Streets · A
A street, and a drive
The straightforward majority of the county, and the pages on this site exist to describe everything that is not this. A made road, a dropped kerb, somewhere to put a vehicle within a few steps of the door.
When the road is easy the loft becomes the story, and the loft is where the quotes move.
What the day involves
Where the volume actually is
On the estates along the M2 and M20 the access is genuinely easy, which is exactly why nobody checks the volume. The loft, the garage and the shed are opened at survey, every time, and they are the reason a figure given over the telephone turns out to be wrong.
A boarded loft in a postwar semi roughly doubles what the house can hold and is invisible from the rooms. It is the single most common misjudgement in this county and it has nothing to do with the road at all.
Shared drives
Common on interwar and postwar Kent housing and worth a sentence at the enquiry. A shared drive means a neighbour has a right of way over the ground a vehicle would stand on, and blocking it for a day is a bad way to leave a street.
Where the drive is shared we agree a standing point that does not obstruct it, or we ask you to speak to the neighbour in advance. Either is easier than an argument on the morning.
Completion, and the hour nobody owns
Where the move depends on a sale, keys are released once money has moved up a chain and the household at the bottom is paid last. We load early and plan for a wait rather than a morning.
Tell us how many households are in the chain at the point you book. It changes what we plan for and it is the piece of information most often left out of an enquiry.
And getting out of the county
Anything heading north or west from Kent meets the Dartford Crossing or takes a long way round it, and which of those, at what hour, is the biggest single variable in a long day. It is decided before the load is built.
A street, and a drive
Questions about a street, and a drive
01 Is this the easy category?
For access, comfortably. The quotation reflects that, and it also reflects a volume measured with a tape rather than inferred from a bedroom count.
02 Why do you insist on the loft?
Because a boarded loft roughly doubles the storage capacity of a semi and cannot be seen from anywhere else in the house. It is the commonest reason a telephone estimate is wrong.
03 Our drive is shared with next door.
Worth mentioning at the enquiry. We will agree a standing point that does not obstruct their right of way, or ask you to give them notice.
04 Do you dismantle beds and wardrobes?
Yes, as standard, and rebuild them at the other end. Anything that cannot come out whole is taken apart here.
05 What if completion slips?
The load stays secured on the vehicle. If the day fails entirely, goods go into store rather than back into a house you have just emptied.
06 Do you cover the whole county for this?
From the Dartford edge to Deal. On a made road with a drive, one part of Kent is much like another.
What is the last road like?
Both addresses, roughly what is going, and whatever you know about the final stretch at each end. A photograph of a gateway from the road beats any description of it.