#HTE

Brilliant Trick for Carrying Full Sheets of Plywood

Soon I’ll be moving house, from city to country. Here in the city, I live 3.5 blocks from the nearest lumberyard; if I need 4x8 sheets of plywood, I make a phone call, go about my business and they’ll later drop off in front of my door. But I have investigated the rural location and the nearest lumberyard is a 25-minute drive, meaning delivery is presumably prohibitively expensive. So I’d have to pick up myself, a minimum time commitment of one-hour-plus.

Which begs the question, ought I bring my considerable stash of raw materials with me on the move? Which then got me thinking, what’s the best way to carry a plywood? Probably the clever Gorilla Gripper ($30) or Handle on Demand ($11), both of which we wrote about here. (Note that the HOD, however, only works on sealed sheets of plywood.)

The Gorilla Gripper seems a worthwhile purchase…unless you stumble upon this clever trick, as I just did:

Illustration by Narda Lebo / This Old House

That tip, which comes from This Old House, calls for a length of rope 18 to 20 feet in length. I’d say it’s ergonomically inferior to the Gorilla Gripper–the rope trick requires you use your non-carrying hand to steady the sheet–but it is cheaper, particularly if you’ve already got rope lying around (and I do). I’ll probably try both methods and report back to you.