The historic Victorian and Craftsman neighborhood beside Duke's East Campus. We handle estate and renovation cleanouts with care for the old homes and tree-lined streets — truck-fill $295 to $895, single pieces from a $75 minimum, scoped from photos before we arrive. Donation-routed, discreet, no NC sales tax on the service.
Send a few photos — flat price back in seconds
Upload Photos & Get Quote →Trinity Park is the block-by-block record of Durham's first boom — Queen Annes, four-squares and Craftsman bungalows put up largely between the 1890s and the 1930s on a grid that runs right up to the stone wall of Duke's East Campus, a few minutes' walk from Ninth Street and Brightleaf. It's a designated historic neighborhood with an unusually settled population: Duke faculty and staff, retirees, and families who have held the same address for thirty and forty years, mixed with a band of student rentals along the edges nearer campus.
That tenure is what shapes the work. When a Trinity Park house finally turns over, it isn't a move-out — it's an entire life stored in a house with no basement. Everything went up into the attic instead: forty years of books, a dining set nobody eats at, three generations of Christmas boxes, the wardrobe that never came back downstairs. Add the other half of our Durham calendar — renovation clears, when an owner finally opens up a kitchen or takes out the 1970s bathroom — and you have the two jobs this page exists for. Both need the same things: photos scoped honestly in advance, a crew that treats plaster and heart pine as things that break, and donation routing so the good stuff doesn't get dumped.
Room by room, plus the attic and the crawl space hatch. Whole-home jobs are scoped from what you send — no salesperson doing a walkthrough first.
Priced by truck volume, or by the piece if it's a short list. The number is fixed before the crew is dispatched — nothing gets renegotiated at your door.
Insured crew, on-street loading, careful on original stairs and floors. Usable furniture to ReStore and Goodwill, metal and e-waste recycled.
Whole-home and renovation clears price by how much of the truck you fill. Short lists price by the piece. Both are flat, both are quoted from photos, and both include the carry-out, the drive and the disposal.
| Volume | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Truck-fill — 1/4 | $295 |
| Truck-fill — 3/8 | $415 |
| Truck-fill — 1/2 | $525 |
| Truck-fill — 5/8 | $625 |
| Truck-fill — 3/4 | $720 |
| Truck-fill — 7/8 | $810 |
| Truck-fill — full | $895 |
| Multi-truck whole-home | Scoped from photos |
And the pieces an old Durham house actually produces, priced individually:
| Item | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Box of books | $47 |
| Bookshelf | $97 |
| Chest of drawers | $106 |
| Curio cabinet | $128 |
| Queen mattress | $139 |
| Wardrobe / armoire | $165 |
| Dresser (standard) | $169 |
| Sofa / couch | $170 |
| Dining table (large) | $174 |
| 10 bags or boxes | $178 |
| China cabinet | $215 |
| Refrigerator | $221 |
| Upright piano | $390 |
| Renovation debris, per cubic yard | $162 |
$75 order minimum — a single small piece bills at $75 even if its list price is lower, so it's worth adding the second thing to the same trip. Disposal, carry-out and the drive are included, there are no mattress or stair surcharges, and there is no NC sales tax on the service.
A third-party benchmark, since "what should this cost" is the real question: Junk Doctors publishes a Triangle rate card with a $135 minimum, a quarter truck at $298 and a full truck at $738 (junkdrs.com/pricing), and McJunk publishes a $175 minimum up to $695 for a full truck, plus a $40 mattress surcharge, $10 per tire, $10 per CRT television and a $10 to $50 trip charge. Read that plainly: our $75 minimum is the lowest of the three and we add no surcharges, but on a whole truck their published rates beat our $895. On a multi-truck estate job, get all three numbers.
| Option | Cost | Speed | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durham curbside bulky collection | Per the City's current schedule | Scheduled collection day | Curbside-only and item-limited — an attic's worth of furniture is not a curbside job |
| Self-haul to Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center | ~$65/ton MSW; metal & appliances free | Several weekends | You need a truck, a helper and repeat trips — and it starts after you've carried it downstairs |
| Habitat ReStore free pickup (Durham) | Free | Scheduled, days out | Only takes what it can resell; the unsellable 60% of an estate stays in the house |
| Estate sale, then deal with the rest | Commission | Weeks | Sells the good pieces and leaves the attic, the crawl space and the garage untouched |
| Traditional truck-fill hauler | $135–$175 minimums published | 1–3 days | Volume-priced with surcharges, often confirmed only on site |
| JunkRabbit | $295–$895 per truck, $75 minimum | Often same or next day | None — scoped from photos, we carry it out, donation-routed |
The correction first, because people moving between Wake and Durham counties get burned by it constantly: the City of Raleigh's roughly $35 Bulky Load has nothing to do with Trinity Park. That program — along with Raleigh's ~$70 special appliance pickup and its free weekly electronics collection of up to four items — is run by City of Raleigh Solid Waste Services (919-996-3245) for City of Raleigh collection customers in Wake County, and it stops at Raleigh's limits. Trinity Park is in Durham: different city, different county, different department. If a neighbor told you "it's thirty-five dollars," they were quoting a program you can't use.
What Durham actually has is its own Solid Waste Management department running its own scheduled curbside bulky collection — check durhamnc.gov for the current rules, item limits and calendar, because they do change — plus the Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center, the local transfer and recycling facility. That facility is genuinely good: municipal solid waste transfers at roughly $65 a ton, appliance and scrap-metal recycling is free, and up to five certified tires come in free. If you own a pickup and a Saturday, use it.
Here's why neither one solves a Trinity Park estate clear. The curbside program is scheduled and curbside-only — it collects what is already at the street, which is precisely the half of the job you could have done yourself. Nobody's difficulty is the hauling; it's getting a wardrobe down a narrow 1915 staircase with a turn at the landing, or emptying an attic reached by a pull-down ladder. And the recycling center is self-haul: a furnished three-bedroom house cleared attic to crawl space is several truckloads, so that's a rented pickup, a friend who owes you a favor, straps, fuel, and repeated hours in the scale-house line — for a family that is usually doing this while also settling an estate or closing on a sale. We're the version where you send photos, take a number, name a day, and it's empty.
What we can't take: wet paint, solvents, propane and other household hazardous waste — that needs Durham County's household hazardous waste route, and we'll flag it from your photos.
Estate work in a hundred-year-old neighborhood produces genuinely good material, so we sort before we dispose. Habitat for Humanity ReStore has a Durham location — one of ten Triangle stores — and takes usable large furniture, cabinetry, doors, light fixtures and hardware; it even runs free pickup for large items it can resell, which we'll tell you about even though it competes with us. Goodwill of Eastern North Carolina handles the smaller household goods. Between them, a surprising share of a Trinity Park house finds a second home instead of a hole.
Then North Carolina's rules do the rest of the sorting for us. Televisions, monitors and computers are landfill-banned statewide, and so are appliances and white goods — which is convenient here, because the Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center takes appliances and scrap metal free. Old radiators, bed frames, filing cabinets and washer carcasses go to scrap. Only the true remainder is disposed of, at roughly $65 a ton transfer. If the family wants donation receipts for the tax return, ask — we'll get them.
Trinity Park's streets are narrow, tree-lined and parked on both sides. There are few real driveways, so loading happens on the street beside the house. We scout the approach, park to keep the lane passable for the neighbor trying to get to Duke, and don't stage a pile on the sidewalk or the lawn while we work.
Inside is its own problem. These are plaster walls, original heart-pine floors, narrow doorways and staircases with a turn at the landing — dimensions set when furniture was smaller and nobody owned a sectional. A wardrobe or a chest usually comes down on its end or in pieces; jambs get padded; nothing gets dragged. Attic access is often a pull-down ladder, which means a bucket brigade rather than a hand truck, and that's factored into the scope rather than sprung on you as an upcharge. Crawl spaces get cleared by someone actually willing to go in.
And the part people don't ask about directly: discretion. An estate clear is usually happening because someone died, or because a family is making a hard decision fast. We work without spectacle on a block where everyone knows everyone — no shouting across the yard, no pile mounting on the frontage for days, and the street looks untouched when we pull out.
"Family home in Trinity Park near Duke — whole house. Compassionate crew, fair flat quote, handled the donation routing. Made a hard week easier."
"Renovation debris from a historic-home redo. Careful, quiet, hauled it all. One flat number, no sales tax."
How much does a Trinity Park cleanout cost?
Truck-fill 1/4 $295, 3/8 $415, 1/2 $525, 5/8 $625, 3/4 $720, 7/8 $810, full $895; multi-truck whole-home scoped from photos. By the piece: bookshelf $97, chest of drawers $106, wardrobe $165, dresser $169, sofa $170, dining table $174, china cabinet $215, upright piano $390. $75 minimum, disposal included, no NC sales tax.
Can you handle a historic home cleanout by Duke?
Yes — it's a large share of our Durham work. Plaster, original stairs, pull-down attic ladders and crawl spaces are normal for these crews, not surprises that trigger a surcharge.
Does Raleigh's $35 Bulky Load apply here?
No. That's City of Raleigh Solid Waste Services for Wake County collection customers. Durham runs its own Solid Waste Management department with its own scheduled bulky rules — see durhamnc.gov.
Should I just self-haul to the Durham recycling center?
If you own a truck and the load is small, sure — MSW transfers at about $65 a ton and appliances and scrap metal are free there. For a full house it's several round trips, and it doesn't touch the part that's hard: getting it downstairs.
Will you donate what's still good?
Yes. Habitat ReStore's Durham store takes usable large furniture and cabinetry, Goodwill of Eastern NC takes household goods, and we'll get donation receipts if the estate needs them.
Are you cheaper than Junk Doctors or McJunk?
Lower minimum ($75 vs their published $135 and $175) and no surcharges; higher full truck ($895 vs their published $738 and $695). On a multi-truck estate job, compare all three.
How discreet is the crew?
Quiet, street-loaded, nothing staged on the lawn, no spectacle on a block where everyone knows each other.