AIBU - Complain to housing developer that sofa doesn't fit in our house?

[binkyblinky]

Oh wise women of mums net, I need some advice please!

We recently moved into a new home on a brand-new development. It is a three story townhouse and the lounge is on the middle floor.

On moving in day we discovered that our sofa would not fit up the stairs and into the lounge. It is not a large sofa it is a modular sofa, the end units went up fine but the middle section which is a corner unit would not fit. The staircase is so narrow that we had to take apart the tops of our single Ottoman beds to get them up the stairs as well. This is in a large family home.

There are four identical homes to ours on the estate and every other person in those homes has had the same issue, with our neighbours sitting on beanbags for three months. The beanbag neighbours have had three sofa deliveries, all unsuccessful at getting up the stairs.

I feel angry that I had to throw away part of my sofa. The show home has a massive Corner unit in it. We were not advised when we moved in that staircases was so narrow and that we would have trouble fitting furniture up them.

If we were to team up and complain to the housing developer about the poor design, and that four families have been left with no seating, Would we get anywhere? Is there anything that we could do to ask for monetary compensation to buy sofas that you assemble at home? The other three families currently have their sofas in their kitchens while they try to solve this problem. It's ridiculous, being sold a £400,000 house And not being advised of this issue.

I can't see how they should say it is our fault, when they show home clearly written misrepresents the size of the furniture we required. Wisdom needed, thank you

I think unfortunately this is part of the difficulty of having an upstairs living room. I live in an upper-storey maisonette and would definitely have struggled to get a big boxy sofa upstairs (happily it gave me an excuse to buy an Ercol studio couch), but it's not the sort of thing you think about until you have to think about it, iyswim.

I've always thought the design of modern townhouses was a bit odd generally - you tend to have the living areas in the middle floor and then some poor orphan bedroom marooned downstairs behind the garage. (She says, with an appointment to view one lined up for later in the week...)

@Whymustyoubringinthebirds

My understanding is that show homes have smaller made furniture in them because new build rooms tend to be smaller

True!

Years ago, my DM and I went to look at a show home near her house, just for a snoop. We were in one of the "double" bedrooms and couldn't work out what was odd about it, it seemed small, but it had a double bed in it.

DM happened to have a tape measure in her bag, so we measured the bed. It was only 4', rather than the usual 4'6", and the CFs even had under-sized pillows on it to make it look like a proper double! If you'd put 2 standard pillows on that bed, they'd have hung over the sides.

The house was far smaller than DM's 5-year old council house.

I think we'll see new-builds getting ever smaller as developers try and shoe-horn ever more houses into sites. My 1930s semi seems massive compared to new 2-bed houses.

I t

New builds these days are absolute shite (I say this as the owner of a 2.5 year old new build who is awaiting their 4th front door and is nearing the point of taking the builder to court over the shit job they have done)!

I heard a story about a couple who found the toilet in their new build wouldn't flush properly. It turned out that the soil pipe sloped up instead of down!

I remember 30 years ago looking at a new build three bedroom house and realising that we would struggle to get the furniture from our one bedroom flat in. If they've got smaller since then, they must be pretty unlivable in.

OP, I'm afraid this sounds like a case of caveat emptor. But it won't hurt to ask the developer, maybe with a few hints about taking this to a programme like Watchdog.

I have a friend who decorated shoe homes . The furniture is never full size it is always made to fit the rooms and make them look bigger. I bet if you measure the sofa in the show home you will find it’s not full size. If it is you will find it can be taken apart into more pieces than a commercial one .

Show homes

We lived in Holland for a while when I was a nipper.
The tall narrow houses were ridiculous to get furniture in or out, the houses all had massive lintels at the top to hoist furniture through windows it was brill.

I might complain about my hundred or so year old farmhouse, it’s awful for getting big furniture in. I wonder if I would get compensation?

Everyone who I know that lives in townhouses has had to have furniture in through the window.

I think the issue here is it's a town house with upstairs living, not that it's a new build. I grew up in a large Edwardian town house but there's no way you'd get a modern day corner sofa onto the first floor despite it splitting in two.

Yep, I’ve had two friends buy townhouses and have to do this. It’s part of the reason I’d never consider buying one. But I probably wouldn’t even have considered the issue if I hadn’t known people it had happened to, you don’t think of this being a problem with a modern house!

I used to know someone who lived in a 60s built townhouse. It had a wide central stairwell, with a big half-landing on each flight, and a wide hallway. The understairs space was big enough to take a washing machine and tumble drier side by side.

You could easily get big furniture up and down those stairs and a neighbour had a piano in the first floor living room. It also had loads of storage, big deep cupboards on each landing, and a really well-designed kitchen diner on the ground floor, with room for a table big enough to seat 8, a sideboard and a dresser.

The design had won loads of awards, and the estate was built by Merton Council.

If we were to team up and complain to the housing developer about the poor design, and that four families have been left with no seating, Would we get anywhere?

Caveat emptor A lot of new builds are tiny, and they have special smaller furniture made so people who are inexperienced at estimating space/buying a house get fooled.

It's why I'd never buy a new build.

You should have realised, surely when making a very substantial financial decision, you look at measurements?

Same issue here, we got a corner sofa from IKEA.
Had two sofas that didn't fit before that.
I believe the sofa we have is the nockeby..

I think we'll see new-builds getting ever smaller as developers try and shoe-horn ever more houses into sites.

Planning authorities set minimum densities (number of dwellings per hectare) to meet housing targets.

Sorry but I think the developers will just laugh at you! Its not really their fault is it? You looked at a house & bought that house. How are they responsible for advising what sort of furniture you can get in there? Presumably you measured & considered these things before spending 400 grand?!
We live in a normal 2 storey house & had to take our lounge window out in order to get our sofa in because it's a huge corner one & there's quite a tight 'return' around the doorway from the hall - it was the first thing we said to each other when we looked at the room!

@hopeishere

We had this. Luckily the developer was still on site so they somehow popped the window out and used a cherrypicker to put it in the window. Flipping sofa workshop just abandoned it in the hall!!

This. When I was in Paris I was amazed to see this happening in apartments. Including a grand piano. Go back to show home, measure it and if it’s normal size, ask how the hell they got it in. (I’m betting before the windows were installed).

We lived in a similar townhouse, central curved staircase completely enclosed.
Couldn't get the sofa bed upstairs and we had 2 new sofas on order!
King size divan base (in 2 pieces) also wouldnt fit.

Asked the neighbours for advice and tbey said previous owner had removed front window to remove his large furniture.
So we did that for bed but Sofa bed was too heavy.

Amazingly, the new sofa delivery men not only got them.upstairs, they also managed the old sofa bed too and we paid them extra for doing that.

When we moved out, we warned the new owners and coordinated moving large stuff, they moved in a Couple of large things the day before after we got our stuff out the window

It doesn't sound like it will help in this situations, but sometimes it's worth getting professional furniture removers to get furniture in. They know all the tricks and if they can't get it up the stairs, no-one will!

My DPs had some furniture delivered recently from a large chain furniture store and their delivery guys couldn't get the angles right to get it in to the room it was intended for. DF knows someone that works for a removal company and he popped round and singlehandedly maneuvered a very heavy, big, piece of furniture in to position in about 60 seconds!

I know of a few people that have had furniture issues with a townhouse and either going through the window or removing the bannisters is the most common way of getting around it. One homebuilder that my friend bought from knew how big an issue it was and actually installed removable bannisters from the get go!

Haven't RTFT, but what about a double/kingsize bed? How did you get that up the stairs?

Go through the window. That's what I've done in the past moving into townhouse flats.

Yep. This is standard with town houses with a 1st floor lounge.

Our (ancient) house has a "coffin drop" - the entire landing floor lifts up on its oak beams and can be removed, revealing a hole big enough to fit a huge wardrobe or double bed. We only found this out by chance - the previous owners had no idea about it and only had furniture upstairs that they were able to dismantle completely.

@TurkeyTrot most beds dismantle enough to get upstairs and mattresses bend! Sofas are bulkier than beds, usually, especially corner sofas.

The difficulty of getting furniture up the stairs in a townhouse has been going on for years! It’s not just one developer. You have to have a sofa where the back comes off in pieces so always check this before moving into this type of house otherwise you’ll need to buy a new sofa.

We have lived in two older houses - probably 18th century - where we have had to remove windows to get bedroom furniture in, I remember having a party to get help with DS1's wardrobe, very unsafe as we were all totally pissed and hauling on the rope. Nothing big will go through the front door of our present 30 year old house, we have to remove a fence panel and take it in through the back french windows. I think the rule with buying a house is Caveat Emptor, it is something you need t consider when viewing.

Also a council/social housing issue. My old flat was built in 1946 and there was no way to get furniture in if the smallest plane was greater than 2'9" wide. Then the council 'improved' the doors, which reduced the front door aperture to 2'6" and only a 90 degree opening with a 3 inch thick door, so standard appliances had to be unpacked and tipped over the raised threshholds.

As the windows were only 34 inches across, even people on the ground floor didn't have a hope of getting furniture in or out in one piece.

The woman downstairs, trapped inside in bed for the last nine years of her life (aged 50, had MS) as she couldn't have a powerchair because the hallway was too narrow - but wasn't eligible for a transfer because, despite the 7 steps to the front door, it was 'a ground floor flat' suffered as a result of this, as she also couldn't have a hospital bed brought in.

binkyblinky
beanbag neighbours