Apartment clearance in Blackrock and Booterstown: older blocks, small lifts and storage rooms

Older blocks clear differently

Most of what is written about apartment clearances assumes a modern managed block: a concierge at the desk, a goods lift, a loading bay and a booking app. The apartments along the coast between Booterstown and Blackrock are often older than that. Many are low-rise blocks of three or four storeys built between the 1970s and the 1990s, some are seafront buildings facing the Rock Road and the DART line, and the arrangements are smaller in every way. The lift, where there is one, is small. The management company is a committee of owners and a managing agent reached by email. The storage room in the basement has not been opened since the day the furniture went in.

None of that is a problem, but it changes the plan. For the modern blocks with a concierge and the flats in converted houses further along the coast, see our guide to apartment clearance in Dún Laoghaire. The service pages are apartment clearance in Dublin and apartment clearance; for the houses on the same roads, see house clearance in Blackrock and house clearance in Booterstown.

A management company without a concierge

In an older block there is nobody on a desk to tell. The common areas belong to an owners' management company, usually run by a managing agent with a committee of resident directors, and the practical contact is an email address. Write to it as soon as you have a likely date, not the week before, because a reply may take a few days and the house rules may limit the days and hours when furniture can move.

A short email covers everything the agent needs:

• the apartment number, and the date and hours you expect the work to take
• that Spotless will be doing the clearance, and that our insurance details are available if they want them
• whether you plan to use the lift, and whether lift covers or a reserved parking space are available
• where you expect the van to stop, and for how long at a time

Ask in reply whether anything in the lease or the house rules affects the day, and whether the storage room and bike store have their own keys. In a small block, a note under the neighbours' doors the week before does as much good as the email, because the people most affected by a day of carrying are the ones who share the stairwell.

Spotless holds waste collection permit NWCPO-25-13287-01 as an authorised waste carrier and is fully insured, and both details go to any agent who asks for them.

Small lifts, and no lifts

The lift in an older block was built for people, not furniture. Before the day, measure the clear opening of the lift doors and the depth and height of the car, and send us the figures with the photos. Mattresses, bed frames, flat-pack wardrobes and most tables fit once they are standing on end or in pieces. A three-seater sofa, a fridge-freezer and a solid wardrobe usually do not, and they go down the stairs.

Where there is no lift at all, everything goes down the stairs, and the plan is the one we use for any walk-up:

• large pieces are taken apart in the apartment, so wardrobes, beds and tables clear the turns of the stairwell
• the stairwell carpet, the banisters and the corners are covered before the first heavy item moves
• items are passed down and straight out to the van, so nothing sits on a landing for a neighbour to climb over
• the block's front door is held only while something is going through it, never propped open
• we allow more time, and the price we give you from the photos already reflects the floor and the stairs

A fridge-freezer that will not fit the lift goes down on a trolley, one flight at a time; tell us about it, and anything else unusually heavy, when you send the photos. Our page on flat clear-outs in period houses covers the same stairwell problems in a different kind of building.

The storage room, the bike store and the car-park cage

This is the part families forget, and the part that most often changes the size of the job. Many of these blocks gave each apartment a storage room in the basement or on the ground floor, or a cage in the car park, and after thirty years it holds suitcases, decorations, a cot, paint, boxes from the last move that were never opened, and the garden furniture from a balcony that has not been sat on since.

Find the key before you send photos, open the door and photograph it from the doorway. We price it with the apartment, and on the day it is cleared first or last, depending on where the van can stand.

The bike store is different, because it is shared. Bikes nobody can identify are the managing agent's business, not yours, so ask the agent before anything is removed from a shared store, and get the answer in writing. We take only the bikes and items you have confirmed are yours or that the management company has confirmed can go.

Balconies

A seafront or courtyard balcony after many years holds a table and chairs, planters, a clothes horse, a barbecue and sometimes a storage box. All of it comes through the apartment to leave, so the floors inside are covered first and the balcony is cleared before the rooms it passes through.

A barbecue is fine, but its gas cylinder is not something we take, full or empty, so return it to the supplier. Planters full of wet compost are heavier than they look; if there are many, mention them.

BeforeAfter spotless.ie

Where the van stops

Along this stretch of coast the main road is the problem and the side roads are the answer. The Rock Road is a busy main road with a bus lane, so a van does not stand on it; the village streets in Blackrock are busy and short of space; and the basement car park under an older block has a height barrier or a low ceiling that our Luton van will not clear.

So the plan is usually one of three:

1. The block's own car park or forecourt, if the agent will reserve a space or the gate can be opened for us.
2. A side road or the building's own entrance road, with the van arriving loaded in short runs rather than standing all day.
3. A set-down area at the front door, where one exists, held only while loading.

Loads are gathered inside before the van arrives, and it is filled in quick runs, so it never waits at the kerb with nothing to put in. A few days beforehand, stand at the entrance, note every sign you can see from it, and photograph the kerb and the car-park gate for us.

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The day, step by step

1. Covers go down in the lift, on the stairwell carpet and along the corridor before anything heavy moves.
2. The storage room is cleared first or last, depending on where the van is standing.
3. Rooms are staged: everything going is gathered by the apartment door, and the lift or the stairs are used in short, full bursts so neighbours are not kept waiting.
4. The balcony is cleared through the covered rooms before the furniture in those rooms goes.
5. Appliances last. The fridge-freezer, defrosted a day or two before, goes on the trolley at the end when the route is clear.
6. The final check: the hot press, the top of every wardrobe, the meter cupboard in the corridor, the balcony, the storage room, the bike store and the post box.
7. Photographs and keys. We photograph every empty room, and you gather every key and fob, including those for the storage room, the car-park gate and the bin store, and return them to whoever has been agreed.

Papers, photographs, post and anything else that looks personal are set aside as we clear and shown to you rather than removed.

Carpets after the clearance

Older apartments are often carpeted throughout, hall included. Once the rooms are empty they can be cleaned by hot-water extraction, hot water driven into the pile and extracted again with the dirt, and an empty room gives a better result than cleaning around furniture. We test a hidden patch first in an older carpet and tell you honestly if a room would be better replaced than cleaned.

Drying takes a few hours with the windows open and a little heat on, which makes the carpets the last job before the keys go back or the agent's photographer comes. See carpet cleaning in Blackrock for the local page, and cleaning carpets before you move in if the apartment is about to become someone's home. A mattress that is staying can be cleaned at the same time; see mattress cleaning. We do not offer a full domestic clean of the kitchen and bathroom, so if the sale, the let or the family expects one, a cleaner should come in after the clearance and before the carpets.

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Who gives the instructions

The building does not care why the apartment is being emptied, but the paperwork does.

• A sale. Fixtures and fittings that stay, such as the kitchen, the fitted wardrobes and usually the blinds and light fittings, are listed in the contract; read it before anything built in is moved.
• An estate. The executor, or the person the executor names, decides, and the family chooses what to keep before the clearance date. Our bereavement house clearance page explains how we work with families, and the Sandyford apartment guide covers an estate apartment in detail.
• A let ending. What belongs to the landlord is settled by the inventory, and anything a tenant has left behind needs the owner's written instruction before it leaves; see flat clearance for landlords.

Getting a price

An apartment in an older block needs a few more photographs than a house, because the building is half the job. We need:

• a photograph of each room and the balcony
• the storage room or cage from its doorway, and the bike store if anything of yours is in it
• the lift doors with the measurements, or a note that there is no lift, and the floor number
• the entrance, the car-park gate and the kerb outside
• the management company's hours for moves, if you have them, and the date that matters

You get one fixed figure in writing before anything is booked, and it does not change on the day. We are a Dublin-based company covering Dublin and all of Leinster, and we work Monday to Saturday, 8am to 5pm. WhatsApp the photographs to 085 202 1222 or attach them to the quote form. For lifts and loading in any building, see our guide to clearing an apartment.