What normally comes apart
Beds and bunk beds, dining tables, desks, sectionals, wall units and shelving, headboards, large mirrors off their dressers, and treadmills and home gyms. Some of it comes apart because it will not clear a stairwell turn, and some because it travels far better flat than assembled.
A few things should come apart even when they would technically fit. Glass tabletops, marble and stone tops, and tall wall units are all safer separated and wrapped individually than carried whole with the weight in the wrong place.
Hardware discipline
This is where most reassembly goes wrong. Every piece's bolts, cam locks, brackets, allen keys and bed rail pins get bagged and taped to the piece they came off, not thrown into one communal box that then rides on a different truck.
If you took something apart yourself weeks ago, find the hardware before move day. A bed frame with no rail bolts is a bed frame nobody can sleep on, and hardware for older or discontinued furniture is not something you can pick up on a Sunday.
Flat-pack and older furniture, honestly
Ready-to-assemble furniture is built to go together once. Particle board with cam locks loses grip every time it is taken apart, and a tall wardrobe or a cheap bookcase can come out of a second disassembly noticeably wobblier than it went in. We will tell you when a piece is a poor candidate for the trip so you can decide whether it is worth moving at all.
Older solid wood furniture has the opposite problem. It comes apart fine but the joints may already be loose, so it gets handled and reassembled with that in mind.
Putting it back where it goes
Reassembly happens in the room you want the piece in, not in the hallway, so nothing has to be carried assembled a second time. Say where things are going before the unload starts. Tall pieces that were anchored to a wall at the old place should be anchored again at the new one, which is worth arranging separately if there are children in the house.
