Question: When my husband and I bought our home about 10 years ago, we repainted the interior before we were fully moved in. Then we bought lots of massively heavy Victorian furniture, which was delivered by the antiques stores.

Now the entire interior urgently needs repainting, and some of the oak floors need refinishing. We want to do the painting ourselves. The big question is: How do we move the furniture back and forth?

This is the first time most of our furniture has been too heavy to move ourselves. And not just up or down stairs; we can't even lift some pieces to move them more than a few inches.

Frances Grimble
via e-mail

Answer: Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that painting a room is an easy job to do one area at a time. The bad news is the floors present another problem with no easy solution.

Professional floor refinishers are unwilling to work on one section of a room at a time, and usually won't move furniture. The entire room must be cleared before they'll begin, and because sanding and refinishing floors is messy, it's just as well that all the furniture is out of the space.

If storing all the furniture at one time in the garage isn't possible, perhaps renting a storage container and parking it on the street in front of the house (with police permits, of course) is an alternative.

Wish I could wave my magic wand and solve the problem easily because if I could, I'd bottle the solution!

 

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