House clearance in Cobham is rarely one tidy job with a beginning and an end. It is a bedroom this week, a garage in a fortnight, then the loft once somebody finally gets the hatch open. We have been doing this since 2007, and KT11 behaves much the same as it always has: houses that turn over slowly, then all at once, and a lot of work that arrives in pieces rather than in one go.
The clearance I keep coming back to when people ask what we actually do all day was a trade one. A plumbing contractor started booking us in whenever one of his jobs left behind more than his own van would carry. It was never a single clearance — it was a run of them. A call, a collection, then nothing for a fortnight, then another call. Different properties each time, some empty and being worked on, some still lived in with the family stepping round us. The loads were not the same size twice: one was small enough for two of the crew and a short slot in the diary, another swallowed a whole morning.
Trade work is like that: it is a relationship rather than a job, and it is measured in how little has to be said. After the last of them he wrote back, and that was the whole message: "I have made payment".
That is a trade account, and trade accounts are easy. Most of our work is not that. Most of it is a family, a solicitor or an executor. A house that has to be empty by a date somebody else set.
Second visits, and why Cobham produces so many of them
A family sells after twenty-odd years, the buyers strip a bedroom. A fortnight later the loft gets opened and there is another van's worth standing in the hall. So we come back. On a repeat booking the team confirm the load size on the day, once they can see the whole lot in one place. A bed frame in two halves takes up less room than people expect and four under-bed drawers take up more.
We do not ask anyone to bag or box anything beforehand. Cupboards, wardrobes, drawers, the shelf above the boiler — the crew empty them. Carpets and underlay come up if you want them up, and stay put if you do not. If there are things staying in the house, say so at the start and the crew will mark them off before anything is lifted; it is far easier than trying to remember at eleven o'clock which of the two sideboards was the one to leave.
The kinds of house clearance in Cobham we are booked for
Probate house clearance in Cobham
A good share of our Cobham clearances are probate. Somebody has died, the house has to be emptied before it can be marketed or handed back. The person organising it is often not in Surrey at all. That is normal work for us and it is the reason that side of things runs the way it does: we can work from a key left with a neighbour, an agent or a solicitor's office, we photograph the property before and after for our own records and send those photographs on. Nobody has to stand in a cold hallway watching a van get loaded.
On the paperwork side, we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. You do not have to pay for it yourself and claim it back later, and payment can come out of the estate in the ordinary way. There is no deposit. The estimate is free and does not commit you to anything. If two executors need to see the same paperwork, we will send it to both.
Probate clearances also tend to be the ones where something turns up that nobody expected: documents, war medals, a box of photographs. Anything of that sort is put aside and flagged, not loaded.
Flat clearance in KT11 and around it
A flat clearance is a different animal from a house. The volume is smaller and the logistics are worse. A shared entrance, a lift that may or may not be big enough for a wardrobe, a bin store that is not ours to use, and neighbours who are entitled to get past. Cobham has flats above the High Street shops, purpose-built blocks off the main roads. Converted first floors in older houses where the stairs turn twice. We size the job on the stair, not on the floor plan. Where there is a lift and somewhere to stand the van, a two-bedroom flat clearance is comfortably a single day.
Garage and loft clearance in Cobham
Garage and loft clearance is the other half of the work, and often the half that is left until last. A detached garage that has not been opened since a hedge grew across the door. A loft with boards down the middle and thirty years of Christmas decorations, suitcases and paint tins either side. Lofts are slow — everything comes down a ladder by hand, one item at a time. We allow for that rather than pretending it takes an hour. If the loft has old insulation disturbed, or the garage roof looks like the corrugated sheeting from the 1960s and 1970s, tell us before the day: that changes what can and cannot be handled.
End of tenancy clearance for landlords and agents
Managing agents book us for tenanted properties across KT11, usually where a tenant has gone and left furniture, or where a property has to be back to bare rooms before a check-out. The awkward part there is almost never the work. It is getting hold of somebody with a key at the right hour. Give us a window and an agent's contact and we will work round it.
The patch: KT11 and the roads out of it
Cobham and Stoke d'Abernon sit in KT11, in the Elmbridge district of Surrey. That is the middle of a run we drive most weeks. Oxshott and Leatherhead in KT22 are ten minutes east and south. Claygate is KT10, and there is house clearance in Esher on the same postcode and often the same day. House clearance in Walton-on-Thames covers KT12 just north of us, house clearance in Weybridge takes KT13 to the west, and house clearance in Thames Ditton sits in KT7 with Long Ditton beside it. East and West Molesey are KT8. All of them Elmbridge, all of them on the same day's diary as often as not. Surbiton in KT6 is just over the borough line into Kingston, and we are in both constantly.
Within Cobham itself the crews know Downside, Cobham Tilt, the Fairmile, Church Cobham and Street Cobham. Stoke d'Abernon down by the river. They are not interchangeable: the Tilt and Downside are lanes and gravel, the streets behind the High Street are tight. The Fairmile is long drives and gateposts.
Cobham & Stoke d'Abernon station is the useful landmark for anyone directing us in: it is a good mile and a half out of the village, down in Stoke d'Abernon, on the Guildford line from Waterloo through Surbiton. If you are meeting us with a key and coming down by train, that is the one. Not Cobham High Street, which is a bus ride from the platform. Plenty of our clearance instructions come from people who have made exactly that mistake once.
Surrey County Council runs the household recycling centres locally, and Elmbridge collects at the kerbside. But a full house does not fit through a civic amenity site, and a lot of what comes out of a probate property is not accepted there anyway. That is the gap we fill.
Getting a van up the drive
Access shapes the day more than the volume does. Around the Fairmile and out towards Downside and the Tilt you get long gravel drives, gateposts set at the width of a 1970s estate car. Overhanging limes that a Luton roof does not agree with. We would rather know in advance. If the van has to sit on the road and the crew walk the length of a drive with every mattress, that is time. We would sooner plan for it than discover it at eight in the morning.
In the older terraces and the flats off the High Street it is the opposite problem: no drive at all, a loading restriction. A residents' bay we are not entitled to. Where a permit or a suspension is needed, the council wants notice. Usually a couple of weeks — and it has to be arranged by whoever owns or is selling the property. We cannot apply on your behalf. We will tell you plainly if we think you need one.
The order of the day is usually the same. Van in, walk-round with whoever is there, agree what stays, then work top down. Loft, bedrooms, ground floor, garage and shed last, because the garage is where the awkward items live and you want the van packed properly by then.
What we cannot put in a mixed load
Tins of paint, thinners, bottled gas, car batteries, asbestos sheeting from an old garage roof. None of that can travel with household waste, and a licensed tip will not take it that way. Tell us and we will either arrange a separate route or point you at the right disposal site. Fridges and freezers we can take, but they go separately. The gas has to be drawn off under permit and they cannot be tipped in with the rest.
Upholstery is the one that catches people out. Sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs and footstools fall under the POPs rules because of the flame retardants in the foam, and by regulation they cannot be crushed in with general waste. They are kept apart and sent for incineration at a permitted facility. Tell us how many soft seats there are when you ring and it will be planned for from the start.
Houses that are worse than they look
Rooms you cannot get the door open on. Thirty years of newspapers. A garage packed to the rafters and a path worn through the middle of it. Nobody on the crew comments and nobody photographs anything except the standard before-and-after walk-round we do for our own records. If the contents are verminous, or a specialist clean is needed after we have gone, that is a different service and a different team. Say so on the phone and we will book the right one rather than turning up with the wrong kit.
Where it ends up
Furniture that is still usable we try to pass on locally. A reuse project or a charity shop, rather than a skip. What is left goes to a permitted transfer station where it is weighed, sorted and recorded, and we keep the paperwork. If you need a copy of the waste transfer note for the estate file, ask and it will be sent. Abacus is registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, CBDU419679, and carries public liability insurance. Ask for either and we will send them over.
Common questions about house clearance in Cobham
Do you handle probate house clearance in Cobham, and who do you invoice? Yes. Probate work is a large part of what we do here. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, so nobody has to settle it personally and reclaim it afterwards. Payment can come from the estate. There is no deposit.
How do I find out what a clearance will come to? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe what is there, or send photographs through the form on this page. You will get a figure back. For a big house we will come and look first.
Do I need to empty the cupboards or bag anything up first? No. Cupboards, wardrobes, drawers and the loft are the crew's job. Just tell us at the walk-round what is staying.
Can you take a fridge, a sofa and old paint tins in the same load? The sofa and the fridge yes. They are handled separately from the general load under the POPs and refrigerant rules. Paint, thinners and gas bottles cannot travel in a mixed load at all. We will tell you where those go.
Do you do part clearances, or only whole houses? Both. A single room, a flat clearance, a garage and loft clearance, or the whole property from the loft down. Plenty of our Cobham work is one room and a shed.
Can you work if nobody can be there? Yes. We work from keys left with agents, solicitors and neighbours all the time. The before-and-after photographs go over by email the same evening.
If you want a figure for a house, a flat, a garage or one Friday morning's worth of what the last owner left behind, ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe what is there, or send photographs through the form on this page. House clearance in Cobham is what we are in KT11 for most weeks of the year, and the estimate costs you nothing.
