Day 15 – Sunday, June 13:

Goals: Clean up and paint underside of the piano, including removing the pedal assemblies and cleaning them (maybe); polish the pedals and prep for painting (?); fabricate new brass rods for the pedal assembly.

Music: Louis Armstrong’s “Hot Fives and Sevens” (disk 4); Albert Ayler’s “Spiritual Unity” (about half of it before I couldn’t take it anymore); Chet Baker’s “The Original Quartets” from a 10 disk European import set, disk 1; Carla Bley’s Incredible Big Band’s “Appearing Nightly”

The first thing I had to do was clean and organize. Since I started this undertaking, I’ve had to buy a lot of tools to get various jobs done. None of the new tools had designated storage locations, and few of the tools that I did have were not well determined in their storage location either. So I gathered everything up in the area of my toolbox, made a few decisions like “screwdrivers in the top tray, wrench sets in the bottom” and such, and put everything away. It was fifteen minutes very well spent.

Next, I vacuumed up all the old wood filler and chips and whatnot that had fallen down, moved the rugs and padding about, and put the keyboard assembly, damper assembly, legs, and miscellaneous piano parts, in separate areas around the walls and out of the way. Then I was ready to get to work.

Not wanting to mess up my newly cleaned dining room right away, I took the pedals outside and used the wire brush drill bit on them to clean them as best I could. They cleaned up pretty well, but I’ll have to make a decision about keeping or removing their patina, which is certainly authentic but definitely not pretty. I was dripping wet from the heat and effort after about ten minutes, so I went back inside.

Since I had the vacuum out, I decided it would be a good time to do the sanding underneath the piano. But, since I didn’t want dust all over the house, I first taped plastic over both of the dining room doorways. To do that, I had to open a window and close the air conditioning vent in that room, which made it 100 degrees in there in very short order. I got the sanding done as quickly as I could with the bare minimum of mess and cleaned up again. I would have been ready to paint, but I was too tired from the sanding and cleaning, so I left it at that. It was a productive enough day for a “lazy” Sunday.