How to pack dining room chairs for moving

When moving to another home, you should definitely consider initiating the packing process from your dining room as it’s often one of the least used rooms in the entire house.

Luckily, packing your dining room set is a relatively straightforward task that should serve as a warm-up for the more challenging packing jobs as you move the packing action to another room later on. After all, wrapping up your dining table and dining chairs should be much easier than protecting your queen-size bed – at least under normal circumstances, that is.

Nevertheless, packing your dining room table and chairs must be done with utmost care so that those valuable furniture pieces don’t get damaged during the haul. Of course, you should always make sure that all the furniture items you take with you reach the new home perfectly unscathed regardless of the origin room.

And now that we’ve covered extensively the topic of how to pack and move a dining room table (see here), it’s time to turn our sole attention to the dining room chairs.

Read on to learn the best way to pack dining room chairs for moving.

How to prepare dining room chairs for moving

Before you can pack your set of dining room chairs for a move, there are a couple of things you should do to prepare the chairs for the packing task.

Clean the chairs

You don’t wish to drag any dirt and grime into your new home together with the dining room furniture, do you?

Make sure you clean each chair before wrapping it up for transport. What’s the best way to do it?

Dust off the chairs, then wipe clean the chair legs, seats, backs, and the areas underneath the seats using a soft cotton cloth and a mild solution of water and dish soap.

Let the chairs dry completely before wrapping them up for the long haul.

Remove the chair legs

Check to see if the legs of the dining room chairs can be removed easily and safely. And if the answer is yes, then you should do just that to facilitate both the packing and transportation processes.

In most cases, the legs will be glued to the chair seats, which means you shouldn’t attempt to disassemble such chairs at all. But sometimes those chairs will be either screwed in or bolted to the chair bases, meaning that you should be able to detach them fairly easily.

So, if you know you can disassemble your dining room chairs, do it carefully, without rushing the job. Keep nuts, bolts, screws, washers or any other fastening elements in resealable plastic bags to keep them from getting lost.

If you’re not sure whether the chair legs can be removed safely, then just leave them as they are.

Good to know: Is it better to move furniture or buy new?

How to pack dining room chairs for moving

The good news is that wrapping dining room chairs is pretty straightforward and it shouldn’t take you long to protect each chair for the upcoming move.

What’s even better is that you can choose one of the 2 following ways to pack your dining room chairs for moving:

Packing method 1: Pack up your disassembled chairs

Here’s how to pack dining room chairs by disassembling them first:

• REMOVE the four legs of a dining room chair. Remember – do it only if the legs are detachable and you know how to take them off safely.
• LABEL the chair with a piece of paper and assign numbers to each chair: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Attach the numbered paper tag to the base of the chair using painter’s tape.
• LABEL each individual leg to know not only the specific chair it belongs to but also the exact position on it. USE small pieces of paper to tag each chair leg – for example, 1 FL (chair #1, front left), 1 FR (chair #1, front right), 1 RL (chair #1, rear left), and 1 RR (chair #1, rear right). ATTACH each label to its corresponding leg using a small piece of painter’s tape.
• WRAP each detached and labeled leg in bubble wrap to protect it during transport. Secure the bubble wrap with tape.
• WRAP the seat and back of the legless chair with a moving blanket so that no part of the dining room chair remains exposed. Secure the furniture blanket with tape.

Packing method 2: Pack your chairs in moving blankets

In practice, packing your dining room chairs without detaching their legs will be the much easier and faster option.

Here’s how to pack dining room chairs in furniture blankets:

• LAY a clean moving blanket on the dining room floor. The blanket should be laid out with its light blue side facing you.
• POSITION a dining room chair in a diagonal position (kitty-corner) onto the furniture pad, with the top of the chair facing you. BE careful not to step onto the blanket for fear of soiling it with your shoes.
• TAKE one corner of the pad and cover the back of the chair.
• COVER the right or left side of the chair – whichever side comes more natural to you – as you push the furniture blanket between the legs of the dining room furniture piece.
• COVER the other side of the chair as you’re making sure the pad is pulled snug against the furniture piece.
• GRAB both sides of the moving blanket that stretches out at the end opposite the chair’s back, then fold the pad inward and up between the legs of the chair. PULL the furniture blanket tightly over the chair.
• GET the chair back to its feet the way it’s snugly wrapped up while holding the end of the pad with one hand.
• WRAP packing tape around the entire chair, thus securing the protective pad firmly to the furniture piece. That way, the blanket cannot come off during transport.
• INSPECT the protected chair closely – it should be completely covered with the furniture pad so that there’s a minimum chance of damage to the dining room chair during the move.

See also: How to pack furniture for moving

How to move dining room chairs

Now that you’ve packed up your set of dining room chairs, let’s say a few words about how to move chairs to the moving truck and secure them inside the vehicle.

• EXAMINE the exit route and make sure the path is perfectly clear all way to the moving vehicle. If you trip on something and bump a chair into a wall or a doorway, there’s a chance that you damage the furniture piece even when it’s already well-padded with moving blankets.
• USE both your hands to hold and carry each chair along the bottom of the seat. DON’T GRAB dining room chairs by their backs to prevent possible damage.
• NEVER DRAG chairs by their backs along the floor – doing so will most likely result in costly damage both to the floor and to the chairs.
• TAKE each chair to the moving truck by watching your step to avoid painful injuries.
• PLACE a dining room chair with its legs the truck floor or trailer floor.
• POSITION a second chair upside-down onto the first one so that the seats of the two furniture pieces touch.
• SECURE the two chairs together using rope or straps.

Packing and moving dining room chairs is not difficult by any means. However, if you still feel nervous about doing it – in the case of an expensive dining room set of furniture, for example, then do the right thing and hire professional packers and movers to guarantee that nothing bad happens to your valuable furniture.