Day 27 and 28 – Independence Day and the day before that:

Goals: Just trying to move forward.

Music: Tony Bennett’s “Jazz”; Kenny Burrell’s “Midnight Blue”; Peter Brotzmann’s “The Complete Machine Gun Sessions”. (There was no music on July 3 because I was working outside and only briefly. And Christ, Peter Brotzmann’s work is crap. Don’t buy it unless you need something to piss off a roommate or something.)

On Saturday, I pretty much took a break from working on the piano. I finished up the keys, which was an intermittent job, gluing the white tops back on the key arms. They are all as secure and as flat as they are going to get. Then, late in the afternoon, I took the loose wood pieces – the legs, the lyre, the music stand, the front board and the soundboard trim and washed them down with Murphy’s oil soap. I was amazed at how just washing them got a ton of dirt off and made them look that much better. As soon as the legs dried, I glued the fabricated leg piece onto the leg that was missing a chunk. I wanted to use some brads to hold it down, but it kept slipping, so I left the bradding until the next session.

Today, I decided to tackle all the cosmetic stuff. So, I put two brads into the leg chunk to hold it in place and filled in and around it with wood filler. It is as secure as it is going to get.

I then set about finishing the legs. I wasn’t sure what the legs would look like if I just stained over their current poor quality finish, but I figured with it being a strong oil-based chemical, I had a decent chance that it would even everything out and look pretty nice when I got through with it.

I think you can tell from the "after and before" picture (after on the left, above) that I was right (although I won’t know until everything completely dries). I finished the legs and the lyre, but forgot to do the music stand and fascia before I cleaned my brush. I’ll still have to stain the piano anyway, so instead of going back and staining some more, I tried the nasty furniture re-finisher on the soundboard trim. It improved it, but I think I’m going to buy something fancy and replace it anyway.

Then I spray painted the harp. The color that I chose to match the screws I bought was indeed very close to the screw color, but it was far too dark for it to be the final color of the harp. I’m going to have to buy some brighter gold or brass color paint and redo it. I’m going to try and go over it lightly to leave some of the dark metallic color showing through.

And that was it. Tomorrow, I will definitely do some more work on the piano, but I have to go back to work the day after that, so we’ll probably take it easy during the rest of the week, at least until the weekend. After all, I’ve got to take Mrs. S. out for her birthday (Wednesday).