House changing: You can minimise damages, costs

Jul 16, 2010

AFTER living in a rental house for over 10 years, time came for Martin to move to his own house in Mukono.

BY STELLA NASSUNA

AFTER living in a rental house for over 10 years, time came for Martin to move to his own house in Mukono.

As a result, he contracted a truck driver to transport his property and an agreement was reached. Martin started loading his property aboard the truck. This comprised a cupboard, the couch, a glass coffee table and a king size mahogany bed.

He also loaded a television cabinet, two woollen carpets, a 42 inch LCD TV, an LG fridge, an air conditioner, a vacuum cleaner, water heater, wall pictures and flower vases. During loading and offloading, Martin lost much of his property. His couch and wall photos were ruined.

In addition, the television screen and the coffee glass table craked and the fridge walls got pressed in. Just like Martin, many people have faced similar losses. However, such damages can be avoided.

Until you build your house, you can avoid buying fragile property that will easily break due to movements. However, if you have fragile property and you must move, then caution must be taken.

For example, glasses, brittle dishes, wall photos with glass frames and other breakable items should be wrapped properly in old newspapers or art papers and placed in a box filled with sponge. After, seal up the boxes to keep the items intact and safe.

It is an added advantage to keep old packages such as boxes and other packaging materials that come with new items because you can reuse them when shifting. It is advisable that fragile items are packaged separately from the expensive stuff. This will enable you to keep good truck of which box to handle with extra care.

Transporting imported furniture such as wardrobes, kitchen boards, beds and tables is quite challenging. Unscrewing such furniture becomes a problem because screwing it back requires placing screws at new points, which might spoil the beauty of the furniture.

However, if doing all this work seems hard for you since packaging comes with challenges of finding enough paper, looking for boxes, hiring the services of a mover could be the option. These service providers handle the movement of your property according to your instructions.

If you want them to start at step one or the core level, they will start at selection level where items are separated and packaged differently, transported and off loaded. The company you contract, it has to send a supervisor to inspect the items and take stock of them.

It is after the inspection that plans of moving the items safely are undertaken. The company or service provider pays in monetary terms in case anything is damaged.

You should rethink when buying expensive items. It is most likely that if you use the wrong methods while moving, there are high chances of getting damaged or ruined.

Lastly, damage can also be minimised by transporting big items such as beds, tables and sofas separately.

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