance jobs

Cellar contents behave differently from anything else in the house. A brick cellar floor has nothing under it, so it holds moisture whatever the weather is doing upstairs, and cardboard stood on it wicks water until the bottom two inches of every box has no strength left in it. Lift one by the sides and it opens. So we bag at floor level and carry bags rather than boxes up a narrow stair, and the sorting happens down there rather than at the top of it. Chipboard furniture assembled in a cellar has usually swollen along its bottom edges and comes apart on its own.

How an Old Basford house clearance job actually runs

The load out is planned around the street rather than around the house. On these terraced rows there is nowhere to stand a van outside a front door for a whole day, so we work to a window when the street is emptiest, usually the middle of a weekday, and we bring contents out in staged loads rather than filling a hallway with furniture and leaving a door open onto the pavement. Bin day is the one to avoid outright, because the bins take the space we need and the collection lorry takes the street. Where the rear entry is unlocked and wide enough, a barrow through the back is often quicker than the front and it keeps the carrying off a footway that people are using. Then there is sequence. On a probate house the contents get valued and the family take what they want before we start, since neither can be done once the rooms are empty. On a void, we clear first and the cleaners follow, and the gap between the two is worth a full day rather than an afternoon on a street where two vans cannot stand at once.

Who books it here

On the practical side: On-street throughout, and the terraced rows have shared rear entries that are frequently gated with a lock nobody has the key to any more. Tell us if the back way is usable, because otherwise the machine and the hose come through the living room.

We run Old Basford on the same round as New Basford, Bulwell and Bestwood.

What we check on every Old Basford job

The loft is the other space that gets misjudged, and in these terraces it disappoints in a useful direction. The hatch is small and sits over a narrow landing with no room to stand a ladder square to it, so whatever is up there went up by being passed overhead between two people. That limits it to suitcases, boxes, light bulky things and the occasional water tank nobody took out when the boiler changed, and it comes down one item at a time by hand. The semis are the reverse: a proper hatch, boarding, and often a fitted ladder, so furniture goes up and stays up for thirty years. If you are trying to guess the size of a job before anybody looks, count a semi loft as a room and a terrace loft as a large cupboard, and you will be closer than counting bedrooms gets you.

What the house clearance covers

A sample of what is included

• Before we leave: Floors swept through and fixings taken out of walls where asked
• Where it goes: Metal, wood, textiles and card segregated at the transfer station
• Everything that comes out: Loft, garage, shed, cellar and outbuildings, which are usually underestimated
• Everything that comes out: Furniture, beds and bedroom contents, including flat pack that has to be broken down

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full house clearance page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.