Repurposed Thursday: More Piano

Well, I went to see my doctor today, and he said pleurisy is possible, because I do have a little rattle in my chest, but he didn't think it was likely. He asked if I had been coughing, and I told him I hadn't. He said all the tests the hospital did came back normal, but something was obviously going on, and I did the right thing going to the ER. He did a few other blood tests to cover the very few things that the hospital didn't. We should have the results in a few weeks.

Last week, I talked about moving out the old piano last August. Over the next few months, we slowly started taking it apart. One of our biggest problems was trying to loosen the wires on the sound board. I knew they had to be loosened for our own safety, but we did not have equipment to turn the tuning pegs, so sadly, we were left with no choice but to cut them.

It had the most beautiful green cast iron sound board. It probably weighs 200 lbs. It's still in our front yard, because we don't know what to do with it. We have a friend that hauls scrap metal, but he hasn't seemed to interested in it. I've seen them repurposed into wall art and table tops, but I think it would be way too heavy for anything like that.

 I assume this was a serial number, but I never have been able to find out too much about the company that made the piano.

I did want to try and keep the name plate. Eventually, we did get it out and I have it in my office, where it waits for me to come up with a repurposing plan for it. 

Originally, I wanted to turn the piano into a full sized entertainment center, but the way it came apart, left that project unlikely. We wanted to loosen the sound board while leaving the front "shelf" intact. (I don't know how we thought we could do that). It would not loosen from the front at all, so Ed tried to get to the bolts from the back. 

That is when we discovered that the piano was put together with what looks like scraps of wood. 

See these top pieces? The are all glued together with something that held for over a 100 years. It wasn't about to come apart now!

So we went back to the front and realized the shelf was going to have to go,

 Next the sides came off

Still there was no way to get to the bolts from the front, so we turned it over again. Remember I said that sound board weighs about 200 pounds. Thats not counting all the wood still attached at this point.

The boards on top and the posts of the bottom have to come off, but how?

Yeah, thats a skill saw. The chain saw got into the act too, at one point. 

Success! Sort of. Now we had to remove 100 year old bolts. Sometimes, it was a matter of removing the board from the bolt instead of the other way around, but finally, the sound board was free, and so was the name plate!

We now have all the pieces, inlcuding keys, bolts, boards, etc. (except for the sound board) in what we call "The Lab". The lab is a metal shed, that we fixed up for Katherine to play in. While she still has some things in there, it has now become more of a temporary storage shed.  I'm looking forward to warmer weather when I can get out there and start playing with all those great pieces of wood. I did however, already repurpose one of the sides.

I'll share that with you next week.

See ya tomorrow!

Connie