Existing Furniture Audit Preparation Checklist

Walk each room and list every piece of furniture, including the ones you no longer notice such as the hall bench, the bedside tables and the shelving under the stairs.

Inventories written from memory almost always miss the small pieces, and those are usually the ones left homeless once the new layout is drawn.

Note for each piece whether it stays in this room, moves to another room, goes into storage or leaves the household altogether.

A designer needs the destination as much as the item, because a piece moving rooms becomes a constraint on two spaces rather than one.

Record which pieces are used every day and which are used occasionally, because a room planned around unused furniture gives its most useful positions to the wrong things.

Frequency of use is the quickest way to decide which pieces earn a prime position and which can be relegated or released.

List built-in furniture separately from free-standing furniture, and note anything you believe is fixed to a wall or to the floor.

Whether a built-in piece can be removed, and what sits behind it, is a question for a qualified professional rather than something to establish by pulling it away.

Note pieces that belong to someone else, such as a family member, a tenant or a rented item, and record who has the say over what happens to them.

Ownership questions surface at the worst possible moment, usually on the morning the room is being cleared.

Write down anything that arrived flat-packed and has been assembled in place, since some pieces do not survive being taken apart a second time.

Whether a piece can be dismantled and rebuilt often decides whether it can move rooms at all, and it is worth knowing before the layout is drawn.

Measure the width, depth and height of every significant piece and keep the figures in one list rather than on scattered notes and photographs.

A single list is what a designer can actually use; measurements spread across messages and photographs will simply be taken again.

Note the depth a piece needs when it is in use rather than at rest, such as a dining chair pushed back from the table or a drawer pulled fully open.

Layouts fail on the in-use dimension far more often than on the resting footprint, and the owner is the person most likely to notice it.

Record which way each cabinet door and drawer opens, and whether you believe the hinge side could be changed if the layout required it.

Ask the manufacturer or a furniture specialist whether a hinge side can be swapped, rather than assuming it before a layout depends on the answer.

Measure the pieces that have to sit under something, such as a desk beneath a window sill or a chest under a sloping ceiling, including the obstruction above them.

The height available above a piece is the constraint that gets forgotten, because it is not a property of the furniture at all.

Note anything you could not move with one other person, described honestly rather than optimistically, and say where it currently stands.

If a heavy piece is going upstairs or onto a floor you are unsure about, ask a qualified professional about the floor before the position is planned.

Record whether a piece is longer than it looks when carried at an angle, which applies to sofas, headboards, mirrors, ladders and tall shelving units.

The diagonal is what has to pass a turn, and it is the measurement most often missing from an otherwise careful inventory.

Describe the condition of each piece in ordinary words: loose joints, sticking drawers, worn arms, faded fabric, water marks, sun bleaching along one side.

Written symptoms let a specialist say what is worth repairing, whereas a general note saying tired tells them nothing at all.

Note which pieces you would keep if they were reupholstered or refinished, and which you would replace regardless of what a specialist said.

Separating these two groups prevents effort being spent assessing pieces you had already decided against.

Check whether any upholstered piece still has its labels attached and photograph them, without interpreting what the wording means.

Furniture labelling can relate to safety requirements that vary by location, so ask a supplier or the relevant local authority rather than drawing your own conclusion.

Record any piece with a persistent smell, a stain or signs of damp, and note where in the property it has been standing.

If furniture shows signs of damp or mould, ask a qualified professional to look at the room as well, rather than treating the piece in isolation.

Note anything that has been repaired before and roughly how, since an earlier repair changes what a specialist is able to do next.

Previous repairs are frequently invisible in a photograph and decisive in person, so they belong in the written record.

Write down which pieces have parts missing, such as shelves, keys, fixings, feet or a glass top, and whether replacements are still obtainable.

A missing part can quietly turn a keeper into a leaver, and it is better to find that out before the layout is built around it.

List the pieces that are staying no matter what, and say why, so a designer treats them as a given rather than as something to argue you out of.

Designers work happily around a stated constraint and badly around one that only emerges when a proposal is rejected.

Note the pieces that carry a family history and record who in the household would object if they quietly disappeared from the plan.

Sentimental pieces removed by implication rather than by decision are one of the most common causes of late disagreement in an interior project.

Record whether each keeper has to be visible and in use, or whether storing it somewhere would be an acceptable outcome.

The difference between must be seen and must be kept opens up options that would otherwise be ruled out immediately.

Write down which pieces you have outgrown but keep out of habit, and give yourself permission to say so in the brief rather than to the removals van.

Naming these honestly usually frees up the most useful space in the room, and nobody else can name them for you.

Identify anything the household genuinely disagrees about and record the disagreement, rather than resolving it silently while writing the inventory.

An unresolved question stated openly is manageable; one settled by whoever held the pen tends to resurface at the worst point.

Note pieces made for a particular room, alcove or opening in this property, which may not work anywhere else in the house.

Furniture that fits one recess exactly is effectively part of the building, and it constrains what can be done to that recess.

Measure the narrowest point on the route into each room, including the front door, any porch, the turn in the hall and the doorway itself.

The route is only as wide as its tightest point, and that point is rarely the door everyone assumes it to be.

Note the stair width, the turn at any half landing and how much space there is above the stairs, since a turn defeats more deliveries than a doorway does.

The half landing is where large pieces stop, and it is the one measurement almost never taken before an order is placed.

Record whether furniture has ever been brought in through a window here, and treat that as a question for others rather than as a plan of your own.

Removing a window, using a hoist or lifting through an opening is work for qualified professionals and may need permission, so confirm locally before relying on it.

Check whether internal doors can be lifted off their hinges, and note where handles, architraves or a radiator reduce the opening in practice.

A measured doorway and a usable doorway are different things once the ironmongery and the radiator beside it are taken into account.

Note any lift, communal corridor or shared entrance on the route, and record the restrictions you already know apply to using it.

Shared access in a flat or a managed building is usually governed by the lease or the building manager, so confirm what is permitted before arranging a move.

Write down the parking and unloading situation outside, including how far it is to the door and any restriction you are already aware of.

Delivery arrangements are agreed on the assumption that a vehicle can stop nearby, which is not true at a great many addresses.

Decide where each piece goes while work happens and be specific, rather than assuming the garage or the spare room will absorb everything.

Storage assumptions collapse the moment the first room is cleared, and the pieces that suffer are usually the ones you cared about most.

Note which pieces cannot go into an unheated or damp space, including anything veneered, solid timber, upholstered or leather.

Ask a furniture specialist how a particular material tolerates storage conditions, rather than assuming a garage or a loft will be acceptable.

Agree in writing who moves, wraps and protects the furniture, and who carries responsibility if a piece is damaged while it is being handled.

Responsibility for furniture during the works is among the most commonly assumed and least commonly written down arrangements on an interior project.

Record which pieces have to stay in use throughout, such as a bed, a wardrobe, or the table the household eats at.

Furniture that cannot be packed away shapes the order in which rooms are worked on, so it belongs in the conversation early.

Note anything fragile enough that it should be taken out of the room entirely before trades arrive, rather than covered over where it stands.

Covering is protection against dust, not against ladders and boards, and the distinction is worth making item by item.

Ask what protection the trades expect to provide and what they expect you to provide, and write the answer down before anybody starts.

Both sides usually assume the other is bringing the sheeting, and the discovery is made after the furniture is already dusty.

Decide what is leaving before the layout is drawn, since planning around pieces you intend to release makes the whole exercise misleading.

Every position given to a piece that later goes is a position that has to be reconsidered, usually after something has been ordered.

Note which items are being given away, sold, recycled or disposed of, and record who is arranging each of those routes.

Naming the responsible person is what turns a good intention into something that actually happens before the trades arrive.

Check what your local authority accepts for bulky household items and what it will not take, before committing to a disposal route.

Disposal routes for bulky and upholstered items vary by location, so confirm what applies with your local authority rather than assuming.

Record the pieces you are still unsure about and set a point at which the decision must be made, rather than carrying the uncertainty into the layout.

Undecided furniture behaves like a keeper in every drawing, which is exactly the outcome you were trying to avoid.

Write down anything you are keeping only because getting rid of it seems difficult, and treat that as a separate problem from the design.

Separating the two stops a disposal difficulty from silently becoming a design constraint on the most useful wall in the room.

Photograph each piece plainly against a clear background, and photograph it in place as well so its scale within the room is obvious.

Two views answer most of the questions a designer would otherwise have to come back and ask about.

Label the photographs with the same reference you used in the written list, so nothing has to be matched up later by description alone.

Descriptions such as the small blue chair stop working the moment there are two of them, and there usually are.

Include a photograph of any maker mark, stamp or label, without drawing conclusions about the age, the origin or the worth of the piece.

Dating, attributing or valuing furniture is work for a suitably qualified specialist, who should see the piece rather than a photograph of the mark.

Bring the inventory to the first design meeting as one document, rather than describing pieces from memory while somebody takes notes.

A meeting spent reconstructing an inventory is a meeting not spent on the design you came to discuss.

Note which measurements you took roughly yourself and which came from a supplier, so nobody treats an owner estimate as a confirmed figure.

Owners measure well enough for early planning, but a designer needs to know which figures must be checked before anything is ordered.

Keep the inventory updated as decisions change, and note which version is the current one so people are not working from an old copy.

Furniture decisions change more than any other part of an interior brief, and an out-of-date inventory is worse than none.