Three loads, not one
Everything in a studio falls into one of three groups, and they need handling completely differently:
- Materials — heavy, bulky, replaceable. Load them first and low.
- Tools and equipment — heavy, valuable, repairable. They need cases and they need to be accounted for.
- Work — light, fragile, irreplaceable. It should be crated, or it should travel with you.
Work in progress is the real decision
Finished work can be packed properly. Half-finished work frequently cannot be moved at all without damage, and pretending otherwise on the morning helps nobody.
Decide before the day which pieces are stable enough to travel, which need crating, and which should simply not go in a van. That conversation is much easier at a survey than it is with the van outside.
What we are not allowed to carry
Solvents, resins, thinners, spirits, gas bottles and anything else flammable or hazardous cannot go in the van. This is not a preference and it is not negotiable.
It catches studios out more than any other kind of move, so it is worth knowing well before the day, when there is still time to use them up or make other arrangements.
Load for the restart, not for the van
The cost of a studio move is not the day. It is the time you cannot work afterwards. So the load is planned backwards from what you need to start working again — the bench, the essential tools, the current job — and those come off first.
Studio buildings are awkward buildings
Old industrial units, converted shops, upper floors over a business, shared blocks with a single goods door and no lift. Access is usually the constraint rather than the volume, and it frequently dictates when we can work as well as how.
If you share a building, tell the others. A goods door blocked by somebody else’s delivery is the most avoidable delay there is.