I was thinking solely about how we were going to get that baby grand lying in the driveway into the house.
I’ve always enjoyed moving pianos. Piano moving has that magical combination of specialized knowledge, finesse, and bulldog determination that appeals so much to my personality. In fact, I like moving them so much I’m going to give you a sketch of how to move a baby grand. First off, when the piano is sitting in your living room, it’s on three legs with the pedal assembly below, a cover above, and a music stand above the keyboard. There are very few doorways that can accommodate the girth, so the piano is moved around on its side. First I take off the cover, which is on hinges. I lay the cover on several moving pads, cover the top with more pads, and then tape the whole thing perfectly so no wood is showing. Next I unscrew the hinges, remove the pedal assembly, and pad all of that. All of the hardware goes into a plastic bag, which is tied to one of the legs. Next I slide out the music stand and pad that. Now comes the harder part. To get the piano onto its side, I first take off the leg at the bass end of the keyboard. Each leg is attached by a metal flange, which goes up and then in to lock it into place. Most legs come off by taking the weight off the leg and tapping the top section inward to release the locking interface. I do this by taping a moving pad to the leg and then a piece of wood to the pad. While my two movers take the weight off the leg, I tap the wood with a rubber mallet, and the leg releases. The two movers gently lay the corner of the piano down onto a long padded piano board. Now one corner is on the piano board and the other two legs are still attached. Next, we lift the entire piano onto its side, and the other two legs are sticking out horizontally. These get tapped off and padded, and now the entire piano is on the piano board. We pad the piano and tape it to the board and then attach two heavy-duty straps to grooves in the side of the board and tighten the piano onto the board. It’s relatively stable there but I always have a guy holding it to maintain balance. Next, I attach a humpstrap to the front of the board, and two men lift the front end while I set a four-wheel piano dolly underneath. Now we can roll the piano on the dolly. This is all pretty straightforward, and pianos aren’t hard to move, provided you can wheel it to where it needs to go. You can even lift it over a step or two with the dolly. The difficulty starts when it needs to go up or down a set of stairs. You can’t use the dolly. The only thing that works is brute force.
The McNallys’ piano was not going up the interior stairway because of the narrow turn. The outside stairway had fourteen steps with a straight shot through the kitchen into the living room, so that was the only viable route. There was no walkway to the stairs, just grass. My plan was to lay plywood from the driveway to the bottom of the outside stairway. Since we were moving this in, not out, I’d put the piano on the board in the driveway (the previous movers took their piano board with them), put it on the four-wheel dolly, and wheel the piano to the bottom of the walkboard, which sat on step seven.
That all worked out fine, and we wheeled the piano up the walkboard with Julio on the front humpstrap pulling and Carlos on the bottom pushing. (I was standing next to it, holding the balance.) We pushed/pulled one step at a time until it got clear of the walkboard and dolly and was flush along steps seven through eleven. Now we had 600 pounds of piano, wood on wood, at a 45-degree angle. I couldn’t push or pull because I had to hold the vertical balance. With Carlos on the bottom and Julio at the top, they tried to muscle the thing up the incline. No dice. Basically we were short one strong man. I took a second look at the stairway. It was attached at the top by two galvanized joist hangers. I didn’t like the look of that at all and started doing the math. There’s me at 200 pounds, Carlos at 150, Julio at 240, and the piano at 600. That’s a shade under 1,200 pounds being held by two joist hangers. It was holding now, but the real test would be when the full weight of the piano got to stair fourteen and the two joist hangers would be holding the whole thing. It was time to stop and think.
First of all, I didn’t want anyone getting hurt. If the stairway gave way, we could all get very hurt or very killed. Second, this move was already a mess, with a much-distressed and unhappy family. Third, we were hired to execute. Fourth, we had to be in Laramie, Wyoming, the next day to load another shipment.
Here were my options:
1. I could get another mover out here to help push. I rejected this because adding another 200 pounds to the staircase looked even more dangerous, given the flimsy construction, and anyway, I didn’t have another mover available.
2. I could have told Mr. McNally the stairs didn’t look safe and he could contact a rigging company to hoist the piano. I rejected this because the McNallys were at the end of their rope, and I didn’t want to cause them even more stress. Also, I figured this was my problem, and I didn’t want to give up.
3. I could attach straps to the piano board, string the straps over the far railing of the deck, attach the straps to a vehicle, and have the vehicle pull the piano up the stairs, with Carlos and Julio holding the vertical balance with ropes on either side away from the staircase.
I took Mr. McNally outside and explained the options to him. He told me the piano was his wife’s treasured possession and he really wanted it in the house. He thought option 3 was the most practical and said we could use his Jeep. That’s when I brought out the release form and he signed it.