how the Dutch move a Longarm

to the 10th floor of an apartment

When confronted with the size of my longarm sewing machine, people often ask how it ever came into the building. Fortunately, it comes apart into lots of pieces. You can even watch it being assembled for the first time, when we still lived in South Carolina.

But, some of those pieces are super long. The main bars are 3.5 meters or 138 inches long, and the triple bar is not only that long, but also too heavy for one man to carry. So, yeah, my longarm always presents a challenge when moving house.

This is my new apartment building! I live on the 10th floor, but on moving day we simply used the elevator for everything, from furniture to boxes. Except the longarm bars, which I figured would go up the stairwell. Ahem.

Well friends, the first bar went up the stairwell, but it was too long to turn the corner to come into the apartment foyer. So down it went again, to my utter dismay. Have I bought an apartment where I can’t work? Oh my gosh, what have I done!

These are all the pieces that we couldn’t get into the apartment ourselves. While I tried not to panic, Floris starting making phone calls. Within about 20 minutes he had found a crane that would do the heavy lifting a few days later.

Did I want to know the price? Well, I figured anything would be cheaper than moving again. :/

Here is my rescuer in action! Jeroen from Maathuis Kraanverhuur worked quickly and confidently, sending these heavy polls flying up to my 10th floor balcony.

Where he and Floris caught them and brought them straight into the sewing room (aka living room).

The whole thing was over in less than an hour, all those long pieces lying neatly stacked and ready to be assembled for just 500 euros. Totally worth it.

I guess everyone knows I’m here now ;).

Maybe the fact that I can’t even move the longarm out of the apartment myself will help me stay put, do you think? Oh my gosh, I SO want to stay put for years and years. Somebody glue me to the floor.

And my longarm is working!