The soapstone arrived in a semi truck on Monday. The driver hopped out of the car and immediately said to Matt, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” Matt thought he meant “I don’t know how we’re going to move this into your house just the two of us.” But what the guy REALLY meant was, “I don’t even have the right equipment to get this nearly 800 pound monstrosity off the truck.”
So I put on my thinking cap and came up with The Plan. The driver would take the soapstone back to the warehouse 10 minutes away, and hold it there til Wednesday when we could come by with a U-Haul truck. They could then load the soapstone onto our truck with their machine, and we would disassemble the wooden frame and cut up the soapstone right on the truck to make smaller slices that Matt and I could carry into the house. You think I’m good for nothing around here except painting yellow stripes on the walls, don’t you! WELL, THINK AGAIN!
So here is pictorial evidence of how our Wednesday went down.
At ABF to pick up the slabs
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U-Haul pulls through in the clutch
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The nice ABF guy loads up our pallet onto his thinger
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| From Daily Daguerreotype |
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Nearly 800 pounds of awesomeness
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He posed for me on this one
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She’s in!
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| From Daily Daguerreotype |
Here are the two slabs standing upright in their wooden casing
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| From Daily Daguerreotype |
They sent some samples so Matt could practice cutting. Very nice gesture.
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| From Daily Daguerreotype |
At home after disassembling one half of the wooden casing. Taking that apart was actually tougher than cutting and moving the soapstone itself. I left most of this work to Matt and happily stood there holding tools for him.
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Our two slabs!
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| From Daily Daguerreotype |
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Matt putting the diamond blade on the circular saw
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Tape on the bottom of the saw to prevent scratching the soapstone
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The last picture before my camera battery died… right before Matt made the first cut.
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| From Daily Daguerreotype |
Matt actually only had to make one cut, because the other pieces were light enough for us to lift them. So the remainder of the cutting will happen on Countertop Installation Day, which I believe is fast-approaching! All in all, the whole process was easier than expected, since much of the weight was in the wooden pallet and casing. Once that was removed, it was easy as pie!
But I am taking today off. Ya know… to recuperate. 
October 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
her rayyy!!! exciting moments in the kitchen-caper!!