Piano Desk Project
Now before anyone e-mails me with the links, this has been done before, and
you can get it done by real carpenters who specialize in turning your old
piano into a desk.
My piano was no beauty queen. It was a beaten up, grade-school auditorium
piano. It was half-broken, not worth tuning, and musty. It took up room I
wanted for other things. It was impossible to remove from the basement, so
I planned to tear it apart and throw it away.
When I went looking for ways to destroy the piano, I happened upon this site:
http://www.errthum.com/troy/aquiano/
Piano Aquarium
Which led me to this site:
http://tinkertunes.twmagic.com/upright/piano4.html
Upright Furniture Co.
And the match was lit. I decided it would be relatively easy to make a
piano desk, once the guts were out. I could still free up some room by
using it as a replacement for my computer stand and the guitar amp
stand. This would require some strength, which would make it harder to
keep light.
I built a bar with my brother a few years ago, all out of two-by-fours.
It is heavier than hell, and I wanted to avoid that with the new desk.
So I used one-by-threes instead. Combined with metal shelf braces, the
structure proved strong enough to hold both amplifier and 19" monitor.
I was able to salvage 2 marble countertops from a sales display my
company threw away, and it was within 3 inches of perfect for the
surface of the keyboard area. Wood spacers were cut for the sides
of the marble.
Staining turned out to be interesting. I had some Special Walnut
stain left over from old projects, and by what you see on the
label it is not a 'match' for the piano, which was washed out and
sun-bleached to a light oak color. When I put on the SW stain and
wiped off the excess after 5-10 minutes, it looked great- a kind of
cherry brown. Mind you, much of this was not solid wood but veneer
placed over cheaper wood. Semi-gloss urethane completed the look.
I used 2 coats over the wood on the top shelf to protect against
scuffing.
Gloss black paint was used on the side to cover up the white wood
patch and this turned out to be a good match for the original
interior.
I had to use a maul to break up the backboard of the piano. This
tool is a cross between a sledgehammer and an ax. It did a great job
shredding the wood.
A sledgehammer was good in breaking up the cast-iron string frame.
I thought that it would bend like steel and had no greater ambition
than to disconnect it from the wooden soundboard. Then I read up
on metals and found out that cast-iron behaves more like fired
clay than metal under sharp blows. Over the course of 3 days I was
able to smash up the iron into hand-size fragments.
I used a bolt-cutter to cut the strings. This might seem like over
kill but it kept me at a distance from the strings. Piano strings
have been known to wound people when cut, given the amount of
tension involved.
A circular saw was used to cut the enormous posts in the back of
the piano. The piano-aquarium guy used these to support his
aquarium. I didn't need that much support or want that much weight,
so I decided to cut them out and throw them away.
The hammer assembly was the easiest thing to remove. There were only
handful of screws holding the entire thing to the string frame.
I was able to lift it out in one pull- and boy could I see why
I had been allergic around this piano. The dust was everywhere.
Originally I planned to have the piano open up as below:
Upright Furniture Co.
But this did not leave enough room for the amp and pushed the
monitor back even further- so I backed off and decided I could use
the top for the scanner and printer. After my ideas for sliding
shelf drawers went by the wayside, leaving the top down made even
more sense.
This piece of wood was attached to one of the pedals, and
designed (I think) to mute the strings. Nobody, not even
the piano tuner, could have seen this logo for years, and
yet it is one of the best features of this piano. I couldn't
leave it out of the piano, so I put it on the front and
urethaned it.
If you read any of this,mail me with
comments, praise, abuse, suggestions at: EMail me!
