(Did you miss part 1? Catch up here)
It only took me a couple of days or so of thinking to determine that our best course of action at this point was to use the impressive box that this stinking mirror was delivered in as a template. 180 pounds of reflective glass is hard to maneuver in so many ways. A large piece of cardboard? Notsomuch.
While the man was at work, I set to it. After slicing up the spare pieces of box to put out with the garbage, I lay one side on the floor and measured out my mirror-sized square. Several minutes of cutting produced a brown-paper rectangle the size of my car.
** the template, labeled, of course **
It was actually rather easy to tilt the thing sideways (opposite of how the movers had it tilted) and shift up the first set of stairs. The problem arose, however, when one corner reached the landing and bumped into the rear wall before the top of the mirror cleared the first floor ceiling. I then tried to tilt the mirror in the opposite direction (the way the movers had it tilted), and ended up stuck in the same spot as the movers.
After plopping on the steps for several minutes and racking my brain, I measured the space between my banister and ceiling- four and a half inches! Easily enough to accommodate the three and a half inch depth of my mirror! I lifted my template from the sofa up and over my railing onto the second floor landing. It was cake from that point to rotate up the second flight of steps and quickly into my bedroom.
I celebrated too quickly, it seemed. Bryan got home, and after a quick analysis of the mirror’s depth while on an angle, we determined that and up-and-over would not solve our problem.
Our gorgeous, giant mirror remains propped up against our dining room wall, now shrouded by a same size cardboard cutout. At the very least, the bigger-than-Joyce box is out of the house, and I’m free to vacuum up the tiny particles of styrofoam that were trapped inside, and consequently scattered everywhere.
The plan now is to remove our banister, shove the mirror up onto the then-exposed second floor landing, and take her the rest of the way to her new home.
