Moving gun safes up stairs sucks.
Total damage: One sore back for the brother-in-law, I couldn’t make a fist with my left hand for a few hours, one corner taken out with the combo-dial and one bump made in the sheetrock with the dolly handle. Also, apparently, my reputation for guessing weight (I was told multiple times that my estimation of 400lbs for each of the safes was low).
But, now I’m going to go disassemble the blogging desk and bring it over here so that I can reassemble the complete RNS Blogstation Tacoma voodoo-console.
In news that actually matters, William “Cold Cash” Jefferson was dropkicked by the people of Louisiana. Add Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao to the list of freshmen Congressmen.
Bleh. Reason #1 of why I want a house with a basement…
I still have the foam covers for the safe handle and dial that came with my safes, for just such an occasion.
Don’t know if they’re available to rent, but when we bought our safe from Northwest Safes, the hand truck they used to deliver it had a nifty stair-climber device, a motor mounted low on the back (“you”) side, with two drive belts, each of which had feet that would lift the whole shebang up standard stair height.
I’ve tried describing it before, and really wish I’d made a video of the thing working…
Linoge, I hired a safe-mover who shoed up with TWO of those machines. the one he used was for small-to-medium size safes, the other was for HUGE safes. Up a short flight of outside stairs, then the inside stairs with their right angle turn, then three more tight right angle turns before the final resting place in my gun closet.
He carged me just $100 bucks, but his maximum fee was only $250.
It’s the only way to go!
I moved a 700lb 48 gun vault into my office by myself a few months back; but thankfully my office is on the first floor, and I know how to move heavy items (I spent summers as a teen as a furniture mover for a while).
Of course being an ex-powerlifter and all around man mountain doesn’t hurt 😉
Actually, the hardest part wasn’t moving it, it was getting the pallet off.
I can’t imagine how much of a PITA it would have been to move this sucker up stairs. Between the weight and the sheer size, I think it would need a hoist and a hole in the wall.
Re: Hole in the wall. Most of the houses in Europe that are over 100 years old (lots of them) have one HUGE window in the center of each floor, right under the gable, which usually has a fixture for attaching a pulley-sheave. Carpenters would remove the window, and large items (pianos, etc) could be moved in and out of them from the street.
This is an example of pre-Industrial Age tech that is still in use.
I had to move two gun safes upstairs a while back. They were 16 guns each. I was able to take the doors off, but they were still a bitch.
700 lbs? That’s my lightweight safe.
The big one weighs in somewhere between 3500-4000.
http://www.graffundersafes.com
And your tax dollars pay to move the beast every 2-3 years. I love the Army!