People badly misjudge a piano. The thing weighs far more than its frame suggests, its load slung low and off-center, with delicate action and a cast-iron plate tucked under the lid, and a value that no bathroom scale could ever hint at. Hand one to a general crew and dents and grief usually follow. This instrument is the entire reason Nathan Roark founded Checkmate, after years on a Colorado Springs dealer’s delivery floor, so what the piano crew brings to the curb is built for the work: a padded skid board lashed snug, thick quilting, heavy-duty straps, a piano dolly, and a stair-climber that walks the weight down one step at a time, through the stretch where planning beats raw muscle. Folks around the Springs phone in and ask for the piano crew by name the moment a grand, an upright, or a church organ enters the conversation.
Anything with keys is ours to handle. Uprights, consoles, spinets, baby grands, the full nine-foot concert grand, player pianos, plus pipe and electronic organs headed for a church or school. With a grand, we disassemble it correctly, removing and wrapping the lyre and the legs, lowering the case onto the skid board and securing it, then bracing the whole assembly before it ships. An upright gets strapped and counter-weighted against its own mass so it cannot wrench loose halfway down a stairwell. Many a Broadmoor estate has a concert or baby grand parked inside, and the thin dry air up here nudges a piano off pitch, so one thing is fixed: it shows up tuner-ready, and not a single rail, doorframe, or floorboard collects a scuff. An organ rides in that same careful hold, its console and pedalboard treated as their own units.
Stairs, blind corners, and the Broadmoor estates
Almost none of the hazard lives at the tailgate. It is at the doorway sill, the half-turn where a split-level staircase doubles back, and the cramped passage of an Old North End four-square where a bay window pens the instrument against the wall. No lifting starts until the crew has mapped the route, every corner, every handoff, every surface the case will brace against. In a downtown high-rise off Cascade, we book the freight elevator and pad its walls ahead of any work. These movers are on Checkmate’s payroll and learned the trade under Nathan, so whoever guides a 900-pound concert grand down a flight has genuinely done it before.
Where we are straight with you on these
Two honest notes. Though the instrument shows up tuner-ready, tuning itself is not on our menu; a piano shifts slightly after the bumps of a move and the few days it takes to settle into the dry Springs air, and a local technician finishes that part. And we will not quote a brutal staircase without seeing it, since the clearance at each end drives both the method and the price.
What a piano or organ runs
The flat written figure rides on the instrument plus the clearance at each end. Roughly speaking, an upright tends to come in near $280–$450, a baby grand closer to $500–$800, a full concert grand around $750–$1,300, and an organ within the $350–$650 range; for anything jammed up against tight stairs or a high-rise, we set the figure after walking it. Book it by itself or make it the centerpiece of a full-home move; either way, $1M of cargo coverage tags along.
Need a piano or organ relocated around the Pikes Peak region? Phone (888) 711-4778 for a quote on the instrument plus the staircase it has to clear.
What Checkmate Brings
- Checkmate's own trained piano crew, never a borrowed general team
- A snug-lashed skid board, thick quilting, and heavy-duty straps
- A stair-climber walking the weight down one step at a time on a split-level
- A grand correctly disassembled, its lyre and legs removed and wrapped
- The case lowered onto the skid board and braced ahead of the trip
- Rails, doorframes, and flooring shielded the whole way through
- A fixed written figure resting on the instrument and the clearance at each end
What You'll Pay
Local crews from $130/hr — or a flat written rate
Two-mover crew, the truck, pads, and dollies all included.
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