Unless all your furniture miraculously fits out your door and in the moving truck, chances are that you will need to take apart and reassemble your furniture during your next move. This can be a nightmarish headache which takes hours to complete. But, if you follow these tips, you’ll have your furniture back together again in no time.
Don’t Lose Parts!
When taking furniture apart, it is really important that you don’t lose any of those small screws, nuts, bolts, or other parts. Make sure you have lots of plastic bags handy. Screws can puncture the bag and fall out, so wrap them in a fold of paper before putting them into the bag. Then use a sharpie to label the bag with its contents. Now take a piece of packing tape and tape the plastic bag to the furniture it belongs with.
If you are dealing with furniture which has lots of little parts (like all that IKEA furniture with hundreds of different-sized dowels), then you will want to separate all of the pieces into their own baggies and then put them all in one big bag.
Keep a Tool Kit in Your Survival Box
When moving to a new home, you should always create a “survival box” which will have all the things you need to get by for a few days. Along with clothes, toiletries, and other basic necessities, you will want to make sure your survival box also includes all of the tools you need to reassemble furniture, as this will be one of the first things you do in your new home.
Don’t Unpack Boxes Where Furniture Should Go
Ideally, you made a furniture plan for your new home before you moved in so you know where every single piece of furniture should go. When unloading your boxes from the moving van, make sure you don’t put any boxes where the furniture should go. Otherwise, you will have to reassemble the sofa in the middle of the room and leave it there until you clear away all those boxes!
Create a Level Work-space
Putting furniture back together is a lot easier when it is done on flat surface, like a wood floor. Put cardboard on the floor to prevent it from getting scratched. You can also put cardboard on carpet to make it flatter.