Property protection · Floors, walls and doorways
Most moving advice is about your belongings. This is about the building they are being carried through — what goes down before anything is lifted, where homes actually get marked, and how our own terms draw the line between wear and damage.
Quick answer
A crew protects a home before it carries anything: floor runners along the full path, door-jamb protectors at every doorway the piece passes through, banister wraps on stair rails, heavier rubber-backed runners on tile or stone, and disposable film on carpeted stairs where it is needed. Setup takes time and it is worth it, because almost all contact happens at the same handful of points. On the contract side, know this before move day: under LIOO Moving’s terms, wall marks, paint scuffs and floor scratches are treated as normal moving-related wear, and responsibility is limited to significant damage directly caused by movers.
Damage during a move is not randomly distributed. It happens at a small number of predictable contact points, and they are the same in a Grant Park bungalow and a Perimeter townhouse.
In intown Atlanta the stakes are higher than average. A lot of the housing stock has original heart-pine or refinished hardwood, single-width doorways, and a hall stair that turns at a landing rather than running straight. Those homes are not harder to move out of because of the furniture; they are harder because there is less room for a piece to travel without touching something.
Protect the path, not the house. Almost everything happens on the path.
On our in-home work we document the protection step in detail, because it is the part of the job that decides how the day ends. The kit is unglamorous and specific:
| Surface | What goes on it |
|---|---|
| Hardwood and LVP | Floor runners along the full path — the whole route, not just the doorway |
| Tile or stone with grout lines | Heavier rubber-backed runners that do not slide |
| Carpeted stairs, where needed | Disposable carpet film — used where carpet is pet-stained or wet |
| Every doorway on the route | Door-jamb protectors clipped onto the frames |
| Staircase rails | Banister wraps |
Two things about that list are worth drawing out. The first is every doorway the piece will pass through — not the front door. The second is that it takes real time: on a typical two-floor job the setup phase runs roughly 15–25 minutes, and on an hourly move that time is on the clock. It is the cheapest fifteen minutes of the day, but it is not free, and a crew that skips it to look fast is not doing you a favor.
You can see the same equipment described alongside the rest of the process on our in-home furniture moving page, where the protection step is set out job by job.
One operational detail that saves more floors than any material: somebody has to decide how a piece travels, and it should be the crew lead. Our in-home work puts it plainly — the crew lead owns the route, though the homeowner can override any decision.
That division matters because the two common failure modes pull in opposite directions. A crew that never consults you will put a runner where it suits them and route a wardrobe past your grandmother’s mirror. A homeowner who directs every carry tends to optimize for speed over clearance. The workable arrangement is the one above: the lead calls the route, you can veto it, and disagreements get settled before the piece is off the ground rather than halfway up the stairs.
Before the clock stops, the crew lead walks the full path back through the home with you, checks the destination rooms, and looks for wall scuffs, floor marks or furniture issues. Anything found is logged on the spot rather than after the crew leaves.
That timing is the whole point. A mark identified while the crew is standing in front of it is a shared observation. The same mark raised a week later has nobody who can confirm when it appeared — and homes acquire marks from all sorts of things that are not a move. Our terms also reserve the right to photograph, inspect and document property conditions and pre-existing conditions before, during or after service, which cuts both ways: it is how a pre-existing scratch stays pre-existing.
Five minutes, before move day
Photograph your floors, walls, door casings and stair rails at both properties before anything moves. It costs nothing and it is the only thing that reliably separates “that was already there” from an argument nobody can settle.
This is the part people do not read until they need it, and it is better known beforehand.
Under LIOO Moving’s terms, responsibility for real property is limited to significant damage directly caused by movers. The terms go on to state that wall marks, paint scuffs and floor scratches are considered normal moving-related wear, and that floor repairs are limited to the affected area only.
Read that carefully, and read it as what it is: our contractual position. It is not a statement of Georgia law, it is not a claim about what other movers do, and it is not advice about your legal rights. Other companies write this clause differently, and the only version that governs your move is the one in the contract you sign. If you are comparing movers, this is a clause worth asking each of them to show you.
What the affected-area limit means in practice
If a floor repair is owed, the terms limit it to the area affected. A scratch in one room is not a claim to refinish the floor through the rest of the house. That is worth understanding in advance, because the gap between what people expect and what a contract says is where move-day disputes actually come from.
Two boundaries to keep straight. This clause is about your building. Damage to your belongings runs on an entirely separate track — limited protection calculated by weight, with its own exclusions and its own short claim window, which we cover in what movers are actually liable for in Georgia.
Worth separating the contract from the practice, because they are not the same thing. A contract sets the floor of what a company must do; what it chooses to do can be more. On our in-home work we describe resolving minor cosmetic issues — a paint touch-up, a small wood scratch — directly with a touch-up specialist. That is a described practice on that service, not a contractual entitlement and not a promise attached to every job. If it matters to you, ask how a company handles cosmetic marks before you book, and note the answer.
Nearly everyone offers. It feels rude to stand in a doorway while three people work. Resist it, and not only because the crew moves faster without an extra body on the stairs.
Our terms are explicit: customers are discouraged from assisting movers, and if a customer participates in moving activities, they assume all risk — LIOO Moving is not responsible for injuries or damages resulting from customer participation.
So the friendly instinct to grab the other end of the couch changes where responsibility sits for whatever happens next, to the piece, to the wall and to you. The genuinely useful things you can do on move day cost nothing and carry no risk: be reachable, keep the path clear, keep children and pets out of the carry route, and answer questions quickly so nobody is standing around waiting for a decision.
Most of the preparation that protects a home is the same preparation that speeds up the move, which is set out on our moving preparation page.
Original hardwood, a refinished staircase, a narrow landing turn, a freshly painted hall — say so when you book. The route and the protection get planned around it instead of being worked out in your doorway.
The risk is real but it is concentrated, and it is mostly managed by covering the carry path rather than the house. Floor runners go down along the full route on hardwood and LVP, with heavier rubber-backed runners on tile or stone. Most floor marking comes from repeated dolly and foot traffic over the same stretch rather than a single dropped item, which is why the full path matters more than the doorway.
That depends entirely on the contract you signed, and it is worth reading before move day rather than after. Under LIOO Moving’s terms, responsibility for real property is limited to significant damage directly caused by movers; wall marks, paint scuffs and floor scratches are considered normal moving-related wear; and floor repairs are limited to the affected area only. Other movers word this clause differently. This is our contractual position, not a statement of Georgia law or of what the industry does.
Door-jamb protectors clip onto the frames at every doorway the piece will pass through, not just the entrance, and banister wraps go onto staircase rails. Those two points plus the floor path cover most of the contact a move creates. On a typical two-floor job the whole protection setup runs roughly 15 to 25 minutes, and on an hourly move that time is on the clock.
No. Our terms state that customers are discouraged from assisting movers, and that a customer who participates in moving activities assumes all risk — we are not responsible for injuries or damages resulting from customer participation. Helping also tends to slow a crew down. Keeping the path clear, staying reachable and answering questions quickly is worth far more than an extra pair of hands.
Raise it promptly — claims run on a short window under our terms. The stronger position is to catch it during the walk-back, when the crew lead goes back through the full path with you and anything found is logged on the spot. Photographs of both properties taken before the move are what make an after-the-fact conversation straightforward rather than a disagreement about when a mark appeared.
Your next step
When to bring in the pros: stairs and long carries, heavy or fragile pieces (pianos, safes, glass), a building that requires a COI, or a timeline that slipped. See how a LIOO crew runs it →