Friday, March 23, 2012

Piano Redo

Picture from craigslist-BEFORE
Sanded the whole thing!

The broken keys I had to fix


I didn’t want to do it, but I finally took down my Christmas tree that had been up for over a year. Ever since I moved into my house I had a vision for this gigantic wall. I had seen these wire hangers at ikea and thought they would be perfect to hang pictures on and be able to change them up every once in a while. I must have seen a picture on pinterest of a turquoise piano, and thought that would be perfect for right underneath all the pictures. The only problem was, I didn’t have a piano. So of course that lead me to craigslist in search of a very cheap piano! I ended up emailing on a few and found a guy who was selling one for 85 dollars. It didn’t come with a bench and 7 of the keys were broken, so I asked how much he would take for it and he said 40 bucks-Now that was more in my price range. Thankfully my friends brother Andy Allen happened to be in town and a musical genius. I had him offer the guy ten bucks so that hopefully he would take 20 from me, but it didn’t work. I decided to check the piano out and have Andy come with so that he could tell me, in his words if it “sounded good”. I told him, no matter how amazing the piano is, we are not going to say we want it. Instead we would leave and then text the guy if we wanted it or not. We followed the plan and Andy said, it was def worth 40 bucks. But I responded by saying, but what if we could get it for 20? So I text the guy, Would you take 20 bucks if we picked it up tonight? And sure enough he said, sure-I just want it out of my garage! So we got my dads trailer and picked it up!
The keys were broken, so I decided to call a piano shop to see if I could fix them. I mistakenly called this piano tuner, who in the midst of talking to me mentioned, the name of the part that I would need. I went to the internet to see how pricey it would be, and found replacement parts on ebay for 60 cents apiece! I ordered them and fixed them for about 8 bucks.
The next part was finding a color and painting it. I did 3 samples and finally chose Turquoise Gem. I usually like more unique names, but it is a good color. Will wanted an oil paint that was going to cost like 60 bucks in downtown phoenix, but we settled for 40 dollars at home depot. It’s pretty sad when the cost of the paint is more than the cost of the piano. One early morning, I sewed for Will while he painted for me. It took a few coats but eventually we got it finished.
This piano project is not exactly finished…the part that holds the music is kind of broken and I still need to fix that. I obviously need to get a piano bench and I really want to replace the gold knobs with like clear crystal ones, but haven’t found any pulls that will work yet.
As for the wall, I’m getting closer to finishing it….stay tuned for more updates.
AFTER

My personal painter
Will.I.AM


Andy testing the piano out-making sure it sounded great.

1 comment:

Kara said...

That really looks so good. I can't wait to see the finished wall. I love your craigslist skills and the fact that you didn't really like the name of the paint cuz it wasn't unique enough. Love it!