No matter how you look at it, property damage when moving house is bad – bad for your emotional equilibrium (annoyance, anger), bad for your health (an overdose of stress, increased blood pressure, nervous breakdown), bad for your time management (lost time in repairs) and of course, bad for your moving budget (repair costs).
And now that you know exactly what it takes to protect your floors during a move, let’s turn our attention to the doors and door frames along your exit route that may suffer various types of damage on the day of the move.
Below you will find the top 6 ways to protect doors and door frames when moving regardless of whether those doors are inside the home you’re moving out of or in the house or apartment you’re moving into.
Why you should protect your doors and door frames
As mentioned above, any type of property damage on Moving day will create additional problems for you. As if your move weren’t problematic enough! Therefore, untimely damage to floors, walls, ceilings, doors, door jambs, stairs, and banisters must be avoided at all costs.
Think about this: if you’re moving out of a rental home, then you’ll have to cover all damage repair costs from your own pocket and you probably won’t ever get your security deposit back from the landlord. On the other hand, if you’re moving out of your own home, then any property damage will decrease its sale price, and once again, you’ll need to repair any damage or have it repaired at your expense.
By having your time, money and nervous system on the line throughout the move, the stress on Moving day will reach its highest point, especially when you know that one wrong move may cause light, medium or serious damage to the home you’re moving out of or moving into.
The good news is that it’s fairly easy to protect your doors and doors frames from any type of damage – it takes a few minutes to provide the necessary protection, and it won’t cost you anything to implement the various safety measures either.
Must-read: 7 Moving safety tips everyone must know
How to protect your doors and door frames during a move
The greatest danger for your doors and door jambs come from the large household items that you’re moving – bulky pieces of furniture (dressers, couches, tables, etc.) or big and heavy appliances (refrigerator, washing machine, dishwasher, etc.).
Luckily, you have 3 proven methods to make sure your move goes 100% damage-free for the doors and door frames in your home.
1. Cover up your doors
The very first line of defense for your doors and door jambs is their physical protection, and in most cases, that protective measure proves to be enough to keep property damage at bay.
The types of damage your doors and door frames can sustain during a move include scratches, nicks, dents, gouges, scuffs, scrapes, and breakage. And you can prevent any of those by simply covering and padding your doorways sufficiently with various kinds of protective materials, such as
- moving blankets,
- cardboard sheets,
- bubble wrap.
Your best bet is to use thick furniture blankets – the ones that movers use all the time. However, ordinary household blankets will work fine too. Sheets of thick cardboard or bubble wrap will also offer excellent physical protection for your doors during a move.
Just drape one of the above-mentioned types of pads over the upper part of the door and use painter’s blue tape (masking tape) to secure the pad to the door. Do not use standard packing tape directly over the finish of the door as it will damage their finish by leaving hard-to-remove residue.
If you’re unable to cover the entire door with only one padding material, then attach a second pad to the first one to cover the bottom part of the door. To secure one pad to another, you’re free to use the stronger packing tape. Also, cover the door frames in the same manner, and again, be mindful not to use packing tape directly over the finish of the jambs.
If you feel that one layer of physical protection won’t be enough – usually the case when you’re moving extra-large furniture pieces or the doors of the home are really expensive, you should add another protective layer over the initial one. For example, do it by taping flat cardboard pieces or bubble wrap sheets over the moving blankets.
If you wish, you can purchase specialized door protection covers but that will only burden additionally your moving budget.
Needless to say, you should pad only the doors along the intended exit path to the awaiting moving vehicle.
Important info: How to pack furniture for moving
2. Remove the doors
Sometimes the best way to protect a door is to remove it – a good option when 1) the door is quite expensive and possible damage to it will cost you plenty of money, and 2) when the initial measurements of your bulky pieces and the doorway show that it’ll be a very close call.
So, to stay on the safe side, you should seriously consider taking a potentially problematic door off its hinges and placing it carefully a safe distance away. Make sure you have at least two other helpers for the delicate door removal task.
Keep in mind that some doors are easy to remove safely, while others are really hard or next to impossible to take off their hinges without causing serious damage. So, if you’re not sure how to remove a door to keep it from harm’s way, then don’t do it. Instead, rely on the other door protection methods.
See also: HELP! What to do when furniture won’t fit through the door
3. Protect your doors INDIRECTLY
Another way to guard your doors and door frames against damage is to do it indirectly – that is, to make sure that whatever bulky objects you intend to move through them won’t damage the doors and their frames simply because you’ve already taken some extra door protection measures.
All in all, there are several great ways to keep your doors and door frames safe during a house move:
- DISASSEMBLE safely all big and heavy furniture pieces so that the dismantled elements can pass comfortably through all the doorways in your home. If you don’t know how to disassemble your large furniture safely, then have someone do it for you.
- PAD well all large and heavy household items with moving blankets and bubble wrap so that any slight contacts with a door or a door jamb do not lead to damage whatsoever. Remember that thick padding materials serve as excellent shock absorbers.
- USE a moving dolly to wheel out your huge furniture pieces or any other bulky items that have the potential to damage your doors and door frames. Bear in mind that it’s much easier to navigate around smaller doorways and tight corners with the right type of moving dolly – most often, the two-wheel furniture dolly that’s also known as a hand truck.
- GATHER more helping hands, or at least try. The more friends you have to help you move all those large and heavy items in your home, the lesser the chance of inflicting costly property damage. In the majority of cases, the combination of physical protection of the doors along the exit pathways and sufficient helpers – understand labor force – should be enough to prevent door damage of any type.
Read also: How to avoid property damage when moving out
Protecting the doors and door frames in your home during a move is not overly complicated but it does require some planning and a lot of caution on the day of the move. If you’re seriously worried that you may inflict accidental property damage, including costly damage to any of the doors, then you’d better call in professional movers who have been trained to protect all accident-prone areas in the home – floors, walls, ceilings, banisters, and of course – doors and door frames.
