This once much-too-heavy piano came from a loving home full of many memories. To keep its memories alive and enhance its purpose, we were asked to transform this beloved instrument into a functional work space. You will never know the true intricacies of a piano until you look under its keys.
As stated in our post The Beginnings of it All, this project came to us at the start of this adventure called entrepreneurship and laid a foundation for the business. Not only was it the first sign that strangers believed in our work, it later propelled us into taking the leap of faith that had Brian doing the business full time. So how did this particular project begin? It began with an inquiry to Midland Center for the Arts from someone looking to have a piano altered. Our co-worker thought to refer us, we began a conversation and decided to take a look.
After a good assessment of the piano, we shook hands with the owners and set up a time to pick it up. Giddy with our first big project, we headed home thinking with Nathan’s help we could haul that thing up the stairs and be on our way. It wasn’t quite that easy. This piano not only was in the basement, but contained an upright cast iron harp (as we called it) inside that weighed a TON. So plan B? Remove the big heavy “harp”. It was a two-day process with a lot of learning along the way. There were so many intricate parts that needed removal and we were learning what those intricate parts were along the way. 48 hours, some YouTube research, a lot of loosened screws, strings and a broken screwdriver later we had a shell of a piano separated from the cast iron piece.
So here we are, 17 days into going Instagram official, both working full-time jobs and a whole lot of transformation ahead of us. Both piano and business-wise. Needless to say, the next four months were chock-full of nights and weekends whittling away at the piano. We introduced ourselves to new tools, new techniques and as our good friend always says, we were about to get so smart.
Diving in to the project, the plan was to strip the whole piano down to what we believed was under the stain - hard wood. From there we would sand it, stain the hard wood and build it into a desk. Well, after the first few days of sanding we realized it wasn’t going to be that simple (imagine that.) The piano was covered in a thick varnish that quickly gummed up the sand paper. Under the varnish? Two layers of veneer. Once stripped we found that the majority of the piano was made from oak (Yay!), but the legs were made from a soft pine, sections had holes from removing the “harp” and some of that pretty oak had worm holes in it. Our original plan of staining the whole thing went down the drain and we had to brainstorm how to restore the ugly parts. Since fully staining the piano didn’t fit the bill, we turned to adding black painted accents.
It was towards the end of month four when we kept feeling the nudge to take the big leap and have Brian take Cone Furnishings on full-time. There was still so much to finish on the piano, we had begun other projects and honestly the bold unknown of leaping just made sense (and was exciting.) The best part? The leap is exactly what we needed. With Brian working the business full time he was able to take the hours during the day to work on the functional areas of the piano and make progress on our other projects. That opened up the evenings once I was home to dig out our creativity and make the piano desk into the unique, one-of-a-kind piece that it is. And without a doubt we were able to complete the desk much faster and more efficiently.
So here we were, four months in and four months smarter. We successfully transformed a treasured instrument into a desk with a new purpose. We not only had a happy customer, but a product that was living in someone else’s life full of our hard work, determination and memories. We learned more than we had ever thought, built a relationship with someone we never knew and were only at the beginning of our journey into the unknown. Needless to say, it. felt. good.
And because of the creative freedom we were allowed with this project, here’s a deeper dive into the pieces of the piano that lived on.
The shelf was originally the front panel that held the sheet music.
The desk top itself was the original piece that sat underneath the keys.
The key cover got attached to the back panel of the desk to hide away pencils and other small supplies.
The “Guaranteed Highest Quality” piece was inside of the piano and transformed into a handle.
We cut the base panel in half and turned them into doors for storage space.
We left the pedals.
This once much-too-heavy piano came from a loving home full of many memories. To keep its memories alive and enhance its purpose, we were asked to transform this beloved instrument into a functional work space. You will never know the true intricacies of a piano until you look under its keys.