One More Piano Post

This is kind of the project that will never end, but the wheels finally came in the mail on Saturday and Bill and I put them on the piano last night. It involved him lifting a side up, me sliding a cinder block under it to hold it up, then laying all over the floor in the dustiness attaching wheels to the underside. It was not my favorite part of the process but they sure look good on. Though of course, in the spirit of never being done, we checked to see if it was level when we were done and it is on the long side but the front wheels are a bit shorter than the back, so it slopes forward about a quarter of an inch. Garrr! So I'll be making a little block to lift that up, and repeating the process another day to fix that problem. But not today. And it's not that bad. So it will keep until I'm ready to finish that last bit.

Things of interest this week

Spencer gave a talk in primary today. I may have teared up listening to my eldest read his whole talk with naught but three or four words he needed his dad's help to read. Learning to read has been one of my favorite milestones to day in my kids' lives.

It took me 34 years but I finally got stung by a bee, probably a wasp, yesterday while mowing the lawn. I didn't realize what it was until today. I thought I had gotten hit by a piece of wood kicked out by the mower, but it felt like a needle hit my ankle. There was no stinger so it didn't occur to me until this morning when it was all red and puffy and obviously a small allergic reaction. Thankfully it turns out I'm not deathly allergic to bee stings. Check that type of dying off my list. 😁

We took the kids to the lake yesterday afternoon. They loved it, of course. Chloe was delighted to float around in a little baby inner tube. We came home dyed red from the clay soil. Thankfully it washed out because our poor swimsuits were pretty worked over before I washed them. 

Friday I took the kids hiking at one of their favorite train tunnels nearby, and then blew their minds by taking them to a waterfall they didn't know is in the same place. They blew my mind at how capable they were at climbing mountains. Aaron especially. Spencer led out and did a fantastic job leading. Aaron was ultra confident, but smart about it. He's not quite three, so he's still pretty short. Whenever he couldn't reach going down the steep slope to the waterfall he just turned around and slid down holding whatever handy root he found. That's not a skill that always comes natural to kids. I was impressed. We'll be doing more hiking this summer. They loved it. 

Chloe has decided she's a full time walker as of this week. She's adorably slow and looks like a pint-sized frail old lady walking, which is adorable beyond reason, but she walks as often as she can. She'll still crawl if she's not certain of the footing, but she's doing it less every day. 

I just finished making my own face cream. Not oil with just a blend of oils, but genuine lotion with a water and oil blend and a preservative and all sorts of fun powders. I haven't put it on my face yet but the little bit I put on my hand mid process feels amazing. 

Bill and I went on a real live date Friday night! I think that would be a first for 2017. It's been a rough year folks. Our anniversary and my birthday were overshadowed by my kidney stone surgery. But our good friend came over after our kids were in bed and we spent a quality couple or three hours away from home just the two of us. It was heavenly. And we took this picture. Obviously we had a great time. Haha!

The piano

Settle in friends. It's a bit of a story.

This story really starts 8.5 years ago when Bill and I got married on a Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend because we didn't want to wait until summer and we didn't have time to go on more than a couple days of honeymoon.

We watched a bunch of presentations for things we didn't really want to buy and got loads of free gifts. One of them was a hotel stay in Cancun for a few days. We made all these amazing plans and got to the airport the morning of the trip only to find that my name didn't match on my plane ticket and passport due to married name change and Delta wouldn't fix it. I can't even tell you how irate I was. I haven't flown with them since. We missed the trip. It was awful.

However, it did set me up to get a piano later that year when I got called as a choir pianist. We picked up this little number for the price of our refunded tickets and it's served us well for years. It's a nice little digital piano that is good enough to enjoy playing on but not so nice that I would want it forever.

I haven't been actively looking for a piano, but then again, if one were to fall into my lap, I'm all over that. Wait, what? A piano could fall into your lap? Why yes, yes it can!



Behold, the first picture of the piano that fell into my lap.



My friend had the good fortune of having her parents give her their piano and she offered hers up for free on the ward Facebook page. I jumped on that faster than I've done anything lately, lol.



The piano came to me black with this black/white bench. There was a section on the side that had peeled off and while the piano had looked lovely in my friend's living room, I wasn't in love with the flat black color in my house. I picked at that spot a bit and was shocked to find it peeled off in huge chunks. Shocked, but super excited. See, I already have experience refinishing furniture, and I immediately started dreaming of how I could make it look.



Turns out not all the paint came off so easy. It took many, many hours to get the black off. The underside of the black was yellow against the wood, which is really odd. That took ages to get off in some places.



Once I had scraped off as much as I could I got down to the business of stripping. I typically use an orange stripper solution to begin with and then an acetone/paint stripper blend and steel wool to get down to the raw wood. I decided to skip the orange stuff at first and went straight to the blend with steel wool. I got about this far, the leg and a bit of the side and changed my mind. It was backbreaking work scrubbing that stain off.



This is what it looked like with the orange stuff on it. You put it on, leave it for a few hours, then scrape it off and the varnish mostly comes off with it.







The legs ended up getting double duty on the stripping and were way whiter than the rest.




I was so excited with how well it was going I jumped right into staining. I had a red oak color I started with but I wanted it more red, so I did a second coat of red mahogany. I was happy with the color and went on with my first coat of tung oil finish. That's my favorite clear finish for most furniture I redo. But refinishing furniture disaster struck! Turns out the red mahogany was the end of the can and a bit thicker than it ought to be. When I put the tung oil on it, it smeared the stain all around and left it looking patchy. I was heartbroken. I don't even know how many hours I'd put in thus far. Weeks and weeks of work interspersed with my normal crazy schedule. These pictures don't do it justice, but itreally was kind of splotchy. I stopped work for a day or two and just looked at the piano because I really wanted to finish, but I wanted to love the result too.





And eventually I decided that I really did love this piano and this wasn't a temporary piece. When we first opened it up we discovered it was a Baldwin, built sometime during the 1970s. It has a lovely sound and is solidly built. Once I had stripped it I was surprised and pleased how little damage it had. I didn't have to patch anything. The corners are a bit worn in places, but I like the charm it adds. So I figured if I wanted to keep it forever there was no reason to rush this process and regret it for years.



Thankfully the stripping went way faster the second time. I was able to make sure it was even and ready to stain. Once I finished the whole stripping process I actually left the main piano alone for a few more days because I didn't want to risk messing the finish up again. It had its own beauty with all the previous stain and paint removed.




I did go ahead and remove the foot board, the lid, and the piano bench cover and carefully stained them outside in my carport. They each took the color a little different, but I love all of them. They're so gorgeous.



I learned a lot about the staining/finishing doing those parts separately. I've done lots of re-staining projects but it's been a couple years since I'd last tackled one. I relearned some tricks of the trade and finally got the courage up to tackle the full piano.



This time it went so much better. I made sure the stain didn't get too thick. I didn't rub the finish in too much and make the stain streaky again. I was patient. I had to wait 12 hours in between each clear coat. I actually waited 24 hours.



This is actually the backside of a piece of wood that holds the keys in place. That green felt replaced some old gunky red felt that had soaked up some of the stripping solution. I removed all of the keys early in the process after accidentally gooping them up with stripper solution and that made things more accessible.



It took me five days to put six coats of clear on top of the two coats of stain. I reassembled everything yesterday. I picked up some pretty knobs for the lid. The only thing left is to get some wheels. I have a set I thought would work, but on further thought they're not heavy duty enough. Otherwise it's done. I vacuumed out all the dust and grit, and this baby is beautiful, it sounds nice, and it's clean. I checked my pictures to see when the whole process started. April 22nd. Wow! Six weeks of work for this beauty! It was worth every day of that time. I have never been more proud of a piece I've created. It's the most satisfying thing I've done in years.