Below the front door · LG
Garden and lower-ground flats in Putney
The flats beneath the Victorian terraces, reached down a flight from the pavement or along a side return. Everyone assumes the ground floor is the easy one. Below it is a different matter, and the constraint is rarely the stairs themselves.
What catches people out down here is not the descent. It is having nowhere to turn once you have made it.
What a lower-ground move involves
Carrying down is easier than carrying up. Turning is not.
On weight alone a lower-ground flat is the kindest level in a Putney conversion — gravity is on the crew's side and nobody is hauling a wardrobe up three flights.
The difficulty is geometric. Most of these flats are reached through a light well or a narrow side passage, and both give you very little room to swing a long item once you are in them. A sofa that would go up a straight staircase without complaint can be completely defeated by a light well with a wall on three sides.
So the measurement that matters here is not the stair width. It is the clear turning space at the bottom, and it is the first thing we look at.
External steps, and what rain does to them
Stone or tiled steps down from the pavement are standard in this stock and they are slippery when wet in a way that internal stairs never are. On a wet day the crew slows down, and the day gets longer as a result.
We cover them where we can and plan the order of loading so the heaviest pieces do not wait for the worst of the weather. It is a small thing that makes a measurable difference.
The side return, and whose it is
Plenty of garden flats are reached along a passage that technically belongs to the whole building. That means it should be clear on the day, and it frequently is not — bicycles, bins, and a neighbour's recycling.
Worth a knock on a door the evening before. We can work round most obstructions; we would simply rather not have to carry a mattress over them.
What the garden is for
Occasionally the answer to an impossible turn is not the front door at all but the garden — over a wall or through a gate at the rear. It needs the freeholder's agreement and it needs planning, but on a genuinely stuck piece it is sometimes the only route.
We will raise it at survey if we think it applies. It is not a decision to take on the morning.
Garden and lower-ground flats
Questions about garden and lower-ground flats
01 Is a garden flat cheaper to move than an upstairs one?
Not automatically. Carrying down is easier than carrying up, but the turning space is usually tighter and the external steps slow things in poor weather. The survey establishes which effect dominates for your flat.
02 What if the light well is too tight?
Then a piece is dismantled further, or it goes via the garden if that is possible, or it does not come out. We tell you which at survey rather than at the door.
03 Do I need to clear the side passage?
It helps enormously. Anything left in a shared passage on the day has to be moved by somebody, and that somebody is usually us, on your time.
04 Can you work in the rain?
Yes, more slowly and with the steps covered. Where the forecast is genuinely bad we will talk to you about the loading order rather than pretending it makes no difference.
05 Will you need a parking suspension?
In most of SW15, yes. We apply through Wandsworth in advance — it cannot be arranged on the day.
Which floor, at both ends?
That and the two addresses. If you can also measure the clear diagonal at the turn in your staircase, we can usually answer the furniture question straight away.