The brief
Mia and her partner were leaving a 4th-floor walk-up in a Park Slope brownstone for a 2-bedroom on the 3rd floor of a Hoboken row house, a few blocks from the PATH. They booked three weeks ahead for the last Saturday in August, one of the busiest moving days of the year, and packed nearly everything themselves. We quoted 7 to 8 hours with 3 movers, plus the tolls, and planned the parking at the Hoboken end before the day.
What made it tricky
- Four flights of brownstone stairs at pickup, with a tight switchback at every landing and a curved banister at the top.
- A sectional sofa that had come up in pieces years earlier and had to go down the same way.
- A Hoboken block parked solid on both sides, on an end-of-month Saturday with other moving trucks on the neighboring streets.
- Getting from Brooklyn to Hoboken means crossing Lower Manhattan to the Holland Tunnel, and Canal Street on a summer Saturday is slow.
How we did it
- Sent 3 movers instead of 2, so one could load the truck while two worked the stairs in a relay.
- Padded the banister and every landing, then took the sectional apart at the arms and carried it down in three pieces.
- Two weeks out, we asked the customers to check Hoboken’s rules for moving trucks; they arranged temporary no-parking signs, which kept the curb in front of the house clear.
- Left Park Slope at 12:30pm, took Canal Street to the Holland Tunnel and were unloading in Hoboken by about 1:30pm.
- Rebuilt both beds and the sectional, then did a final walkthrough with the customers before the crew left.