Unexpected piano movers

[Zaphoon]

Many of you know I tune, repair and sometimes move pianos for a living. I sold my last remaining piano to a lady that has Fredriech's Ataxia. Her middle school aged daughter is taking piano lessons and their current piano is just worn out (1940 vintage spinet).

She elected to buy my piano and of course, I obligated myself to deliver it. I rented a truck this past Saturday and proceeded to move the piano out my side walk-out basement door. Once out the door, I loaded it onto a 2-wheel dolly with 13" tires and pulled it up my front yard to where the truck ramp awaited. Now I had to transfer the piano onto a four-wheel, flat dolly and figure out how in the heck I was going to get it up the truck ramp by myself.

What a time for a team of Mormon missionaries to show up! First they asked what I was doing (kind of obvious) and then asked if I could use their help. The 3 of us easily got this very nice, French povincial console piano up the ramp and into the truck. I had plenty of help waiting to offload at the other end.

I think I'm done moving pianos.

Zaphoon

 

[Al]

Either that or join the Mormon church and offer to hold meetings at your house when movers needed.

AL.

 

[Zaphoon]

I'm trying to upload a few photos of my house to help illustrate what I have to deal with. The pictures come out of my camera in bitmap format and its a pain to figure out how to change the format to jpeg or something else that will work.

 

[Al]

bitmap should work if they're less than 87kb.

AL.

 

[rocmg]

were they mormon or mennonites? a lovely mennonite lady helped me off the subway with my groceries once. they do that sort of thing pretty regular she told me. sorry Zaphoon -- you shouldn't feel any less special!

 

[rose]

Zaphoon,

If you go to Photo Gadget Pro (online) they have a free software (limited trial time) where you can easily resize photo's,change the format to or from jpeg, and many other features. I'm certainly not a computer wizard, so I've relied on this quite a bit over the last few years for resizing and sending photos to my family, etc. I think the full version only cost me about $14, and it was well worth it.

... nice story about the piano help. Piano movers actually moved ME one time! I was having a new piano delivered ~ gorgeous professional upright, ~ and I'd fallen down some stairs, shattered a leg. My (now ex) husband arrived home the same time they got there , and asked for the help (I'm not a big girl BTW) ... I don't think they charged extra, and I have no idea if he tipped them...

 

[brendapals]

wow, I love the moving story Kim-hard to decide what I want to contribute! and I love rose's story too!

I think I'll start with this one:

First of all, we moved to our farm in 1993. My husband had help moving my piano into our house, and he had several choice words to say about it too!

Now for the fun part-

Our water came from an old "cistern" in our back yard. I think it depended on rain to keep it filled up and we had a pump in the basement that pulled it in to our house. About a year into living here, my husband decided to replace some of the old pipes coming out of the cistern going into the house.

He had dug a hole about 3 ft deep, when he realized he had to repel himself INTO the cistern for some reason. He had all of the safety gear on and was working diligently in the middle of summer. It gets really hot and humid here in the summer too!

Two men of the mormon faith walked to our back yard and asked him how he was doing. I think he probably said something like "how the hell do you think I'm doing" and they gave him some reading material and politely left.

Now, our driveway is about 1 mile of gravel out to the main road, we live on 96 acres, so no one else was around, and my husband is 6ft 4in and weighs about 320 lbs. Imagine the "come to Jesus" feeling that those guys must have had that day!

We still laugh about it 16yrs later:lol::lol:

 

[Zaphoon]

Well, I managed to get a picture loaded of my house. You can see the side basement door (its how my basement qualifies as a "walk-out") and the slight hill I climb with a piano when I move them out. The hill is uneven which makes things a little more interesting.

Brenda, I can just picture your big husband in the heat of summer, lowered into your cistern when those 2 fellows asked him how he was doing. Very funny (now)!

Rose, I used a polaroid program, "Photo Impressions 5", to change the format of the photo from bitmap to JPEG and was able to upload it that way. My daughter has a digital polaroid and I have a chincy, stick-looking digicam of Chinese origin that is cruddy at best.

Anyway, if you click into my profile, you'll see my house now.

Zaphoon