Repurposed Thursday: A Ragged Little Box

Welcome to Repurposed Thursday!

Last week I showed you how we disassembled/demolished my old upright piano. During that time, an idea came to me for a gift for Ed. Anytime we've visited an antique store or flea market and came across a valet box, he has always spent a little extra time looking at it. He told me once, that when he was a kid, he thought they were just the coolest things. So, looking at the pieces of wood from the piano, I thought that I would make him a large valet box for Christmas. The fact that I had never even attempted to build anything like that didn't even enter my mind. How hard could it be?

I had decided to use one of the side pieces of the piano because it was wide and long, and I could get everything that I needed from one piece of wood. My first obstacle was finding a time when Ed was at work, and the weather cooperated. By that time, it was fall, and this is Missouri...My original plan was to get my son Kyle to come cut the pieces for me. I never could get that coordinated either. Ok, well, I was just going to have to do it myself. Finally, in October, the weather and Ed's work schedule cooperated.  I had watched Ed, for four years, every time he measured twice to cut once. I knew how to do that. I used two out door chairs to lay the wood across, then measured and marked the wood. Piece of cake!

Now to cut them. We have a battery operated skill saw that I had never used in my life...but I had watched Ed do it. The first cut went beautifully! This is going to be great! I'll get all the pieces cut this morning, and I”ll be able to put them together tomorrow morning! There were a few things, however, that I had not considered: The battery, and the age of the wood.  About half way through the second cut, the saw just stopped. Ok, well, I'll just change the battery (we have three). Apparently that one was dead too. I would soon learn, and I later told Ed, we need new batteries! Never mind that I was also trying to cut through one hundred-year-old wood! I also encountered the problem of very old veneer chipping off.

Anyway, I got two pieces cut that day and had to quit because I had no more battery. A few weeks went by as I waited for time to work on it again. Still, I couldn't keep a charge in the batteries long enough to cut anything.  However, this time, David was outside, and I mentioned my problem to him. He offered me the use of his skill saw...a full size electric one. Well, I couldn't very well say no. I needed to finish that box! I said Ok, thanked him and waited for him to bring the saw. It's about three times the size of our little battery operated saw. Have I told you that my hands aren't very big? I could have used three of them that day, but I got it done! Unfortunately, I didn't have as much control over the larger saw, and the cuts were not all that straight.

 I didn't realize how much until I started to put it together. I used deck screws and wood glue, and my cordless drill. Thankfully, it has a great battery. After a few attempts, I finally got the box together. Then I realized that I had put the side pieces on inside out. At that point, I was tired and not about to take it apart. Next came the lid with hinges and tiny screws presenting a whole new challenge, but finally, it was done.

My original plan was to line the box with fabric, and burn his initials on the lid. Well, I didn't have any fabric that I thought would go well with the dark veneer of the box, so I decided to fall back to decoupage and dictionary pages. I also wanted to honor Ed's relationship with the Lord, and his love for scripture, so I overlaid Bible verses over the dictionary pages for the two outer sides of the box (the ones I put on backward. Inside the lid, I overlaid an original poem on the pages. Overlaying is pretty simple, most of the time. I'll explain it in a future post. This one is getting a little long.

Burning his initials presented another challenge because the veneer was thick and I wanted to get to the wood underneath. It took a few hours, and my hand was very tired, but I finally finished. By rhat time, it was about two weeks before Christmas!

All in all, I thought it was pretty pitiful, but Ed loved it! When I tried to apologize for the mistakes in it, he wouldn't hear it. He says it's perfect! I love that man!

See ya tomorrow!

Connie

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

Repurposed Thursday: The Piano

Welcome to Repurpose Thursday!

I always wanted to learn to play the piano, but when I was growing up, we couldn't afford one, so I learned what I could here and there.

Somewhere around 1989, when I married my second husband, the wife of one of his friends told me something that changed my life...no not on a grand scale...but changed nonetheless. She had an old upright piano and she said “If you can move it, you can have it.” I don't remember all the details, but my husband got several of his army buddies to help him move the 500+ pound monster, and at the age of 26, for the first time in my life, I had a  piano! I was ecstatic!

I have never learned to play well, probably because of my lack of  focus, but I loved that piano. My oldest son took lessons for a few years, and Katherine has had a few lessons too. By the time my boys were grown, and Ed and I were together, the damper pedals were broken, so any playing was out of tune and muddy. I had already been told that the 100-year-old piano could not be fixed or tuned, and it was pretty much worthless, but I couldn't afford a new one, and I was seriously attached to it anyway. You all know how I am about throwing stuff away.

Last summer another friend made a similar offer. She had a smaller piano, probably from the 1940's that she kept in her book store. The problem was that the legs were unstable and she needed to be able to move it around. Did I want it? Absolutely!

Ed says, “so what are we going to do with the old one?” Repurpose it of course!

We did have to overcome a few obstacles that included getting a dolly to move the new piano from the store to the house, coordinating my sons to come and help, and getting the old piano out of the house.
I should mention here that Ed has nicknamed my youngest son, Kyle, “Bam Bam” after the Flintstones character. Kyle is our muscle man. He can move the old piano across the room by himself. If we had needed that, there wouldn't have been a problem. We didn't. We needed it moved out the front door, which is just barely wider than the piano. The angle has to be just right, or it isn't going.

It was hot that day.

Here is just a sample of the two hour ordeal to get the piano out the front door.

They finally got it outside, the new one in, and were ready to call it a day, but I wasn't . Over the next few hours, I did manage to get the two of the front pieces off: The one on the top that covered the keys, and the one on the bottom  that covered the dampers.

For my first repurpose project, that was all I needed, along with a couple dozen old encyclopedias and text books. Our television, DVD player, etc. had all sat on top of the old piano. The new piano was too small, so I was going to need a make do entertainment center. Of course, its a temporary one, but I like it.

The trunk next to it, was another repurpose project. I got the old trunk from a flea market for about $7.00. It was pretty beat up looking, but it was sound. I painted the trim black, and used Mod Podge to cover it with old wallet sized pictures. I had tons from old school pictures and professional portraits. Its a great way to display a lot of photographs. Inside I have all my photo albums, baby books, and other family history treasures. Ed bolted some casters on a piece of plywood and sat the trunk on it. That way, we can move it easily.

As for the piano, Over the next few days, I got the keys and dampers out, but then the weather stopped cooperating and we had to put the deconstruction on hold. I'll tell you some more about it next week, and show you my second project from the piano.

See ya tomorrow,

Connie