How to get rid of a bed frame in Salt Lake City

The short answer

Most people are taking the mattress too. A queen mattress and box spring set plus a standard frame is $143 + $68 = $211. A king bed with a solid upholstered frame is $114 + $152 = $266. Minimum visit is $75.

Which frame you actually have

The price difference is about weight and how the thing comes apart, so identify it before you book.

• Standard metal or platform, $68. A folding steel rail frame, or a low slatted platform. Comes apart with an allen key or just folds. Light.
• Solid, upholstered or storage, $126 to queen and $152 king. A real wood bedstead with a headboard and footboard, an upholstered frame with a padded headboard, or a storage bed with drawers built into the base. These are heavy, the headboard is often a single rigid panel, and the drawers do not always come out.
• Adjustable base, $118. A motorised base with a mechanism and usually a transformer. Heavier than it looks and it does not fold flat.
• Bunk or loft, $123, or $148 in solid wood. Tall, bolted, and almost always assembled in the room it lives in.

The Salt Lake bunk bed problem

Bunk beds are everywhere in this valley, for the obvious reason: households here are larger than the national average, and a basement bedroom that sleeps two is how a family of six fits into a four-bedroom house. Loft beds show up again in student apartments around the University of Utah and Westminster, where a raised bed is the only way to get a desk underneath.

Nearly all of them were assembled in place. The bolts have been in for eight years, the allen key is gone, and the finished headroom in a Salt Lake basement bedroom is often low enough that the top bunk has to come apart before anything can be tilted. Our crews carry the tools and take it down as part of the job. There is no disassembly charge and there is no stair charge.

Old houses, big headboards

The classic failure in this city: a solid wood or upholstered king headboard in an upstairs bedroom of a pre-war house in the Avenues, Capitol Hill or Yalecrest. It went up before the current banister, or it went up in two pieces that have since been glued, and the staircase turns twice on the way down.

Two things make that manageable. First, headboards usually detach from the rails even when they look like one piece — look for bolts behind the fabric on an upholstered frame. Second, we take them apart where they need it. Whether your frame takes fifteen minutes or an hour to get out of a bedroom on 6th Avenue, a solid queen frame is $126.

Sell it or pass it on first

Frames do better on resale than mattresses do, because there is no hygiene objection. Solid wood bedsteads, storage beds in good condition and recent adjustable bases all move on KSL Classifieds within a week in this market, and kids' bunk beds move fast every August before the school year.

What does not sell: cheap metal rail frames, which everybody already has spares of; any flat-pack platform that has been taken apart once; and anything upholstered that has a stain or a pet history. Give a listing seven days. If nothing has happened, add it to a removal list with the mattress and whatever else is going.

Cribs are a special case. Safety standards have changed and older drop-side cribs should not be passed on at all. A crib is $67 to remove and that is the right answer for anything of uncertain age.

What to do before we arrive

• Strip the bedding and take off the mattress and box spring if they are going too, so everything is visible.
• Leave the frame assembled unless taking it apart is trivial. It is often easier to carry a partly built frame than a pile of loose rails and slats.
• Empty the drawers on a storage bed. Every time, and people forget.
• On an adjustable base, unplug it and lay it flat if the remote still works.
• Clear the landing and the stairwell. In an older Salt Lake house the turn at the bottom is the tight point and anything stacked there costs time.

Doing the whole bedroom at once

Since the minimum is charged once per visit, it is almost always worth clearing the room rather than the bed.

A standard adult bedroom: mattress and box spring set $143 + standard frame $68 + standard dresser $126 + nightstand $57. $143 + $68 = $211. $211 + $126 = $337. $337 + $57 = $394.

A kids' room in a basement: bunk bed $123 + two twin mattresses at $82 each ($82 + $82 = $164) + chest of drawers $126. $123 + $164 = $287. $287 + $126 = $413. Against a half truck at $431, the item list wins — but check both, because on a fuller room the ladder often takes it.

Frequently asked questions