When the couch will not turn the corner: Baltimore rowhouse furniture removal

The short answer

If your sofa will not come down the stairs, it is coming out in pieces, and that costs exactly the same as if it walked out whole. A sofa is $126. A sleeper sofa is $149. A three-piece sectional is $185. An armoire is $148 small or $197 large.

There is no disassembly fee, no difficult-access fee, and no stair charge in our pricing. The visit minimum is $75.

The geometry of a Baltimore rowhouse stair

Most of this city's rowhouse stock was built narrow and deep, somewhere between twelve and sixteen feet wide on the outside. The stair had to fit in that width alongside a hallway, and the builder solved it the same way every time: a steep, narrow run with a turn at one end.

Three features do the damage.

• The winder. Instead of a flat landing, older rowhomes often have pie-shaped treads that wrap the turn. A rigid rectangle cannot pivot through a winder, because there is no flat surface to rotate it on. This is the single most common reason a sofa gets stuck in Baltimore.
• The pitch. These stairs are steep. A tall riser and a shallow tread means the carrier below is holding more weight and has less foot room than on a modern stair.
• The headroom at the top. The ceiling frequently drops where the stair meets the floor above, so the diagonal you were counting on to swing the piece through does not exist.

And then the vestibule

Even if it gets down the stairs, there is one more obstacle, and it is specific to this housing type. A Baltimore rowhouse typically has a vestibule: an outer door, a tiny entry, then an inner door, often hung so it opens against the direction you need.

That means the piece has to be turned twice, in a space a few feet square, with a stair newel post usually sitting exactly where you want to put the other end. Plenty of sofas clear every stair in the house and then stop in the vestibule.

Then the marble steps, then a sidewalk narrow enough in Highlandtown and Upper Fells Point that the sofa and both carriers take its full width.

How it got up there in the first place

Four answers, and it is almost always one of them.

• It came up in pieces and was assembled in the room. Extremely common with flat-pack and with anything bought in the last twenty years.
• A door was off its hinges. The people who delivered it did what the crew will do on the way out.
• It went through a window. Second-floor front windows in rowhouses are large, and this has been the answer in Baltimore for a long time.
• The house has changed. A wall went in, a handrail was added, a radiator was reinstalled, a doorway was narrowed during a renovation. The route that existed in 1998 does not exist now.

If you cannot remember, assume it is coming apart.

What the crew does, in order

1. Measure and look. Thirty seconds at the tightest point tells you whether it is going to work.
2. Doors off hinges. Two minutes with a pin punch, no damage, and it buys three inches. Interior doors, the inner vestibule door, and sometimes a closet door that is in the way.
3. Feet and legs off. Most sofa legs are threaded and come off by hand.
4. Back panel off. On a large share of sofas the back unbolts, which makes the piece six inches shallower and changes the geometry completely.
5. Cushions and upholstery stripped. Reduces bulk and weight before the frame moves.
6. Cut the frame. Only with your say-so. A reciprocating saw through the frame in the room, then the pieces walk down one at a time.

Steps one through five solve most of them. Step six solves the rest, and it is the reason nothing is ever left in the room.

Should you take the window route?

Generally, no. It is the right answer for a professional rigging job on a piano or a safe, and the wrong answer for a sofa that is being disposed of anyway.

Consider what is under a Baltimore rowhouse front window: marble steps, a public sidewalk, parked cars, and often a neighbor's steps two feet away. The risk is high and the payoff is an intact sofa nobody wants. Cutting it in the room is safer, quieter and faster.

For heavy specialist items the calculation changes. An upright piano is $290, a baby grand is $438, and a small safe is $100, and those are jobs where the crew plans the route deliberately.

Which pieces are the usual culprits

In order of how often they get stuck in this city:

• Box springs. Rigid, no give at all. A queen box spring will not turn a winder. Yours may already have been split to get up there. $92.
• Sleeper sofas. The steel mechanism makes them heavy, wide and unwilling to flex. $149.
• Armoires and large wardrobes. Assembled upstairs, every time. $148 or $197.
• One-piece china cabinets with glass doors. Tall, fragile and non-negotiable about dimensions. $197.
• Solid wood bed frames. King size especially. $152.
• Sectionals. Two-piece is usually fine at $141. Three-piece at $185 has one section that is always the problem.

What to do before the visit

Nothing structural. Just clear the path, move anything breakable off the stairs and out of the vestibule, and tell us the floor and whether the stair turns. Mention if the house has a rear yard and alley, because on some blocks the back door is the better exit.

You do not need to take the sofa apart yourself, and you should not try to get it down alone. The stair that beat it is the same stair that beats people.

Frequently asked questions