A 19th-century townhouse doesn't resist a removal in general. It resists in a specific order — the sidewalk, then the stoop, then the staircase that was never designed for a sectional sofa. This is that building, feature by feature, and what each one actually does to getting something out.
No stair charge, no age surcharge — piano $390, cast-iron tub $249
Upload Photos & Get Quote →Everywhere else in this city, a difficult removal is difficult because of volume — how much there is and how many flights it has to come down. The triple-decker version of the problem is fundamentally a question of repetition.
Beacon Hill and Back Bay are different. Here the building is a sequence of narrow points, each of which either passes an object or doesn't. A single armchair can be harder than an entire student flat, because the flat's staircase is merely long and the townhouse's is 140 years old and turns twice.
The good news, stated once so it's not repeated: none of this is surcharged. Stairs, carries, turns, awkward doorways and the age of the building are ours to solve. What changes the price in these neighbourhoods is what is being removed, not where it lives.
The job starts about forty feet from the front door.
Many blocks here are narrow and one-way, with parking on one or both sides and no driveway, curb cut or loading zone anywhere along them. Some streets are cobbled or brick-paved, which matters less for vehicles than for what you can wheel across them. And a great many are resident-permit only, which means a truck needs a legitimate arrangement rather than optimism.
Alley access, where it exists, is worth more than anything else on this page. Some townhouses have rear access; most don't. If yours does, say so — it can change the entire shape of the job.
Where the truck ends up parking is the single question that most determines how a day here goes. Sometimes it's directly outside. Often it's a legal spot at the end of the block and a longer carry, which is completely workable — as long as it's known in advance rather than discovered on the morning.
The front steps of a Boston townhouse are handsome, steep, and narrower than they look, usually with an iron railing on one or both sides that fixes the maximum width of anything coming down.
The railing is the real constraint, not the steps. A piece that cleared the treads easily can still be stopped by the gap between the rails, and that gap doesn't care how many people are carrying it.
Stoops also mean the front door sits half a storey above the pavement — so even a ground-floor removal starts with a descent.
Below the stoop, many of these houses have a basement entrance in a sunken areaway — the old service door.
It is frequently the most useful route in the entire building, and it's routinely forgotten. It's at or near street level, it avoids the stoop and its railings entirely, and it was built for exactly this kind of traffic. The trade-off is that it's often narrow, sometimes gated, and reaches only the lower floors.
If your building has one, mention it. It's the single most valuable piece of information you can give us about a townhouse, and the one people most often don't think to offer.
The parlour floor — the grand one, high ceilings, tall windows onto the street — is where the house's best furniture usually lives, and it's also where the tall windows sit closest to the ground.
In some buildings a window is the only viable route for a large piece, and it may well be how the piece arrived. Whether that's available depends entirely on the specific building, the window, what's below it and your building's own policies — it's a question to answer with photographs beforehand, never an assumption to arrive with.
Here's the heart of it.
These staircases were built for a household whose furniture was different from ours. They're often narrow, steep, and turned — sometimes twice — with a newel post at the bottom that removes several inches of clearance at exactly the wrong moment. Upper floors were frequently served by a secondary service stair narrower still.
A turn is much harder than a flight. Length is just effort; a turn is a geometry problem, and geometry either works or it doesn't. This is why a photograph of the staircase — taken from the bottom, looking up — tells us more than the square footage of the property ever could.
Most of these buildings don't have one, and where a lift has been added it's frequently small, sometimes original, and occasionally more constrained than the stairs beside it.
The practical consequence isn't cost — it's that everything is a carry, so the route has to be right the first time. There's no second attempt with a different approach halfway up a townhouse staircase with a wardrobe.
Where a building does have a lift, its management usually has rules about booking and protecting it. Ask them early; those rules are theirs, not ours. How apartment clear-outs are scheduled.
The upper storeys of these houses were the servants' floors — smallest rooms, narrowest stairs, lowest ceilings. They're now bedrooms, studies and storage, and they hold a surprising amount.
Roof decks are their own case. Reached through a hatch or a narrow stair, they collect worn outdoor furniture, planters and grills that were carried up once and never carried down. Anything that went up in pieces comes down in pieces. Furniture removal.
The genuinely stuck object is a real phenomenon here, and it has a consistent explanation.
The piece came in before the building was the shape it is now. A staircase was rebuilt, a wall was moved, a doorway was narrowed in a renovation, or a window was replaced with one that doesn't open the way its predecessor did. The sofa didn't grow — the route around it shrank.
When that happens the answer is usually dismantling the piece where it stands, which is part of the removal rather than an extra charge. Occasionally it's a window route. Either way it's a question to settle from photographs before the day. Sofa routes and what makes one impossible · couch removal.
Two things in these houses are heavier than anything else in them, and both turn up constantly.
Radiators, when a heating system is replaced — $99 each, dense out of all proportion to their size.
Cast-iron tubs, when a bathroom is redone — $249, and genuinely one of the heaviest single objects in domestic Boston. A fibreglass tub, by contrast, is $121, and the difference is entirely weight and handling.
Both are worth a thought before disposal: period radiators and intact cast-iron tubs have a salvage market, and a piece removed carefully is worth more than one removed quickly. If you're mid-renovation, ask a salvage yard before you ask us. What else is worth saving out of a Boston renovation.
These houses have pianos in them, and they came in when the building was younger and the staircase was possibly a different staircase.
Upright $390. Grand $590. The price is for weight and handling; the route is the actual question, and it depends on the specific building rather than the general case.
If it plays, try to place it first. A working instrument is worth finding a home for, and there are people who take them. Removal should be the answer for an instrument that's genuinely finished, not the first call. Who takes things that still have life in them.
Across the rest of this blog the advice is consistent: on anything approaching a whole room, the truck rate beats itemised pricing. The itemised-versus-truck comparison in general.
In these buildings that logic frequently reverses, because the expensive things here are heavy rather than bulky.
Take a townhouse bathroom and heating job: a cast-iron tub at $249, two radiators at $99 each, and an upright piano finally leaving at $390. Itemised that's $837. Those objects occupy remarkably little space — they'd disappear into a corner of a truck — but they're priced as items because weight and handling are the work, not the volume, and a quarter-truck rate doesn't cover a piano no matter how neatly it fits.
So the rule for a historic building is: heavy things are priced as things, ordinary furniture is priced by volume, and a clear-out containing both gets quoted as both. Send photographs and we'll do that arithmetic rather than guessing at it.
Both of these are historic districts, and historic districts have rules. Separately, most buildings here have an association or management with its own policies on moves, access, lifts, shared hallways and hours.
What those rules cover, and whether anything about a given removal touches them, varies by street and by building. We're not going to tell you what they say, because a hauling company confidently reciting a neighbour's version of a historic-district rule is how people end up in trouble.
Ask the city, and ask your own building's management. They are the two authorities that actually apply to your address.
What we can tell you is how we work, which sidesteps most of it: things go from the building directly into the truck. Nothing is staged on the pavement to sit there, nothing is left overnight, and the street looks the same afterwards as it did before. Why a container is often the harder option on these streets.
| Item or scope | Flat price |
|---|---|
| A couple of items (minimum) | $75 |
| Radiator | $99 |
| Bathtub — fibreglass / cast iron | $121 / $249 |
| Piano — upright / grand | $390 / $590 |
| Sofa / three-piece sectional | $170 / $249 |
| Wardrobe / china cabinet | $165 / $215 |
| Mattress and box spring set | $192 |
| Large safe | $273 |
| A room's worth — quarter truck | $325 |
| Half truck | $580 |
| Three-quarter truck | $790 |
| Full 16-cu-yd truck | $985 |
| Stairs, turns, long carries, no lift | No charge |
Quoted from photographs before anyone travels. Full Boston price list · Beacon Hill · Back Bay.
Photograph it and the staircase. Dismantling is included if the route demands it. Sofa guide.
$99 each — and check salvage value first if they're period pieces.
$249. Heaviest thing in most of these houses. Renovation debris.
Upright $390, grand $590. Try to rehome a working instrument first.
$165. Usually comes apart; that's normal, not damage.
Set $192, and Massachusetts restricts mattress disposal. The rules · mattress removal.
Comes down the way it went up. Priced by piece or by volume, whichever is lower.
Quarter truck $325 upward. What Boston basements hold.
Half truck $580 to a full load $985, additional trucks at the same rate. Apartment cleanout.
Slow down. These houses hold things worth going through properly. Estate work · estate cleanout.
Can't go in the trash. E-waste routing · TV removal.
Try the free routes first. Every option ranked · furniture routes.
Four pieces of information, and they're worth more than anything else you could send.
The street, so parking is solved before the day rather than during it.
Whether there's an areaway or rear access — the most under-reported detail in this neighbourhood.
A photograph of the staircase from the bottom, showing the turns and the newel post.
Photographs of anything large or heavy, from far enough back to show the doorway it has to pass through.
With those, the route is planned before anyone arrives, and a building that looks intimidating turns out to be an ordinary afternoon. Same-day availability.
Photograph the route, not the pile. In every other part of Boston, what matters is how much there is. In a Beacon Hill or Back Bay townhouse, what matters is the narrowest point between the object and the street — the railing gap, the turn at the bottom of the stairs, the doorway that got narrower in someone's 1990s renovation. Send us the staircase and the street and we can tell you whether a piece comes out whole, comes out in parts, or comes out through a window. Nothing about the building's age costs you extra. It just has to be planned, and a building this old has earned the courtesy of being planned around.
Free quote from photos — access worked out before the day
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