Redneck Moving Crew

I wish I had taken a picture yesterday.

Background. My parents have added another person to their office staff at our business. The new person really needed an actual desk, not a table to work at.

Our house is a big old farmhouse. Upstairs there are 4 bedrooms, plus a 5th bedroom suite type area that was originally for the hired hand on the farm, complete with a separate set of stairs. A BIG house.

In one of the bedrooms upstairs, which used to be my room when I was younger, we had an old bankers desk. 5'x3' top on it. Since this is now one of the two spare bedrooms, the folks decided to take this desk out of the house to the business.

So, yesterday Dad and I set to the task of moving the desk. At first we figured just pick the desk up and move it. So we lifted and headed for the door. No dice. Too heavy to spend time manipulating. New plan. Take the top off. Out comes the cordless drill and driver bits.

20 minutes later, the top is off, down the stairs and to the truck. Along with the drawers. Pick the desk up and head for the door again. Damn. Too wide.

Turn onto its side.

No dice.

Trying rolling the desk 180 degrees. Still. No dice.

I ask dad, "Did you measure this thing before we started?"

Dad: "No."

Me: "Okay, lets set this thing down and think about this for a second."

We put the desk down.

Me: "How the hell did we get this thin in here?"

Dad: "I don't know. That was 15 years ago."

Me: "Why don't we take it out the window onto the porch roof?"

Dad: "I don't think it will fit."

Me: "I bet it will. Got a tape measure?"

Dad leaves and comes back with the tape measure. Measure the body of the desk. "21 inches"

I take the tape measure and check the window. "22-1/2 inches."

Dad: "Is the window all the way open?"

Me: "Yes."

We each get on a side and lift the desk up and start moving it through the window. When the desk was about half way through the window Dad says "One of us should have been outside for this."

Me: "I said that before we started."

Dad: "You balance the desk while I climb out the window."

Dad climbs out the window and we set the desk on the roof.

Me: "I'll go get the loader."

Dad: "It's in the machine shed. The ground should be dry enough to drive right up to the roof edge."

I go out to the machine shed, move the farm truck and start the farm loader.

The loader is the same one we use for all the general farm tasks you would use a loader for. Leveling gravel, loading silage for cattle feed, moving bales of hay or cornstalks, loading manure into the spreaders, which is what covers most of the surfaces and tires. It just so happens that the loader has the bale forks on the bucket and from the looks of the streaks on them, the last thing they did was to put a bale into one of the feed lots.

I pull out of the shed and drive across the yard. Raise the bucket and forks up to the roof and dad slides the desk onto the forks. I back up and set the desk into the grass and take the loader back to the shed. And then, instead of moving the truck to the desk, we carry the desk around the house down near the garage.

The unloading was not nearly as eventful. Stupid desk actually fit through all the doors at the office, and it is all on the ground level. Pretty boring.