230 kg grand piano down the spiral staircase

The enquiry came from the heirs. In an old flat in the third district, second floor, there is an old grand piano. The man who played it for decades is no longer alive. The family did not want to keep it, but they did not want to throw it away either, and there was already someone in the 20th district who wanted exactly this grand piano. The only question was: does it come out of the building undamaged? The stairwell is narrow and winding, and there is no lift.

I said what I always say: send me photos. The heirs were open and glossed over nothing: the grand piano from every side, the staircase from above and from below, the bend, the front door. And on those photos I saw that this time I would have to drive there myself.

Normally four or five photos are enough for me. With a narrow spiral staircase they are not, because no photo shows how much space really remains in the bend. So I drove there. The grand piano: 162 centimetres long, a small grand with Viennese action, built in 1890. After 135 years the wood is dry, and the cast iron plate is built lighter than in a modern grand, because it was designed differently back then. Together around 230 kilos, considerably less than you would think looking at such an instrument.

The staircase: stone steps, winding, narrow on the inside and wider on the outside, a handrail on the wall, on the half landing a window in the niche. I measured the narrowest point, pictured the grand piano on its edge, without legs, without lyre, without lid, and did the arithmetic. It works. Only just, but it works. No stair climber, because it cannot work on a spiral staircase. No crane, because no window fits. Two men, a grand piano board, straps, and for every bend a plan for exactly where the grand piano will stand.

In the first case I wrote that a narrow spiral staircase is the limit beyond which the machine comes. That is true, for a large, heavy grand piano. This one was just under the limit, and I knew that before the day, not on the day.

We were on time, the two of us. First the grand piano in the flat: lid off, on such an instrument that is the largest part you can remove, and in the bend every kilo less counts. Then legs off, lyre off, the grand carefully tipped on its side and mounted on the grand piano board, the padded carrying board you see in the video. Blanket over it, film over it, tension straps, tight. Before that, sleeves up and muscles warmed up. That is not a saying: with 230 kilos on a spiral staircase a cold back is the most common injury.

Then the staircase. One below, with his back to the bend, one above, both with carrying straps over the shoulders, so that the weight hangs in the back and in the legs and not in the arms. Two, three steps, stop, turn the grand piano in the bend, carry on. That is slow, and it is meant to be. On a straight staircase you carry. A grand piano on a spiral staircase is carried and turned at the same time, and every turn is a place where it could touch the wall. It did not. Not the wall, not the handrail, not the window. From the flat door to the van, including dismantling and packing, around 30 minutes.

Downstairs the corridor with the vaulted ceiling and the old tiles, then the front door, then the van. On the dolly through the gate, pushed into the van, lashed down once more. The heirs watched. I will say it plainly: sometimes a day like this is sad. It is not only a piece of furniture leaving the building, it is a piece of a person.

The video says: today not a transport, a farewell. For the family that is what it was. For the grand piano it was a beginning. An hour later it stood in the 20th district, on the ground floor, without a single step, with a person who wanted exactly this instrument and had been waiting for it. That is the part you do not see in the video, and the reason why we work this way: we do not throw away. We accompany.