Bonus room over the garage: getting the furniture back down

The short answer

There is no extra charge for the bonus room. A two-piece sectional is $141 whether it is in the front living room or up the stair over the garage. A three-piece is $185. The old heavy TV up there is $73 for anything 65 inches and over.

If the whole room is going, it is usually a half truck at $431 or three-quarters at $587.

The reason people ask is that they have already tried to get something down that stair themselves.

Why Charlotte has so many of these rooms

The finished room over the garage is close to universal in this metro's 1990s-onward housing. Highland Creek, Steele Creek, Providence, the Matthews and Mint Hill subdivisions, and essentially everything newer out in Waxhaw, Weddington, Indian Trail and Fort Mill.

It exists because of what Charlotte houses do not have. The Piedmont's red clay meant slab and crawlspace foundations rather than basements, so there was no rec room downstairs. Builders put it over the garage instead, where the square footage was already framed.

What it becomes: a media room, a playroom, a teenager's room, a home office, a home gym, and — in a surprising number of houses — the room with the pool table in it.

The stair is the whole problem

Bonus room stairs in this region share a set of traits that make them uniquely bad for furniture:

• They are narrow. Often the minimum the builder could get away with, because the stair eats saleable floor area.
• They turn at the top. A landing with a ninety-degree turn, or winders, right where a sofa needs length.
• They are enclosed. Walls on both sides for most of the run, so nothing can be angled out over a railing.
• They sometimes start in the garage or a rear hallway rather than the main house, which makes the route out longer, not shorter.

The other half of the problem is history. Large pieces frequently went up during construction or on move-in day, when the drywall was unfinished or the handrail was not in yet, or they went up in more pieces than they will come down in.

What comes out of one

A standard media-room clearout: sectional at $141, the old big TV at $73, the entertainment center at $96 and a recliner at $98. $141 + $73 + $96 + $98 = $408.

The pool table upstairs

It happens constantly here, and for a logical reason — with no basement, the bonus room is the only space in a Charlotte house big enough for one.

A pool table is $603, and that price includes what it actually takes: the slate comes off in sections, the rails come off, the frame comes apart, and the pieces come down the stair one at a time. Slate is heavy and brittle, and a bonus-room stair with a turn is not somewhere to improvise. It is a genuinely two-to-three-person job and it is not a thing to attempt with friends.

The same logic applies to the other oversized bonus-room occupants: a home gym or multi-station at $241, a treadmill at $115.

How the crew gets it down

Disassembly in the room, not in the stairwell. Sectionals separate at the connectors; cushions and legs come off; if a sofa genuinely will not make the turn, the frame is cut down in the room rather than forced against the drywall.

This matters in Charlotte houses specifically, because the walls are drywall over stud with no plaster and the stair is enclosed on both sides. Forcing something around the turn takes a chunk out of the corner bead, and that is a repair you will notice for the rest of the time you own the house.

None of the breakdown work is billed separately. It is inside the item price.

Why people finally clear it

• Converting it to an office. The most common trigger now. The media furniture has to go before the desk arrives.
• The kids have gone. The playroom stage ends and the room is full of furniture chosen for nine-year-olds.
• Selling. A bonus room staged as a bonus room shows a house as bigger. A bonus room full of old furniture shows it as a storage attic.
• Temperature. A room over an uninsulated garage is the hottest room in a Charlotte house in August and the coldest in January, so the furniture up there ages faster than furniture anywhere else in the house — particularly anything upholstered, in this humidity.

Booking it

Tell us what is up there and mention that it is a bonus room, so the crew arrives with two people and the right tools rather than discovering the stair on the day. The price shows before you book and does not change on arrival.

Carry-down is included at every floor, the breakdown is included, and the room gets swept before the crew leaves. We work across the metro — Highland Creek, Steele Creek, Providence, Ballantyne, Matthews, Mint Hill, Huntersville, Cornelius, Waxhaw, Weddington, Indian Trail and Fort Mill.

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