Wednesday, November 10, 2010

3156 Such a pretty table, but....

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

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Please, World, learn the difference between "peek" and "peak". They are NOT the same word!

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Monday afternoon I headed north, and Monday night and Tuesday morning I loaded the van with more stuff to bring to the new house.

The first thing loaded Monday evening was the marble table. Other than the houses and vehicles, it's probably the heaviest thing I own. The top is somewhere around 42 inches in diameter, and 1.5 inches thick, and solid marble, colored marble inlay over a solid marble slab. It sits (rather frighteningly loosely) on a ceramic base. I want to use it as a breakfast table.
I suspect the base was once a plant stand, and the table once had wrought iron legs or something, and somewhere along the line they got married, as they say in the antiques game, and in the interests of liability reduction I may have to divorce them, but ... anyway ... back to the story, The Hairless Hunk wrestled it from my basement, around the corner of the house, up the hill, and to the van. Amazing.

So far, I've had three men help me move it. The first move was from the auction house to the Suzuki, where the top leaned on edge in the back seat for several weeks because I couldn't get it out of the car myself. The second move was from the car to the basement, through the basement SGD, when the auction house guy delivered a chest after the next auction, and I asked him to help me get it out of the car. It lived in my basement for a year or so. The third move was from the basement to the minivan Monday evening. The Hairless Hunk was working in his yard when I went past on my way to the old house, and I asked him if he would help me.

The flippin' thing must weigh almost 200 lbs. I can support almost 100 lbs if I can rest it on the top of my thighs, so with another person I can help to move it, and in every case I've asked these guys to help me - and in every case they've insisted on doing it themselves. Testosterone overload, I guess.

So, anyway, we laid it flat on the open center floor of the van, and then I packed everything else on top of it, and drove back to the new house last night. This afternoon Daughter helped me unload the van, but the table top is still out there.

I suggested that maybe when Hercules got home from work, the three of us could bring it into the house, but she said no way. Without having heard my experience with men "helping", she, being smarter than I, said that if we involved Hercules, he'd insist on doing it himself, and she's not too happy with that idea. He's strong and healthy, but he's a marathoner-type athlete, not a weightlifter. He sits at a desk when he's not running up and down stairs. But being idiot male, he'll try anyway.

Yeah, that's the way it seems to work.

I need to find several people, all at once, either all females or a group with a minimum of two males. At the moment, I don't have the faintest idea who or how. I think I'm going to be hauling it around in the van for a while.

Sigh.
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4 comments:

the queen said...

I know I always have to "rest a minute" when I am involved in moving something heavy, so that just makes it slower and more painful. Plus the guy prbably feels like he has to worry about hurting the furniture and hurting me by knocking me down with the furniture. It would be like my mom helping me move furniture.

~~Silk said...

BTW - I do have hand trucks, one here and one at the old house, but they don't really help because the slab has to go sideways through doorways, and the hand truck wheels don't do that. Plus, it has to be lifted onto the hand truck, then onto the base.

Daughter suggested that we might be able to roll it into the house, which is actually a good idea if we can pad the edges or the path sufficiently, but I'm not ready to go that route because I'm worried about chipping or loosening the edge. It's separate pieces of marble "glued" to the mail slab.

~~Silk said...

Uh, that should be "main slab".

Anonymous said...

I think I mentioned before that we have recently moved. I used a desk chair (the type without arms) to move some things. It helped me when nothing else seemed to work (including helpers).