The Completion

You know, truth be told, this piano fought for its life to the very end. It just didn't want to go back to being a playable piano, but after that, it wanted even less to be a bar. I was not satisfied with an unplayable piano taking up the kind of space that this one does. It’s just ridiculous. So I made up my mind to make it into something mildly pretty and completely useful. Since I’m a bit of a boozaholic, a bar seemed a good fit.

But truly, the piano fought me to the end.

Once I cleaned up the finish and vacuumed the felt, I moved the beast over to the stairs. Mrs. S helped again with moving the support boxes to change the height to go up the stairs, and then sliding the bar across the floor on an extra carpet we keep for playing poker in the garage. Now that it is about 350 pounds lighter than when I started, this process was not nearly as bad as it sounds. Once I had it on sawhorses in the dining room, the real fight began. 

Right away, the first leg (right rear) wouldn't go on because the felt was in the way. Since the felt on the back will not be seen by anybody, I was okay with just removing it. I had to smack the leg to get it in place, but that worked. Right front leg was mounted without any problem. Left back leg was a different story. Not only was the felt in the way, so was the sound board at the bottom of the bottle well.

Son of a -!

There were different sorts of approaches I could take, but I wanted to minimize the amount of work I had to do. I unscrewed just enough screws to lower the sound board to let the edges of the leg slip between the bar and leg. That was relatively painless and I quickly screwed the bottle well board back in place without checking clearance on the front left leg.

You’re probably expecting another “Son of a -!” here, but actually, the leg just grazed the sound board and I was able to get it on. About then Mrs. S wandered in and liked the look of the thing but suggested I reattach the pedal lyre. Even though I knew I removed the dowels that held it, I (for some screwball reason) thought, sure, why not? I crawled under the bar and remembered why not.

Legs on, sitting pretty on the floor. 

The bottle well is where the pedals used to go.

We went with just leaving the pedals positioned on the floor, more or less in place where they go. Good enough.

The keyboard, because it was originally designed to be pushed in and taken out went right back in, no problem. Hardly worth mentioning, but there you go.

Lights off, lid on. (This picture is not sequential with the others.)

Now for the lighting. Bad planning here again. I drilled holes for the light cords in the back of the piano toward the edges. Turns out that’s where the legs ended up. Had I not had some foresight (as I will relate in a moment), I would have had to drill the holes through the legs. That might not have been bad, however, the LED panels I bought actually came with a switch. Obviously, the switch needed to be at the front, where it could be reached, so the holes in the back wouldn't have been of much use anyway. Back when I was drilling holes for electrical cords, however, I didn't actually own the lights at the time, so I didn’t know what the cord configuration was going to be. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I drilled two more cord holes in the front of the bar.

Lighting installed. Notice the glare on the right where the piece of the piano is missing.

Good thinking, Eric.

  

I installed the switch, ran the cords, attached the lights and lit everything up. Worked like a charm except the cord length dictated one of the lights end up where a big chunk of the back of the piano had gone missing during the pin block removal process. I covered that up with the support rod from the pedal lyre (which doesn't have anywhere to attach to any more anyway).

Rod installed and glare gone. Looking good!

 I plopped the lid and support arms back in, and the bar, after only two and a half years, was complete!

The bar is closed, for now...

Time for a drink (next entry)!