Move moved moving our stove

[lkeriegrl]

We made the drive down yesterday--me and my younger daughter, Deirdre, plus sister and brother in law, who says he will not be taking any more trips with me until he gets his tetanus shot updated.

She was in the butler's pantry of this humongous old Victorian home in Pittsburgh. We had the choice of scooting her out the back door, down 5 steps and out a long walk to the alley, or around through the house, out the front, and down 3 sets of steps each 6 steps high. So we took her out the back!

I used the following supplies:
medium size flathead screwdriver.
pliers w/cutting blade
duct tape
ziploc sandwich bags
small notepaper pencil
large shopping bag like from buying a pillow
large canvas totebag
liquor case-type strong cardboard box
10-15 sheets of newsprint
1 twin size wool blanket
2 or 3 cotton flannel 'sheet blankets'
1 appliance dolly, 1 bungee cord
2 old rugs
an $8 package of furniture/appliance "sliders" purchased at Ace hardware

I removed all the 'moveable' parts: Burner grates x4
Burners x4,
Drip pans
Thermowell lid
?wrapped each in a piece of newsprint and placed into the large tote bag. There were double pans too. I put those separately into a plastic grocery bag.

Service cabinet door (4 screws, label and baggie)
Griddle
Oven racks
Broiler pan aka sizzling platter [img]wink.gif[/img]
?Heavy stuff wrapped in newsprint and stood on end in the beer case. Lighter stuff/racks I put in the giant bed bath and beyond bag.

I removed the bottom of the oven plate and placed it in the car.

I removed the oven burner, wrapped in paper and placed into the box as well.

removed the original light bulbs and placed them in a ziploc. you never know.

Then it was light enough to move away from the wall and get at the back.

This is a 15-B so I had to remove the high back to fit into my dad's GMC Safari van w/ the back bench sat removed. The back was attached with long torpedo-ey screws. It would have taken far less than the 1 hour 40 minutes we spent there if I had not deferred to my BIL who said those long torpedo-ey screws couldn't possibly be the ones for the silverlite back. We basically dismantled the entire back before we discovered, oh yes they are! We wrapped this piece in the softest sheet-blanket and placed it on top of the oven bottom in the car.

Wrapped one large sheet-blanket, folded, around the front side of the appliance dolley, secured it in place with the bungee cord. The sheet blanket did not cover the bottom flat scoop-part of the dolley.

Laid the wool blanket out on the floor to the left (oven side) of the stove. Here's where strong helpers came in. We walked the stove onto its left end, making sure it was entirely on the wool blanket, with some overlap. At this point the broiler control got kind of excited and sprung up uncontrollably. I guess i could have taken a minute to fold back the cover and tape the springy thing down, but instead we ran 3 big strips of duct tape over the cover from front to back to hold it in place.

We guided it onto the dolly shelf, making sure the wool blanket was folded up over the bottom corner. Ran the dolley strap around the back, bottom, and front of stove. made SURE it wasn't pinching any of the valves on the front. cinched down the strap, and wheeled it out of the house.

3 of us lifted it off the dolly and into the back of the truck. My dear sister placed the sliders under the leading end, which resulted in her being crushed between the stove and the bench seat, since the sliders worked so darn good.

I believe this process would have worked in reverse, but here's what actually happened. I pulled into the driveway Sunday night at like 8:30. My neighbors were out playing ******** and enjoying the fruits of their own day's labors brewing beer. They insisted that my dad and I not bother putting the stove into the garage until my husband, who is a cop, could be there with or without a dolly.
I should say that there may have been some multiplying effect of the alcohol, nieighborliness and manly bravado, but also the tallest of the group tested the weight of the stove by lifting the service cabinet end and proclaiming it "not that heavy." I tried to explain, but by then they had laid their sandbags aside and were crowding around unhinging the back barn doors of the van and were not to be dissuaded by my information about the oven side being triple-insulated and filled with rock-wool, etc.

The 4 or 5 of them picked it up, lofted it across the grass, ascended the few steps onto the porch, climbed the one more step into the house, and then basically staggered through the living room and into the kitchen, where they finally allowed the sliders to be placed under the legs. It was epic! Once in the house one of them did say the thing was heavier than at first thought, but the others were too strained to do more than grunt in agreement. So I don't know if Lori G. or whoever's moved 4 stoves with just two people did it with an appliance dolly, but if not?wow. Your chiropractor must be really happy.

That's my story from yesterday. Thanks to everyone who shared tips I could not have done this without your many suggestions as to how to get going. I just thought I'd post this as a new topic for future reference, since I wasn't too successful finding moving stories.

Oh, one more thing about removing the two doors. I Guess I didn't HAVE to remove the service cabinet door, but it made the stove a lot easier to handle since there was a big space to gar the edges of. And I did try to remove the oven door, given how much weight it represents. This was a bad idea for me. I tried to remove it the same way I did the service cab. door, but that just exposed its rock-wool innards. And I was sitting on the ground supporting the door with my knee, which out me much too close to the rock wool, even the small amount that came out on the screws. I can still feel that **** in my throat and am hoping the stoveman doesn't come back with the name of some lawyer organizing a rock-wool insulation class action lawsuit. It was only a few seconds, peeking into the door cavity two times, but it wasn't worth even what i hope is very short-term discomfort from breathing that.

[chipperhiker]

Yep, rockwool is not something to be taken lightly. It's nasty, nasty stuff to inhale. I got into it once, too.

Next time be sure you wear a full respirator - the kind that completely seals around your face and has replaceable filter/absorbant canisters. You want one that is rated for asbestos exposure. You can find them at Lowe's for about $40-45. Don't bother with a dust mask - it won't help. I was wearing one when I took apart my first oven door, back before I knew better. Big mistake...

Your stove may also contain asbestos panels below each of the porcelain side panels. All three of my stoves have them. Yuck. You'll want to be wearing that same respirator when you remove them.

Congratulations on your new stove.

-Jenn

[ha_asfan]

wonderfully thorough and descriptive. the rock wool contact sounds nasty...thank you for the tip ! was the victorian house fabulous, hidously rundown or somewhere in betweeen ? i just completed being the tour guide on four vintage trolley tours through our historic distric so i have stoves on the mind...each house we passed, i wondered what the original stoves were and i decided they must have been chambers !

[lkeriegrl]

Knock wood. There will no be a next time as far as exposing the innards of the rock-wool insulated panels. I have alot of faith in this stove that it will not need that sort of thing to get it working. Y'all may be about to set me straight.

As for my range's previous home, it is apparently on its way from lowly and rundown to ghastly overdoen "restoration". Like, the kitchen has its original beadboard cupboards, and the current owners are tolerating the unrehabbed-ness of it by having screwed immense, sleek modern, totally wrong stainless steel door pulls onto the front of every one. It was really strange?for more on this subject read "Modernizing the Vintage Kitchen Or How Best to Avoid Cognitive Dissonance in Design" [url="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/24/CMGFVBUSO91.DTL"]Modernizing the Vintage Kitchen[/url]

Tim and I realized that we and our new house were a match made in heaven once we started learning about the bungalow philosophy summed up in the quote from arts & crafts movement pioneer William Morris, to the effect that one must have nothing in one's house that you do not find beautiful or useful. That's been a good rule of thumb in unpacking boxes we haven't looked at in 3 years.

I appreciated the sensible and beautiful simplicity of my new home so much more after being in that house--I wanted to hug its bony lines when we got back.

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ May 08, 2006 11:15 PM: Message edited by: lkeriegrl ]</font>

[Joe Pieweed]

Thanks for the narrative: it's always good to know that there are many ways to skin a cat.

Beer and brawn... Sometimes it works. I assume that no milk glass spice shelves were harmed in the production of your move?

Also, the article on kitchens is great. Thanks for bringinging it to notice. I love the way our kitchen turned out: very close to the way it was originally layed out 94 years ago. But knowing then what I know now, I would have done some things differently.

Oh, and, welcome to the B's. You have been assimilated. All others will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Joe P

[lkeriegrl]

Jane Powell is the bane of my husband's existence. The B is so pretty. We opened the back door of the van and the neighbors--all guys--were like ooooh, wow. that's so pretty!

I was surprised at how small it was in person. Thinking about it now, I want to cuddle it, it's so small and perfect. Kinda like my little baby girl. Anybody have male stoves, or are they all female? Maybe mine can be a boy so my dh isn't so outnumbered.

[fatfutures]

Hey, I call mine... The Beast. Very unisex!