Pretty Piano

Well, it is day 10 of this blogging for a month thing. And I'd say so far it is going very well. :-) I have a super busy weekend coming up though, so fitting in three blog posts over the next three days is going to be tricky to say the least. But, I am committed! I feel like this goal is like going it alone in euchre - it's all or nothing. Once I miss one day, I am done! :-) So I've been working hard to make the time to write up at least a quick blog, because I have a serious allergy to failure. :-)

So yesterday I finally got around to something that has been bugging me for a while. When we bought Wendhurst Castle the previous owners left us their piano. Which I was supremely excited about. And then I found out that it was super out of tune. And that it would be over a hundred dollars to bring it back into tune. And so we didn't worry about tuning it for the first two years. I was busy with other major house projects that didn't leave a lot of time for piano playing.

The strange thing about this piano is that the top had been removed and replaced with a large piece of wood, topped with a huge piece of glass. Oh, and the back of the piano? Covered in cork and mirrors. This piano was stylin! :-) Here's a pretty good picture of what it looked like not too long ago.

You can see that the top extends beyond the back of the piano, and is supported by corbels. While it looked a bit strange, it didn't bother me too much. That is, until I finally had a piano tuner come to the house. And here's where the story gets interesting. Look closely at this picture:

When the previous owners replaced the top of the piano, they fitted the large piece of wood and glass into moulding that they then screwed into the piano frame. Then, to make matters worse, they filled the screw holes with wood filler, and then stained and polyurethaned right over the top of them. Making it impossible to open the piano to tune it. Now tell me, who in their right mind does that? So, Lover got all muscle-y with the screw extractors, and that's why you can see all those holes in the picture above. The piano tuner came out, tuned up the piano, and proceeded to tell me he had never seen such a bizarre thing in his life.

So then we were left with the dilemma of what to do with this strange concoction on top of the piano. The tuner had also mentioned that the wood on the top seemed like it was actually the piece that went on the bottom of the piano, just above the pedals. Which would make sense, because there was only a piece of flimsy plywood there now.

Then a lightbulb went off. I remembered a pile of wood in the attic with a piece lying on top that looked strangely like a music stand. Was it possible that they had kept the previous piano top when they did their customizations? Sadly, they hadn't kept any of the other things they had removed in order to "customize" the house (like the crown moulding in the living room) so I didn't have a lot of faith. But yesterday I finally had the time to investigate up in the attic.  And here's what I found!



What's that, you ask? Why, it's the original top! And music stand! And they're still in pretty nice condition! I found them in a stack with some random shelves, table leaves and who knows what else, covered in bird poop and dirt. Why they were covered in bird poop I do not know. :-)  But some time with some water, vinegar and baking soda removed all aviary excrements, and some mineral oil shined these babies right back up. The top is in better condition than the music stand, and the finish and veneer are no longer perfect, but I am so thrilled. I was able to move the kickplate piece back into place, beneath the keys, and the top just slides right on. The best part is the piano is now a good 6 inches less deep and wide, so it now fits on the wall instead of needing to be at an angle. I can see both my curtains now! :-)



All in all I am pretty excited. The piano looks so pretty now, and takes up less of the room. And while I lost a little display space, I am excited that I now have more floor space to move around in. Hurray! So what did you work on yesterday?