Post #6 - Let The Dice Fly

So...  I need to post more and catch up to where I am in real life.   As you may have surmised, if anyone is actually reading this, the posts so far are about three months behind real time.  There are actually not bad reasons for this - life has been absolutely nuts the past couple of weeks with work upheaval and I'm trying wrap my head around what I really want to to do with this piano.

Here's the final installment on how I got to the place, and then we'll start on the actual piano dismemberment stuff.  And I'll do a post at least every other day going forward.

...

After figuring out that this piano was really, REALLY and antique - and after reading all the reviews I possibly could about what to do with a piano such as this - I finished this journey by attending a scheduled lunch with my team at work.  Until recently, we try to do this at least once a month for the team members that are in Houston.

I was able to go to this one - a lot of time, as the manager I have conflicts and can't - but this one worked out.  So we all met at a local - very nice - Italian restaurant for lunch.



As part of the passing conversation, I mentioned that I had bought a piano, a piece of furniture really.  And that I was planning on refinishing the case to the best of my ability, and then probably gutting it and plunking an electronic keyboard into it.

For the most part, for those at the table who could hear the statement, there was silence.

One of my guys, who actually knows how to play piano, was upset, if not outraged.  I think the statement went along the lines:

"Why would you do that?  That is a musical instrument, not a piece of furniture!"

And that struck a little close to home, along the lines of what I'd already been thinking.  However, I tried to explain that I had done my research, this wasn't an "ordinary" piano with a cast iron harp (it's wood), and that every article I had read indicated that the sane, rational decision would be to either use it for firewood (if you bought it), turn it into a planter (again, if you bought it), or run away in the direction of a "real" piano as fast as you could (if you hadn't bought it).

"It's still a musical instrument.  I don't understand how you can just gut it"

So I tried again...  Not tunable, not capable of sustaining a tune if it were, probably warped due to age, yada yada and finally yada.  And if you care to do your own searches, you'll find plenty more.
 
Deaf ears on that side, then another well-meaning team member spoke up and said he had a piano that had been in the family for years that he'd be willing to sell.  If I wanted a real piano.



Now, he didn't say that exactly, but that's what my brain heard.  You just bought a pseudo-piano - no matter what you do, it will never play unless you take out the primary guts and throw in an electric keyboard.

And I walked away for that lunch starting to change my mind.  Thanks to Rob and Michael.  Probably neither of whom knew what they had brought about...

So I went back to my research...  At least $500, if I was lucky, to refinish and buy/fit an electonic keyboard.  Now, I knew that, sort of, going in - but it needed to be confirmed.

On the other hand, professional restorers wanted close to that just to look at it and tell me - probably - what I already knew.  And a total restoration, including shipping (thank the powers that be) ran anywhere from $3-6,000.  No way that was happening.  Not even for a piece of history.

And that's where it all started to come together...  What if...  What if I did the restoration myself?  Could I?  What would it take?  How hard would it be?

The more I thought about it, the more "desecrating" this piece of history that was also a musical instrument (maybe, with luck) just wasn't cutting it anymore.

So I started looking into how one - an amateur - could possibly do this.  And make it really work.

And that's where this adventure really begins.  Buying it and all the angst and planning that went into the decision was really just foreplay.  Now we had it, and now we had to do something with it.  And, unfortunately, I don't tend to do things halfway - I either do it or I don't.

And I was starting to believe that I did want to try something I had never dared before.  Refinishing (done), rebuilding (kinda), tuning (nope), repegging and restringing (never).

But here we go.