The slide show to the left documents the move of a 9'1" Concert Grand to the third floor of a Townhouse. There were several challenges with this move.

The first challenge, and most obvious, was craning this monstrous 1300 pound piano to the second floor above the garage. The planned entry into the house was through the sliding patio doors opening up to the balcony. The challenge here was not so much the craning of the piano, but the fact that there was an overhang to this balcony. The piano could not be simply lowered to the balcony. It had to be pulled inwards to the balcony landing as it was gently lowered.

The craning operation was actually straight forward. The more difficult challenge was the set of stairs leading up to the third story living room. They were hardwood maple stairs with lips — very susceptible to damage either from being scratched, or having the lips sheered off.

Grand pianos, especially 1300 pound concert grands, cannot be lifted up the steps, even by a large crew. It all gets down to physics — leverage and inertia. The piano needed to be positioned on the stairs in such a way that its center point created a fulcrum on the top step allowing it to be tilted upward like a seesaw, with little effort.

Due to the tremendous weight which would be concentrated on the single step a special block had to be created to distribute the weight over two stairs.

At first, the piano was not positioned high enough. It was then tilted up almost on end, and then rocked back and forth to move it forward so it was closer to the top stair. Once the fulcrum was positioned on the top stair, it seesawed easily to the living room and slid on top of rollers into the room.