Seriously, how do piano movers/people move grand or baby grand pianos to places, anywhere? But especially to either small spaces, up stairs, or for example, an apartment/penthouse in a tall building in NYC? I know it happens. It seems very difficult. Explain plz haha
edit for punctuation because my keyboard is broken oh 2nd edit – yeah genuinely no pun intended with the word “keyboard”
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you could have literally googled it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+move+grand+piano
I moved an upright once with a few mates and a ute. I now know why piano movers are a specialist kind of service.
When our piano was delivered to the 4th floor, we had a group of 5 men with shoulder straps anchored to the piano bringing it up the stairs.
I used to help this guy move all kinds of pianos. It was his second full time job. It take 2-5 guys depending on the type/size of the piano. Usually 3 guys can move almost any piano. The legs can come off and we would usually tip the piano onto its side onto a heavy duty carpeted dolly. We would roll the dolly up a ramp onto the bed of the work truck. There was special piano blankets for wrapping to protect the piano. Also a lot of buckle straps. Good communication was key. We would have to lift at the same time and also be precise. I think moving pianos is much better as it’s own moving business as opposed to a moving company that can move pianos. Some Pianos are massive but also can be delicate in certain areas so extra care must be taken. We had quite a few jobs where a piano would either be moving up stairs or down stairs, sometimes spiral staircases.
This is why people just put them up for free on FB marketplace lol. I always thought a great business would be taking these free pianos and reselling them.
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It’s pretty amazing watching professional piano movers do it. I worked with a chamber music festival for a number of years. We had to move pianos all the time between performance sites, some of which were in the houses of donors to the festival. Pros have a number of different types of custom rigs they can strap the pianos to, which make moving them simple and safe. It blew my mind every time I saw it.
Not a grand but my folks had an upright player piano from the 1920s in their basement. Of their 7 kids, only 1 took lessons (not me). They were empty nesters when I went over and asked if I could take it for my 3 kids to learn on. It was at risk of being wrecked by all of the other grandkids hammering away on it.
I found a screw, took it out and it revealed a few more. It was like a huge puzzle as I gradually found more and more screws and eventually it was in pieces on the floor. I rented a large truck, grabbed a friend and together we moved the dismantled thing to my house where I put everything back together. I only missed out one screw which held the bottom cover on. It has never had the player part installed but I have it.
Having it restored was described to me as if it was an antique car. 10% are pristine museum pieces, 10% are firewood and the middle 80% are all dependent on how much money you want to put into them. It would cost me $3500 to have it restored (parts and labour) but I could find one already done for a lot less apparently.
Depends on how far and what obstacles are in the way. I helped run our college’s music dept. and we had a small recital stage with a grand piano, fortepiano and harpsicord. Luckily we never had to move either out of the building or off of the floor they were used on, but the stage was elevated, with a small flight of stairs and wide double doors. 99 % of the time, the Grand was just left on stage – either used in the performance or left to the side as “decoration.” On the rare occasions where we had larger groups and had to move the piano, it was basically brute force – get a few people together, wheel it to the edge and then carefully (with the primary piano instructor looking on with a lot of concern). The legs came off, but I honestly don’t remember if we did for such relatively short distances…the hauling itself would have been much, much easier if we did. The smaller instruments were moved on and off more frequently, and again we usually just gathered up a small crew and moved it.
The college was smart enough (and well off enough) to just invest in duplicates of our larger instruments for our larger down-town performance facility that opened my senior year. For most of my time there though, we frequently did have to move all of our other instruments in and out of the same building, usually via truck. Everything up to our bass drum and largest timpani could be moved (though not easily) by one person on or off stage and down short stairs. We had an ancient elevator that could fit one timpani at a time….and then again brute force getting it up into our truck and unloaded on the other side (finally got a truck with a lift gate my last year there). The biggest challenge was lashing everything down and protecting it with covers during the move itself. Symphony and orchestra moves it almost always took more time preparing to move than actually moving. For marching band, most of the instruments had their own cases, and we had the loading process down to a Tetris-like science, so those moved quickly – except for our front ensemble (mallet percussion mainly)…those were tougher and had to be protected a little more carefully….and we certainly never almost drove away with the back door unlatched and nearly wrecked a few thousand dollars worth of instruments..
A couple I know built their own house, and had the piano lifted into the top floor with a crane before the roof went on. They accepted that they’d never get it out intact.
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