Boise Pool Table Removal: Why the Slate Comes Out First

A guy on the Boise Bench texted me a photo of his basement last spring. Middle of the frame, an 8-foot table with sun-faded felt, left behind by the folks who sold him the house. His question is the one I get most often about pool table removal in Boise: can't you just carry the thing out?

Not in one piece. Nobody can.

There's a few hundred pounds of rock under that felt

Any pool table worth owning has a slate bed. On a decent 8-footer that's three matched slabs, and each one is heavy enough that you move it slow and pay attention to where your feet are. Older one-piece slate is worse, because there's no splitting that weight into thirds.

That's before you count the frame, the legs, the rails and the pockets.

So the job goes in order. Pockets and rails first, then the felt gets pulled or cut off the staples, then the slate comes up one slab at a time and goes out the way it came in. The frame is last, and it's the easy part.

If your table came from a big-box store and the bed is particleboard under the cloth, that's a different afternoon. Those come apart quick and they're light. They're also not worth much to anybody, which matters in a minute.

Will anybody take the table instead?

Worth asking before you pay to get rid of anything. Sometimes the answer is yes.

If it's a real table with a name on it, Brunswick or Olhausen or Connelly, the slate's flat and the rails aren't dried out, there's a market for it around the Treasure Valley. People finishing basements and bonus rooms in Meridian, Nampa and the new subdivisions out past Star buy used tables all the time.

Here's the catch. Your buyer still has to get it out of your basement, and a table that isn't broken down right and re-leveled is a table that plays wrong. Most of the folks who answer a free listing show up with a lot of confidence and no clue about the slate.

Thrift stores usually pass. Idaho Youth Ranch and St. Vincent de Paul do good work with furniture, but a pool table isn't furniture they can move, store or sell easily. Don't count on a donation pickup for this one.

Tip: If you think you'll sell it, number the slate slabs along the seams with a pencil before anything comes apart. They're matched and shimmed to each other, and whoever sets it back up will thank you. Once they get shuffled, leveling turns into a long afternoon.

What pool table removal in Boise usually runs

I price off the load and the labor, not off a menu, so I'd rather tell you what moves the number.

A walkout basement or a ground-floor game room with a straight shot to the driveway is the cheap version. Still a couple hours of careful work, but the path is the path.

Stairs change it. A turning stairwell in an old North End house, or a tight landing with a door at the bottom, adds time and adds risk to your walls. One-piece slate down a turn isn't a solo lift, so I line up a hand for those, and anybody who tells you different hasn't carried one.

Then there's where it all ends up. Slate isn't recyclable and nobody's taking it as a donation. It's rock, and rock goes to the Ada County landfill, which charges by weight.

That's the part people don't see coming. A pool table costs more to haul off than a couch sitting in the same square footage, and the weight is the whole reason.

Bolts, leg hardware and any metal trim get pulled and recycled. The felt and the wood ride out with the rest of the load.

Before the pool table removal starts

Clear the path you want me to use, and look at it honestly. The deep freeze at the bottom of the stairs. The storage shelf on the landing, the bike hanging in the doorway.

All of that gets moved either way. It just goes faster if it's already done.

Think about the extras too. Cues, racks, ball sets, the light hanging over the table, the wall rack. People forget the light every single time, and then it's hanging there over an empty rug.

And decide about the slate before we start. A few customers have kept a slab for a workbench top or a patio project, which is fine by me and less weight going to the landfill. Just say so up front, not after it's in the trailer.

Bottom line

A pool table isn't heavy the way a dresser is heavy. It's heavy in a way that rewards taking it apart in the right order, and it goes sideways when somebody skips that step.

If the table's good, try to sell it first. If it's tired, or it's been sitting in a Meridian basement collecting Christmas boxes for six years, let somebody haul it.

I'm based in Eagle and I'm in basements all over the valley, foothills to Nampa. Text me a photo of the table and the stairs it has to come up and I'll send you a price. (208) 391-0221. Most of the time it's gone within a couple of days.