When we bought out new wood-burning stove a month ago, we left it at the store, thinking we would pick it up when it was ready to install at the house. A month later, we aren’t close to that point, so I decided to bring it home Friday.

Here it is in the bed of the pickup. That’s Chloe walking at the right side of the truck.

It had been strapped down for the hour drive back from the stove store, but at 300+ pounds, it is unlikely that it would have moved much on the trip.

Prior to this point, after trying to push the stove to lift one side, I had spent considerable time contemplating the problem of how to unload it by myself. I knew I couldn’t count on Chloe for any help. I briefly considered using my hand truck, but the lifting platform on the hand truck wouldn’t have provided sufficient support for the stove pallet. Besides, there was really no way I could have tilted the stove and hand truck back far enough to balance the stove over the wheels. And even if I could have done that, it was have been too unstable on the narrow hand truck. I didn’t even want to think about controlling 300 pounds as it rolled down the ramp.

So I decided to simply drag the stove out of the bed. In the photo above you can see the chain I connected to a winch, which was hooked to the trailer hitch on our little Kawasaki Mule. I used a big pry bar (which you can barely see above on the right side of the bed) to life the pallet and slide a couple of pieces of plastic “boards” under it. The winch pulled the stove towards the loading ramp to the point that I could push it myself. Then I made the fortunate decision to tie a safety rope on the stove to control its descent down the ramp. Here it is resting at the bottom of the ramp. I used plywood covers for the ramp.

This looks worse that it actually was, but it might have been a different story if I had not tied if off. About halfway down the stove tried to turn sideways. My safety rope caught it so I could guide it down. As you can see, the plastic boards came out from under the pallet.

I was able to walk the stove the rest of the way down until it was flat on the concrete. Then I pried it up to slip the plastic boards under the pallet again and pushed it into the garage. And here it is, not quite all the way in.

As of now it’s safely tucked in behind the Mule in the garage, where it will stay until it’s time to install it. I’ll use my trailer to haul it to the new house. It will be much (much!) easier to load and unload from the trailer.