Garage Clearance in Ballsbridge: Mews Garages and Coach Houses, for Executors and Families

The last building on the list

When a period house in Ballsbridge passes into an estate, the family starts with the rooms. The drawing room, the bedrooms and the kitchen are sorted over weeks. The garage is left until last, and in a house of this kind the garage is rarely a small job. It is a mews building or an old coach house at the end of a long garden, with its doors on a lane, and it has been the household's store for longer than anyone can say.

This guide is for the executor or family member who has to deal with it. It is about the garage in particular: what has to be settled before it is touched, how we get to it, what is kept back and what the sale needs. For the house itself, our guide to clearing a period home in Dublin 4 covers the floors, the stairs and the street.

PropertyClearance.ie is based in Athy, Co. Kildare, and clears homes across Dublin 4; see our house clearance in Ballsbridge page and our garage clearance service, or call 083 090 4545. We are a clearance company and nothing here is legal advice. Questions about the estate are for the executor and the solicitor.

Four questions to settle before anything leaves

A garage holds things that a sitting room does not, and some of them are not ours to take or yours to give away without a word to the solicitor first.

• Is there a vehicle? A car, a motorcycle, a trailer or a boat is an asset of the estate, and it is not something a clearance takes. Ask the solicitor how it is to be dealt with. It needs to be moved before the day, or we clear around it.
• Does anything need to be valued? Period houses often keep good things in the garage: furniture moved out of the house, pictures, garden ornaments, a full set of tools. If the estate needs a valuation, it happens before the clearance, and those pieces stay where they are until the valuer has been.
• Is all of it the estate's? A mews may have been lent to a neighbour or let on its own. Things stored for someone else go back to them, not into a truck.
• What belongs to the building? Original doors, ironwork and fittings stay. If the house is a protected structure, ask before anything fixed is removed from the building at the end of its garden.

We ask who is instructing us and take our list from that one person.

Getting to a mews garage

Many of the older terraces and squares of Dublin 4 have lanes behind them, and their garages are reached from the lane and not from the street. That decides how the job is done.

1. Photograph the lane from the road end, at its narrowest point and outside your own doors. A truck needs width, and room to leave again.
2. Tell us about bollards, gates or a chain, and who holds the key.
3. Say who else uses it. A shared lane cannot be blocked for a morning, so we load in short runs and move for anyone who needs to pass.
4. If the truck cannot go down, it stands at the mouth of the lane and we carry or use trolleys. The quote allows for that from the start.

Loading from the lane is nearly always better than carrying through the garden and the house. It keeps a dusty load away from the hall and the front steps, and it leaves the kerb at the front, where parking is by permit or pay-and-display, free for the neighbours.

Who needs what from the garage

Several people have an interest in the building before it can be sold, and each wants something slightly different:

What is set aside as we work

A garage is not where anyone expects to find papers, which is why they are found there. A drawer in a workbench, a biscuit tin on a shelf and the glovebox of a car that has not moved in years are all places where documents turn up.

These are put to one side as they turn up, in the place you have chosen:

• Vehicle registration papers, service books and insurance documents
• Keys of every kind, labelled with where they were found
• Deeds, maps, plans and anything about the property or the lane
• Receipts and manuals for machinery or equipment that may be sold
• Photographs, letters and personal papers
• Anything on the family's own list

Boxes, drawers and tins are opened and checked by hand, not lifted blind. Everything set aside is handed over with the keys.

What we clear, and what we cannot

Once the questions above are answered, the clearance itself is straightforward. Our crew carries out stored furniture, tools, benches and shelving, garden machinery and furniture, bicycles, timber, tiles, old doors, fridges and freezers, and the boxes nobody has opened in decades. Heavy pieces are handled with trolleys and straps, and appliances go for proper electrical recycling. The floor is swept at the end.

We cannot take paint, solvents, oils, fuel, chemicals, batteries or gas cylinders. They are stood together and you are told where they are, so they can go to a civic amenity site or back to a supplier. A lawnmower or other machine can go once the fuel is emptied from it.

We do not handle asbestos or clinical waste. Old lane garages often have a roof of corrugated cement sheeting. Left undisturbed it does not stop us emptying the building, but it may contain asbestos, and removing it is work for a specialist contractor.

Lofts, lean-tos and the yard

A coach house is seldom one room. Photograph all of it, so the price covers the whole building and not only the part you can see from the doors.

The loft. Many have an upper floor reached by a ladder or a steep stair, and it is often as full as the ground floor. We check that the boards are sound before anyone stands on them.

Lean-tos and stores. A fuel store, a potting shed or a covered passage beside the garage. See shed clearance.

The yard and the garden. Pots, garden furniture, old fencing and whatever is stacked against the back wall. See garden clearance.

What PropertyClearance.ie does on a job like this

For an estate in Ballsbridge, the garage is usually one part of a larger instruction. These are the services that come together, under one fixed price where you want them to:

• Garage clearance: mews garages, coach houses, lock-ups and workshops emptied and swept.
• House clearance: the rooms of the main house, floor by floor.
• Bereavement clearance: the same work at the family's pace and in step with the solicitor.
• Attic clearance and shed clearance: the other places a long-held house stores things.
• Furniture removal: for single large pieces once the family has chosen.

We provide a written quote beforehand and, on request, dated photographs of the empty building and written confirmation of clearance for the estate file. Reusable furniture and tools go to reuse where possible, metals and electrical items are recycled, and the rest goes to authorised facilities. PropertyClearance.ie is operated by Krystal Klean Express Limited, an authorised waste carrier under Waste Collection Permit No. NWCPO-25-13287-01, and is fully insured. We work Monday to Saturday, 8am to 5pm.

Ballsbridge, Donnybrook, Sandymount and the rest of Dublin 4

The same houses and the same lanes run across the district, and we clear garages and mews buildings in Donnybrook and Sandymount as well as Ballsbridge. If the garage belongs to a house that is being let or sold by its owner, our Donnybrook guide to clearing a garage before a letting or a sale is the one to read. For the attic of the same house, see attic clearance in Ballsbridge.