Most piano moves go through the front door. This one went in through a first floor window, on the forks of a telehandler, with inches to spare under a stone arch. The whole lift is in the video below.
A repeat customer with a piano that belonged upstairs
The customer lives in Bretton, near the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and she had used us before. This time she wanted her Yamaha grand taking upstairs to a room on the first floor. Simple enough to ask for. The house had other ideas.
Why the stairs were never an option
We take grands up and down stairs every week, so the staircase is always the first thing we look at. A grand does not travel on its legs. The legs and pedal lyre come off, the piano goes over onto its straight side on a padded board, and it is walked up one step at a time. That works on a straight flight, and on most staircases with a proper landing, because a landing gives you somewhere to stop, reset and turn.
A curved staircase is a different thing. The treads narrow towards the inside of the curve, there is rarely anywhere to pause, and the full length of the piano has to swing round a turn that keeps on turning. Hers was curved and far too tight for a grand. There was no way round it that would not have damaged the piano, the staircase or both.
So the window came out
That left the window. The first floor room has a large arched window in the stone front of the house, and with it taken out there was an opening big enough for the piano to pass through. That is not a small undertaking and it is not a cheap one. Plenty of people would have settled for the piano staying downstairs. She went to the expense of having the window removed, because she wanted it in that room and there was no other way of getting it there.
Our part: getting the piano ready to fly
A piano that is going to be lifted through the air on a machine needs different preparation to one going up a staircase on a board. We supplied the materials and did the preparation. The legs and lyre came off, the piano was wrapped in blankets and strapped down to a pallet, and the bottom edge of the opening was covered so that nothing hard would meet the piano or the stonework as it came in.
The pallet does more work than it looks. Forks are made to carry pallets, not pianos. A piano set straight onto the tines would rest its whole weight on two narrow steel bars and could shift the moment the boom moved. Strapped to a pallet, it becomes one solid load of exactly the kind the machine was built for, and once it is inside the room it comes off the pallet onto the floor rather than being dragged off bare steel.
A local builder and a telehandler with a few years on it
The lift itself was done by a local builder, who brought along his telehandler. It is a machine that has seen a few years, and it did the job without any fuss. The window sits directly above the front door, in the same line of stonework, and a telehandler suits that kind of lift because the boom reaches forward as well as up. The machine can stand back from the house on firm ground and still set the load right into the opening, which a forklift, lifting straight up on its mast, cannot do.
The builder ran the machine and our crew worked the piano in from inside the room. With the arch where it is, the last few feet were slow and deliberate. You can see in the video how little room there was.
Back on its legs upstairs
Getting it through the window is only half the job. Once it was in, the piano came off the pallet, the legs and lyre went back on, the pedals were checked, and it was set in position in its new room.
One piece of advice we give after every move, and it applies twice over after a trip through the open air: leave the piano a few weeks before having it tuned. It needs time to settle to the temperature and humidity of its new room, and a tuning done straight away will not hold.
Working with Yorkshire Piano Logistics
You will find this job on the Yorkshire Piano Logistics site as well. YPL is our sister company, part of the same family business here in Huddersfield, and it looks after piano removals, disposal and storage right across Yorkshire. Bellwoods handles house removals and storage, and moves plenty of pianos too. Between the two names we have been moving pianos since 1977, and the business is now into its third generation, so a job like this one can come in through either door and still end up with the same people.
When a piano will not go through the door
A window lift makes a good video, but it is a last resort, not a first one. Nearly every piano we move goes in and out through the doors and up and down the stairs, including plenty that their owners were sure would never make it. Before anyone pays to have a window taken out, it is worth having a piano specialist look at the route. Our will it go page explains how we judge access, and the Bellwoods piano challenge shows how much tighter a gap a piano will pass through than most people expect.
If it genuinely will not go, a window is usually the next option. Whether it will work comes down to a handful of things:
- An opening big enough for the piano once the window is out, which often means the frame as well as the glass.
- Somewhere for the machine to stand, on ground firm enough to take it and close enough to reach.
- A machine with the reach for the job: a telehandler for a first floor window like this one, a crane for anything higher or further back.
- A builder or window fitter to take the window out and put it back. That part is not a job for a piano remover.
- Protection on the way in, for the piano, the sill and the room inside.
Our side is the piano: the preparation, the materials, working alongside whoever is running the lift, and putting the instrument back together at the other end.
Piano removals in Bretton, Wakefield and beyond
Bretton is a short run east of our base in Huddersfield, and we work right across West Yorkshire every week, as well as travelling nationwide for long-distance piano removals. Uprights, grands, baby grands, pianolas and organs, moved room to room, house to house, up the stairs or, now and again, through the window.
You can read more about our piano removals service, or get a price straight away with our free piano removal quote. Family-run in Huddersfield since 1977.