The Digital Upright Piano Project--Tear Down

I've wanted a place to set up a music studio at home for a while, but our small house doesn't allow us dedicated studio rooms (me for music, my wife for art). A couple years ago we bought my wife a nice, tall drop leaf table to work at, and it sits in a corner of the dining room, waiting for her daily dose of inspiration to hit. Since she lives by the adage "A clean desk is the sign of a lazy artist", I've neglected to include a picture of her workspace here. However, upon seeing how productive my wife's workstation helped her to be inspired me to make this stand/shelf thing out of stuff I had lying around the garage.

It works well for practice and has space for a few odds and ends, like headphones, a few cords, and some music. What became glaringly apparent, though, were the lack-luster aesthetics, and the inefficiency of having my electronics in a closet, sheet music and books in my bedroom, and keyboard in the main room. Plus, my new keyboard (not shown in the pic) doesn't quite fit. I've been wanting to delve into recording for a while, but was constantly setting up and tearing down my "studio." I wanted to co-locate as much of that as possible but keep the small footprint. I'd seen plans and ideas for building a custom case to look like an upright piano, but I thought, why not just gut an old piano that isn't worth tuning/fixing/restoring? It already has a "shelf" for the keyboard, and I can add shelves above and below for books, speakers, laptop, and whatever else I want to store. With the "flaps" and panels on the front, I can hide stuff away when I'm not accessing the interior of the piano (the "studio"). The 2-3" thick sides will bear as much weight as I want to put in it, and, if I was building from scratch, I wouldn't bother with the finer detailing present on older pianos. I'm up-cycling something someone else doesn't want, preventing it from becoming firewood or land-fill. But the best reason I can think of is this: with this re-purposing project, I'll have a more interesting story to tell and will end up with a cooler looking piece of furniture.

The first step to this project was finding a FREE upright piano. That was more difficult than I thought it would be--people were reluctant to part with even their non-playable heirlooms when I told them I was basically in the piano dismantling business and their "antiques" would end up forever altered, not restored. [(it never ceases to amaze me the strings people attach to "free" stuff or "gifts," but I digress.)] After a few months of searching, I found a decent looking 44" upright on Freecycle with some nice woodwork. I paid Expert Piano out of Albuquerque to have it moved, which turned out to be money well spent. Those guys were certainly better (and stronger) lifters than my friends and I, as TWO of these pros were able to dead-lift this beast (500? 600 lbs?) up a couple feet to set it on a dolly and roll it right into their van. It took them a little over an hour to move the piano across White Rock (and move a second piano between neighbors--the woman who gave me this piano also acquired a nice Baldwin from her next door neighbor, and we split some of the travel costs). It probably would have taken me and 3 friends most of the afternoon! Here's the piano, after they rolled it into the garage and I removed the access panels.

I removed the "guts" by unscrewing screws and carefully removing pieces of the case to get at the keybed, action/hammer assembly, pedal mechanisms, and finally the cast iron harp (I googled "dismantling a piano" and got a lot of great information; you should do the same if you're interested in this kind of project). 100 years of dust bunnies were gobbled up with the shop vac, but the only "treasures" I found were a penny, a couple paperclips, and a broken pencil. With the harp exposed, I removed the strings and the tuning pegs (all 228 of them, one at a time...), which enabled me to get at the large number (25? 30?) of 5/16" lag screws that held the harp to the sound board. Only two were stubborn enough to require drilling and a bolt extractor. I started at the bottom and worked my way up to the top, until finally, the harp was free. I took the key shelf out then walked the harp assembly over to my workbench, where it currently stands (it's heavy enough that I can't lift it safely by myself). The soundboard (3/8" solid fir/pine/spruce?) was cut out with a circular saw and the edges were pried away; I'll salvage as much as I can but I beat it up pretty good getting it out of there. Here's the empty case where once stood a piano. It's taken me about 6 good hours to get to this point.

For now, I have to take a break from this piano project for some car work--timing belt, water pump, spark plugs, radiator fluid, air filter, and oil/filter change on our 4Runner in preparation for a road trip in November. We are running out of nice fall days!

In a future post I'll show the finished project and how I got there, but it'll involve installing new casters, re-installing the bottom, sanding and finishing parts of the inside, installing adjustable shelving above and below the keyboard, and finding/installing speakers for the digital piano. As an aside, my wife and I are already starting a list for art projects using the leftover pieces (IVORY and EBONY keys, hammers, steel pins, ancillary woodwork, etc.). 

Have a great week!