Six Days, a Horsham Bungalow and a Spiral Staircase
Most moves are booked as a day; this one was booked as six, and that was the point.
A full pack, a country bungalow on the edge of Horsham, three lorries, our own store used as a holding bay in the middle, and a barn conversion with a spiral staircase waiting at the other end.
A Six-Day Move Out of Horsham
Most house moves are booked as a day. This one was booked as six, and the six days are the reason it went well rather than a sign that something went wrong. The clients were leaving a long, low, timber-clad country house on the edge of Horsham for a period barn conversion at Itchingfield, about three miles west, and they were not packing a single box themselves.
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A modern single-storey country house on the edge of Horsham, moving to a period barn conversion at Itchingfield, about three miles west. Full packing by our crew — the clients packed nothing.
Six working days, Wednesday to the following Tuesday with the Sunday off. Three lorries. Part of the load went into our store mid-move and came back out at the end.
If you are looking at removals in Horsham and wondering why one firm quotes a day and another quotes most of a week, this is the difference. A day covers carrying a house that is already packed. Six days is what it takes to pack a Horsham family home, take it apart, move it in the right order, and put it back together at the other end.
What a Full Packing Service in Horsham Actually Involves
Two full days went on packing before a single item of furniture left the house. That is what a full packing service means in practice: our crew bring every carton, roll and reel with them, and every cupboard, shelf and drawer in the house is emptied into cartons by us, labelled by us, and loaded by us.
People underestimate how much of a house is small. Beds, sofas and wardrobes are the things you picture, and they are the quick part. It is the loft, the garage, the kitchen cupboards and the shelf of things nobody has looked at since the last move that eat the hours. Two packers working solidly for two days is not slow. It is what a family house holds.
Day two added the dismantling. Beds, wardrobes and anything that would not come down a stair or through a door in one piece came apart, with the fixings bagged and taped to the frame they belong to — which is the difference between rebuilding a bed in ten minutes and hunting for a bolt in a box of forty.
Why Half of It Went Into Store First
Here is the part of the schedule that looks odd on paper and is the single most useful thing we did. On days three and four, the crew loaded the non-essential half of the house and took it to our store rather than to the new address.
The reason is simple. If you deliver an entire house into a barn conversion on one afternoon, the clients spend the next fortnight climbing over boxes in every room, and every box has to be moved twice because the furniture it is standing in front of has not been positioned yet.
By holding back everything that was not needed in the first week, the barn got its furniture, its beds and its kitchen first, and the rest arrived on day six into a house that had somewhere to put it. Wolves Removals
The garden went the other way. On day one, before the packing was even finished, garden items were taken straight over to the new address, because garden things do not care about being first and they take up an enormous amount of lorry.
Town to Village: the Move Horsham Does Most
This is one of the commonest shapes of move we do in the Horsham district, and it is worth describing because it catches people out. A family sells a comfortable, well-serviced house on the edge of Horsham and buys something older, larger and more awkward in one of the villages around it — Itchingfield, Slinfold, Barns Green, Rudgwick, Southwater, Broadbridge Heath. The house they leave was built for furniture. The house they arrive at was not.
Almost everything that makes a Horsham village move harder happens at the new address rather than the old one. Lanes narrow, so a lorry that parked on a drive in Horsham parks on a verge in the village and the carry gets longer. Doorways shrink and stop being square. Floors are older and less forgiving. Ceilings drop under beams, and stairs stop being straight.
None of that is a problem if it is known in advance, which is the argument for a survey at both ends rather than a phone call about the one you are leaving. On this job the difficult building was always going to be the barn, and the schedule was built around it. It is also why our Horsham page lists the villages as well as the town — most of the work is out in them.
The Barn, and the Spiral Staircase
The new house was the interesting half. A period barn conversion is the opposite of the bungalow they left: oak frame, exposed trusses, a galleried bedroom under the roof, and a floor plan that was never drawn with a three-seater sofa in mind. Barn conversions are common right across the Horsham district, and they are the buildings that most often turn a one-day move into a three-day one.
There is a fuller account of what a curved staircase actually constrains in a later job. The difficulty with a spiral is not the width on its own — it is that the width keeps turning, so nothing can be tipped or slid — a long item has to be lifted, rotated around the newel post and lowered again, and the person walking backwards is doing it blind. What governs whether something goes up is the clear diagonal at the tightest tread and the headroom under the turn, and you measure both before you commit rather than finding out with a wardrobe wedged at head height.
Anything that would not make the turn came apart downstairs and went back together upstairs. That is a straightforward decision when the furniture was dismantled by the same crew four days earlier and every fixing is still taped to its own frame. It is the practical argument for having the same Horsham crew at both ends rather than a pack team and a separate delivery team.
Protecting Two Houses, Not One
On a move like this the crew are working in a house someone is leaving and a house someone is arriving at, and the second one has just been finished.
New oak floors, fresh plaster and a staircase with no marks on it are the easiest things in the world to damage on day five when everyone is tired. Wolves Removals
So protection goes down before anything moves, in both properties, and the run gets extended as the route changes. It is the least interesting thing we do and the thing most likely to be noticed if we skip it.
What It Cost
The whole thing — six days, full packing and materials, dismantling and reassembly, three lorries, and the storage in the middle — came to £5,676 including VAT. Insurance cover for the goods was arranged as part of it and confirmed in writing before the job.
That is one number for one job, not a price list, and it is worth saying why. A six-day move is priced from a survey: how much house there is, how much of it we are packing, what has to come apart, and whether anything needs holding back. Two houses with the same number of bedrooms can be a day apart in the answer. If you want a number for yours, that is what the survey is for.
The clients moved into a finished barn with beds built, furniture placed and the boxes arriving in an order that made sense. That is what the six days bought. Not a longer move — a shorter unpacking.
The Wolves Removals Team
Family-run removals · Ashington, West Sussex
We have moved families and businesses across West and East Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Kent since 2016, from our Ashington base. We are fully insured, Checkatrade-verified and a LAPADA Approved Service Provider for antiques and fine art. More about us, or read our reviews.
Six Days, a Horsham Bungalow and a Spiral Staircase — FAQs
Yes — packing is the part of a Horsham move most people underestimate. Our crew packed this entire house over two full days before anything was loaded: every carton packed, labelled and loaded by us, with the materials brought with us. A full pack is usually the right answer for a family house, and always worth it where part of the load is going into storage.
This Horsham move ran to six working days: two packing and dismantling, two loading into store, one delivering the essentials and one bringing the stored items back out. A smaller house packed by the owners can still be a single day. The length comes from how much packing is involved and whether the load has to be split, not from the distance.
Yes, and on a large move it is often the best thing you can do. Here the non-essential half of the house went into our store for a few days so the new property could take its furniture and beds first, then the rest was delivered once there was somewhere sensible to put it.
It is measured before the day, not discovered on it. Anything that will not make the turn is dismantled downstairs and rebuilt upstairs, which is straightforward when the same crew took it apart and kept the fixings with the frame. We go through this in detail in our guide to moving furniture up a spiral staircase.
They are separated out and moved last. On this job the house was split into essentials and non-essentials: the non-essential half went into our store on days three and four, the essentials were delivered on day five, and the stored items followed on day six. You keep living normally until near the end, and the new house fills up in a sensible order.
No. Most clients are there for the first packing day, so they can point out anything that needs special handling or should not be packed at all, and again on the delivery days to say where furniture goes. The loading and storage days in between do not need you on site.
