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The key to moving a piano is having someone else do it

3 min read

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It was my first major purchase, the Steinway upright piano I bought shortly after starting my first real job in television. The piano was eight years old then, its harp and keys broken in by an Ohio man who had played it for hours every day and who was trading up to a baby grand.

That piano has followed me around, from that first townhouse in Ohio where I played it most days, to an apartment in Pittsburgh’s East Hills where it was the most expensive thing in the building, to an old farmhouse in the North Hills where its bench stored baby books, to an old Victorian along the Ohio River where my kids’ grandmother gave weekly lessons. Just writing all of that reminds me that I don’t stay put for long, and that I don’t like the process of moving.

Yesterday, three strong young men arrived at that Victorian house to escort my Steinway to its next home. We’ve downsized to a smaller home a bit farther north, the furniture move done by the farmer and my son and a sturdy pickup truck. But any hopes of our family moving the piano ourselves were dashed the day I tried to help the farmer move it 10 feet closer to the front door without gouging the new hardwood. My piano has a cast iron harp and weighs 800 pounds. A half-foot felt like a half-mile. I was no help.

“We need professionals,” I said between grunts.

This triggered a flashback to that old farmhouse. Its floors were the original pine, 120 years old and soft as Ivory soap. I couldn’t sleep the night before the move, worried that the piano would ruin the floor, or worse, crash through to the basement. I couldn’t watch. But the piano arrived safely upright in the dining room, and stayed there.

Two houses and 20 years later, it was time to move again.

There’s a right way to move a piano, beyond the muscle it takes to lift one. Lock the keyboard, pack the harp with blankets, don’t move it horizontally, try to avoid humid weather – the internet has lots of advice for how to do it. I didn’t see advice on how to get a piano down from the fifth floor, but I suspect ropes and a lot of prayers. Fortunately, this move was from the first floor to a ranch.

I was waiting at the open door when the piano arrived at the new house; I peeked through my fingers as the three men inched it out of the truck, down a ramp and onto the grassy yard. Grass was iffy, but the gravel driveway would have been worse.

Yellow straps crisscrossed the piano. Sometimes the men rolled it and other times they lifted. It occurred to me that, strong and careful as they were, the men didn’t look quite right. T-shirts and shorts are fine when you move a bed. But that piano is handsome, artsy. It plays Chopin, for heaven’s sake. Tuxes seem more fitting.

With a final grunt and push, my Steinway was safely through the door and against the wall in the den. It takes up a lot of space, but in a good way. It’s nice to have it home.

It is said that pianos don’t like drafty rooms or air that’s too dry. They don’t like being near windows or close to fireplaces. And they don’t like being moved.

That makes two of us.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.

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