Piano and gun-safe moving
Gather a couple of buddies and a rented dolly to shift a piano or a gun safe, and what you’ll usually end up with is a cracked instrument and a wrenched back; hired day-labor does no better. These jobs go to Tony Pisano instead. After years on heavy safes and instruments, he’s the one who can carry a baby grand down two flights of a tract staircase and out the new front door without a mark, case clean and wall untouched. The wrap, the board work, the slow careful rolling are his to run; the price gets fixed in writing; and from the first lift to the final placement, no hands but our crew’s ever touch the straps.
Pieces he takes on
Heavy and genuinely valuable usually means it’s on Tony’s list. Uprights and consoles, baby grands, the full concert instruments, and those massive old player pianos that settled into a family room a generation ago, all of them qualify. Gun safes make the cut too, the half-ton-and-up sort that has to be worked down a turning stairwell and angled through a narrow Oakley doorway.
Safely down a flight
Nothing here gets improvised. The wrap and the shrink come first, and depending on the instrument the lid, lyre, and legs are either padded or taken off. Then the weight comes to rest on a strapped piano board that rolls along the flat runs and gets brought down each flight a step at a time. A turning two-story staircase allows no margin at all, so before a hand goes on the piece the crew walks and maps every landing. Safes ride that same rated rigging, and at no point does anyone shove them by hand. Once at the destination, the piece is leveled and set down on whatever spot you choose.
| Piece | Typical flat rate |
|---|---|
| Upright piano | $450 to $700 |
| Baby grand | $800 to $1,300 |
| Gun safe (by weight) | Quoted on weight and stairs |
The stairs are the job
If we’re honest, the stairs are what bring on the call. The two-story staircases around Oakley and Brentwood tend to run narrow and turn hard at the landing, and bringing a baby grand down one is work for a mover who’s logged a hundred carries like it. That’s Tony, and he plots the route before a finger lands on the instrument.
One flat written price
You decide whether the piano is quoted by itself or folded into the figure for the entire move. Either route, the number is in your hands before the truck arrives, and the people working the instrument are the same crew minding everything else in the house.
