So i'm at a friends house today, helping to deliver a very large, very heavy framed mirror, 45" wide, 72" tall. ooooff.

get it brought in, unwrapped, set in place. she'a happy. well, almost.

in the opposite corner of the room is a free standing, 72" high, 3 section mirror on little wheels. she wants that one gone.

there is a full length piano hinge connecting the 3 parts (left, center, right, each about 18" wide).....

but, here is where it gets good:

whoever built this, attached the piano hinges to sections of 3/4" plywood, and then glued the mirror sections to the plywood. but they did it in such a manner that you cannot fully fold the mirror sections either back to back (plywood to plywood), nor face to face (mirror to mirror), so you'd have some chance of either storing it away, or transporting it to a new home. if you try back to back, the edges of the plywood bind and prevent more than about 90 degrees of bend. if you try face to face, the edges of the mirror bind, and one already had a crack in the edge.

there was no way to remove the hinges, as their screw heads were hidden under the glued on mirror sections, and no way to remove the mirrors from the plywood without destroying the mirrors; pretty sure it was common construction adhesive.

so please, when you build something, think ahead, how can someone move or fix this, or take it apart if needed.

sigh.

A former co-worker had been a Navy pilot for a number of years in the '60s and '70s. He said there was a saying they used P^7 -- Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

Oh, and I'm reminded of a job I did once for one of my moving/delivery company customers. They were moving a woman from one small home to another. There was a large armoire in a room at the end of a hall. The movers even tried removing the door frame to get it out. But I could not make the turn onto the hallway (then down the steps). I got there and took the top half off. That enabled them to get it all out and I got called back a few days later to reassemble in another small (19th century urban house) home.

The same company moved me to my current house. I had a 350 lb jointer/planer combo in my basement workshop. They got it up the steps and it would not fit thru the door. They asked if the chip chute would come off. No. Then, standing there they said they were not able to get out. Well, it got in there 20 years earlier. I told them to put it thru like they would a sofa, run the side with the chute thru at and angle, straighten it out, and then go. Got it.

many years ago i designed and built a standing desk for my BIL. i'm about 1/2 done with it, working in my then basement shop, and i paused....uh oh, when assembled, it will be taller, wider, and deeper than the door frame out of the basement. crap. no matter how you turned it, it wasn't going to fit if i kept going, it was all mortise and tenon joinery, no screws or bolts that you could undo later.

move everything up to the garage, continue work, get it done, and they later picked it up to take home to their house in CT (we were in MD then). they rented a minivan and took the seats out.