Basement Laundry Part III: Forearm Forklift

One of the particular challenges of this house is narrow passageways. For instance, the widest entrance to the backyard is 28.5 inches. (Try getting a back hoe through that.)

Inside the house there are tight corners and narrow stairways. Moving from room to room requires elevation changes and turns and winding around. "Wait, what floor are we on?" is a frequent query. There is no enfilade. The charm factor is through the roof, but so is the dread of the days you have to maneuver the relocation of large objects.

There are two ways to get to the basement. One requires you to go down the "servants' stair", the steep, narrow, secondary stairway at the back of the house. The other requires you to exit the house and re-enter through the back door, which opens directly to the basement. This back door is about 30" below grade. There is an approximately 3 ft x 3 ft x 30" deep hole in front of the door, with a little brick retaining wall holding back the earth.

Perfect for small people. Like gnomes.

Our best guess is that at some time in the past, there were wooden steps in this cavity, but for whatever reason, no such walking aid is present now.

So, which twisty turny, narrow route do we take to get two giant appliances into the basement?

The laundry room is not ready for its machines, but we would like to move the washer and dryer out of the 1st floor dining room and into the basement to await installation.

These are standard size machines: 27" being their narrowest dimension. So the narrow back stair, with the right angle entrance, never had a chance. In the only other option, the back door opening is too small, but if we take the bars off the door, we get a 27 3/4" passageway. And that will have to do.

The boxes wouldn't have fit, so we unboxed the machines and wrapped 'em in butcher paper.

And this is the part of the blog where I become a shill for the Forearm Forklift people.

There is a very particular sense of elation, energy, and freedom that is evoked by the finding of the perfect tool for an arduous job.

Don't get me wrong, these suckers were still heavy: particularly the washer. But unlike the scene during which the old, smaller, broken machines were removed from the basement (five people, a push cart, wrenches, ratchets, hammers, swearing), today's move, with our little As Seen On TV helpers resulted in zero damage to the house, zero damage to the machines, and zero damage to the movers.

It's the type of tool that makes you want to find other things to use it on, even if you don't need to. It's the giant axe, the super glue, the deep fryer of moving tools. I'm sure we'll be putting it to both good and frivolous use.

Now the laundry machines are one huge step closer to cleaning our clothes, and the fear of future furniture maneuvers is no longer crippling, nor are the maneuvers themselves.