Today I bring you a DIY project that began over 10 years ago. I used to have a problem taking in homeless pianos (I have since gotten over this mental health issue), and a student once talked me into accepting a beautiful baby grand from the 1920s. It had been her grandmother's piano, but it had not been tuned in far too long for it to be salvageable. Being the 20-something living with a house full of roommates, I decided to take it and and use it as a dining room table. I put barstools around it, used placemats so as not to hurt the gorgeous rosewood, and it sat in my dining room for at least five years. I played it sometimes, but it sounded terrible. My piano tuner said that re-furnishing the soundboard, etc, would cost thousands and it still wouldn't sound as good as my 1995 Yamaha studio piano (i LOVE this instrument). |
| Ignore large dogs and look at the piano that functions as a dining room table. That's the BEFORE photo that I can find right now. |
I'd had the idea to turn it into a bar, but I lacked the tools and the time. Enter DAVID! He and Adam, our amazing piano tuner, used piano-tuner tools to de-tune and remove the hundreds of strings (you can't just cut them because you might accidentally decapitate yourself). David took the insanely heavy iron soundboard to a metal recycling place, cleaned out the inside, and we used it as a bar for the next several years -- lifting up the piano lid to reveal a hidden vault of single malts and glassware.
But then, we had babies. Keeping a baby grand full of liquor just took up too much space.
We then went full-on PROJECT, and David created the piano bar masterpiece that I'd always envisioned, taking apart the legs and going vertical:
We only kept two of the legs (it is anchored to the wall), but they weren't tall enough for a comfortable height. David took some wood, stained it to match the rosewood, and raised the height of the bar:
Another shelf will be coming, but we've been, er, busy and not paying much attention to the bar!
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| An old Kimball piano from the 1920s converted into a bar. |
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| Piano bar! DIY upcycling project. Also, we have a mighty Scotch collection for a couple of Kentuckians. |
As for the innards of the piano, well, they hang on our wall because we can't do *anything* with it. The keys are ebony and ivory, and with the weird rules around ivory, we can't really upcycle them. It's a fun interactive piece of art in the dining room though:
2 comments
Gorgeous! I always hurt for a dead piano, but this is about the best use of one imaginable!
ReplyDeleteSame!! It was such a beautiful rosewood baby grand that was clearly once a great instrument. And then it doesn't get tuned for 50 years -- done!! It makes me happy daily.
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