Once all the steps have been traversed using the cheat and the piano is safely standing on top of the steps, again it must be mounted onto the dolly. For upright pianos, this dolly mount and every dolly mount will depend upon the consideration of the number of consecutive stairs to be further encountered in the remaining move path. If there will be 1 step or less on the move path, put the upright piano up onto the dolly on it's feet. If there will be more than 1 step, put the upright piano up onto the dolly on it's side. For grand pianos always mount them on the piano skidboard on the dolly.

CARRYING A PIANO OVER MORE THAN 4 CONSECUTIVE STEPS

If there are too many consecutive steps at any given point in the move path these tip and lift - cheat techniques will not work. More than 4 low consecutive steps in the move path automatically dictates to the crew that they must carry the piano.

Notice in the picture below that the first step has been cheated with the dolly and just 3 more steps are well covered by the piano's bottom. The 4th step that it could reach would not be covered enough for a safe cheat and in this case there is even one more step above that one so this crew will absolutely have to carry this piano in order to to traverse all the steps.

Carrying the piano up / down stairs is the most dangerous part of piano moving and this is the reason why we try to convince you to not move your piano yourself. Once the piano is being carried, even if it is only being raised or lowered 1 or 2 steps at a time, it can very easily go out of balance and get away from the crew causing terrible things to happen very, very rapidly resulting in severe injury and / or piano damage. So please pay close attention to that part of the website's instruction about actually carrying the piano. For now we will just stay general in our discussion about how-to-move your piano.