Tips For Moving A Piano Across Hardwood Floors

 

A piano is a perfect accompaniment to a family home, it can bring endless hours of pleasure and fun whether you’re a seasoned piano player or an enthusiastic amateur. One thing for sure about a piano is that it will impress anyone who visits your house, attracting the eye not only to the musical instrument itself, but also to its surroundings. A well maintained hardwood floor is just as pleasing to the eye, making it an ideal location to site your piano. What looks far less impressive, of course, are scratch and scuff marks that can easily be left behind when moving a piano across and onto a hardwood floor. If you’re worried about moving home with a piano, and moving it across hardwood flooring in the process, then here are some useful tips to help you create a scratch free move.  

Don’t Be Afraid To Call In The Professionals

Arranging and carrying out your own house move can not only save you money, it can bring a great sense of achievement as well. It’s important, however, that you recognise your limits, and moving a piano can be one of them. Pianos pose two physical problems during a removal process: they are very heavy, and their uneven shape can make them cumbersome and difficult to lift. For this reason it can make sense to call in removal professionals if you are moving home with a piano, and especially if you are trying to transport a piano up and down stairs. It can be worth searching on the internet for removal firms who are experienced in piano moving, or even asking for a recommendation from your local music store. If moving a piano a shorter distance, from room to room for example, then it is certainly something you could consider doing yourself if you take the necessary precautions.  

Never Push Your Piano On Its Casters

Your piano has casters, so you must be able to push it right? Unfortunately that’s wrong as you could easily find out to its cost. The casters on a piano can be used to manoeuvre its position slightly, a matter of a few centimetres, but they are not designed to be used to push the piano for any discernible distance. If you try this, there are two possible outcomes. The first is that the casters may collapse under the piano’s weight or the piano can pitch forwards and may even fall over completely causing irreparable damage. The other possibility is that the casters remain in place but destroy your hardwood floor. Hardwoods are defined as trees that are not evergreen, as pines and firs are. Typical examples are oak, teak, walnut, and mahogany. Their timber makes very beautiful flooring material but it can easily be scratched and damaged by the abrasive action of piano casters being pushed across it. Once the scratches are in they are very difficult to cover up, especially when in sunlight.  

Lifting The Piano

You can now appreciate that the piano cannot be pushed over a hardwood floor on its casters so what is the alternative? There are two possible ways to move a piano across a hardwood floor and the first is by lifting it. This ideally needs a team of four strong people. Be prepared to take the strain and lift with the knees, because the piano will be much heavier than you expect. A team of four allows two people to lift and two others to guide, as well as allowing the roles to be swapped during the move. Even so, it’s unlikely that the piano could be lifted cleanly all the way. For this reason, caster cups or covers should be used to cover up the potentially harmful casters. This allows the piano to be lifted for short distances at a time without scratching occurring  

Using A Furniture Dolly

The second way to move a piano across a hardwood floor is through the use of a furniture dolly. These can be rented by the day, and allow you to lift the piano onto the dolly and then pushed. Obviously the piano will need to have its casters and ideally its legs removed first before being lifted onto the dolly. The wheels on furniture dollys are designed to be kinder to hardwood floors, but even so great caution should be exercised when using them to transport a heavy object across such a surface. For this reason the lifting method outlined above is the recommended solution, allowing you to play your favourite music again in a new room or even a new home.