Piano removals
Uprights, baby grands and grands, moved nationwide. Everything about the day is set by the route out — which is why we measure it before anyone quotes or lifts.
A piano is the item people worry about most and the one they describe least usefully. "It's an upright, it's in the front room" tells us almost nothing. What we need is the way out: how wide the hall is at its tightest, what the staircase does, whether there is a step at the door, and where a van can stand.
Get that right and a piano move is calm and unremarkable. Get it wrong and it becomes the story everybody tells for years.
Tall, narrow front to back, and top-heavy.
Travels on its castors onto a piano board or skates, strapped upright, quilted at the corners and across the casework. The top-heaviness is the whole risk — an upright that starts to tip does not stop, which is why nobody stands downhill of one.
Goes down stairs on a board with the weight held from above, never carried. A standard straight flight is routine. A turn with a low ceiling is where the assessment earns its keep.
Long, wide, and awkward until it is in pieces.
Legs and lyre come off, the lid is secured, and the case goes onto its side on a padded skid board. Assembled in a room, dismantled to leave it, and rebuilt at the other end — that sequence is not optional.
On its side on a skid, controlled from above. The width of the case against the width of the staircase is the deciding measurement, and it is taken at survey rather than guessed.
Light by comparison, fragile in a different way.
Not a heavy job, but the key bed and the action still dislike being carried by the ends. Boxed or blanketed, and it travels flat rather than on edge.
A two-person carry in almost every case. Genuinely a man-and-van job rather than a piano one.
At survey
Photographs and a video walk-round cover most piano jobs. Anything with a difficult turn gets a visit, because a tape measure beats a phone camera on a half-landing.
Put it where it is going to live rather than where it will fit for now — against an internal wall if you can, away from a radiator and out of direct sun. Then leave it alone for a while. A piano that has just been through a temperature change and a van journey will not hold a tuning, and tuning it too early simply means paying twice.
When you do book a tuner, tell them the piano has moved. They will want to know.
Then it is one job. The piano gets its own assessment inside the house move, and the crew on the day is sized for it rather than for the room count. Other heavy pieces — safes, range cookers, gym kit — are covered on heavy item removals.
Long-distance moves load differently for a piano, because motorway miles and a heavy item that has shifted are a bad combination. Same crew at both ends.
Usually. The turn, the headroom above it and the width at the narrowest point decide the method — a board with the weight held from above, a temporarily removed handrail, or occasionally a window lift where the building allows one. We measure at survey. If a particular instrument genuinely will not come out that way, you hear it then.
Enough that nobody is taking more than their share, which for most uprights means four plus someone directing. A firm sending two people to an upright on stairs is a firm about to damage either the piano or a person. Crew size is on the written quote.
Almost certainly, and that is normal rather than a sign anything went wrong. Pianos react to movement and to a change in room humidity and temperature. Let it settle in its new room before you book a tuner — a tuner will tell you how long they want for the room in question.
Yes. Legs and lyre off, lid secured, case onto its side on a padded skid, and rebuilt at the other end. It is a more involved job than an upright and it is priced as one.
Often, and it is a harder question than bringing one down because gravity stops helping. The route gets the same assessment plus a look at what the first-floor room sits on — a piano is concentrated weight in a small area.
We will say so. Plenty of old uprights are worth less than the job of shifting them, and if yours is one of those you deserve to know before you commit rather than after. That is your decision, but it should be an informed one.
Yes, on the European routes. A piano changes how a vehicle is loaded for a long run and needs its own line on the customs inventory, so it is flagged at survey rather than folded into a carton count.
Goods-in-transit cover applies and the limits are in the booking terms. Instruments of unusual value should be declared at survey so they are properly accounted for rather than treated as ordinary household furniture.
Two photographs — one from the room, one from the front door looking back — and we can tell you most of what you want to know.