Bulky Buddy
A dining set is the item people most confidently underestimate. "It's just a table and some chairs" — until two of you try to lift the marble top and it doesn't move. A 6-seater with a stone slab can outweigh a fridge, a glass top can turn one wrong bump into a floor full of fragments, and the whole thing is longer than the lift is deep. The chairs are the easy part. The table is the job.
Here's the honest guide to getting a dining table and chairs out of your HDB flat, condo or landed home: why tables rarely leave intact, why marble changes everything, and how to get a fixed, all-in quote before anyone touches anything.
Know your table? Snap a photo — top material visible — and get your exact price now.
Get my dining set priceWhy dining tables rarely leave a flat intact
A 4-seater runs about 1.2 metres long; a 6-seater 1.6 to 2 metres; an 8-seater longer still. Meanwhile the front door is under a metre wide and the lift car was designed for people, not a two-metre slab with two movers attached to it. Some smaller tables squeeze through on a careful diagonal — most don't, and nobody sensible gambles a stone top on "maybe."
So the standard play is the same as a wardrobe or a bed: break it down first. Legs or pedestal base off, top separated, everything carried as flat, manageable pieces. On a screwed-together wooden table that's ten minutes of spanner work. On a stone-top table with a doweled or bonded base, it's more careful surgery — which is exactly the kind of thing a photo tells us before we quote.
The factors that actually set the job
Every honest dining set quote is built from the same handful of things:
| Factor | Why it changes the job |
|---|---|
| Top material | Laminate and wood are a normal carry. Glass needs wrapping and edge protection. Marble or sintered stone is a strict two-man lift with straps. |
| Table size | A 4-seater may squeeze out with legs on. A 6- or 8-seater comes apart, and the top alone is a long, heavy carry. |
| Chair count & type | Four stackable chairs disappear into a lorry. Eight solid-wood carvers or upholstered dining chairs are real volume and real weight. |
| Dismantling | Bolted legs come off cleanly. Bonded stone bases and welded frames take longer and need more hands. |
| Floor & lift access | Lift-accessible floors are quick. A walk-up with a marble top is slow, careful, per-storey work. |
| Bundling | Table, chairs and the sideboard in one trip beats three separate pickups on value every time. |
Marble and stone tops: the two-man rule
This is the heart of it. A solid marble, granite or sintered-stone top on a 6-seater commonly runs well past 80 kilograms, and the big statement slabs push 150 or more. That's not a "get a friend to help" weight — it's a trained two-man lift, minimum, with lifting straps and a plan for every corner between your dining room and the lorry.
Stone has a second trap that catches DIY attempts: it's strong under compression and weak in bending. Carry a slab flat and let it flex — over a shoulder, across a stair edge — and it can crack under its own weight. Crews carry stone on edge, strapped, with the load path supported the whole way. That discipline is the difference between a clean removal and a broken slab wedged in your stairwell.
Glass top warning: glass dining tops are lighter than stone but less forgiving. Tempered glass doesn't chip politely — it goes all at once, into a thousand pieces, usually in the worst spot possible. A proper crew tapes the surface, wraps it in blankets and carries it on edge, and never leans it where a corridor knock can reach it. If your top is glass, tell us — it changes the handling, not the honesty of the price.
The chairs: easy, until there are eight of them
Chairs are rarely a problem individually — the game is volume. A set of four stackable chairs is one trolley run. Eight solid-oak dining chairs, or heavy upholstered ones, fill real lorry space and take multiple trips down. Bench seating counts too: a solid-wood dining bench is basically a small table in disguise. Send the whole set in one photo and the quote covers all of it — no per-chair haggling at the door.
While the lorry's there anyway
The dining set usually isn't leaving alone — it goes when the living room is being refreshed or the whole flat is turning over. If the sofa's going too, it has its own quirks (L-shapes, recliner mechanisms) that we break down in what sofa disposal really costs in Singapore. And if this is part of emptying the entire place for a move or reno, the per-item maths changes completely — see our guide to full house clearance in Singapore. One lorry run for everything is always the better deal.
Table, chairs, sideboard — one photo of the lot, one fixed price for the lot.
Get my dining set priceDon't stage it at the void deck
One more thing before anyone starts carrying: a dining set left at the void deck or along the corridor "to deal with later" is illegal dumping, plain and simple. It can draw a fine, and a table blocking a common corridor is a fire-safety problem on top. Nothing moves to a common area until a collection — town council or private — is actually booked for it. The full rundown is in our guide to NEA and HDB bulky waste rules.
How to get an exact price (in about two minutes)
There's no fixed rate card for dining sets because the jobs genuinely differ — a laminate 4-seater and a 150-kilo marble 8-seater are not the same afternoon. The fast path is to show us the set:
- Snap a photo of the table and chairs together — top surface clearly visible.
- Tell us the top material (marble, stone, glass, wood) and how many chairs.
- Give us your floor and lift access, plus anything else going in the same trip.
You get a fixed, all-in quote back in minutes — dismantling, straps, wrapping and the carry included, no surprise charge on the day. It's the same photo-and-price loop we run for furniture disposal all across Singapore.
