Piano Dismantling 101

Guess what I did last weekend?  Hubby and I finally got up the courage to take apart our piano.  Reason being, we have a formal living room that is waaaay under utilized, unless you count the dog in his chair keeping watch over the neighborhood.  We've been wanting to convert our living room into an office for awhile.  The hold up... the piano.  Our daughter ceased piano lessons a few years back and we since purchased an electric version for her room, hence, no longer needing our piano.  After seeing many pianos listed on craigslist with no takers, we decided to take ours apart and use its parts for projects for our home and Patina General.

Warning Piano Lovers, the following pics may be disturbing.

Saturday was the day, with tools in hand, hubby and I began removing screws and pieces of the piano.  It was like one giant puzzle, one screw led to another and on and on.  Once I got over the horror that we were killing our piano, it was actually quite fun.  The ideas were flowing and my wheels were turning of what each piece would soon become.

 

 

 

 

When it came time to remove all the piano strings, it was a team effort.  Our system, I held the string with a pliers in one hand, and the other hand gloved holding down the string while hubby cut the string with a bolt cutters.  Also note, we were both wearing safety glasses.  Our system worked great.  Proof of the danger of this operation.  While I was detangling a few strings, hubby decided to cut one of the small strings by himself.  Well... the string flew across the room and both ends stuck into the wall.

It all came down to this, the heaviest parts of the piano.  Six screws left and they weren't budging.  WD-40 helped with a few and then there were 4, Hubby drilled a few, hack sawed one and the last was downright stubborn.  He wedged a crow bar and some other thing-a-ma-jig, lifted the large harp til it broke at the screw and it was finished.

If someday you decide to dismantle your piano, allow for several hours of fun, really it was fun.

Stay tuned to see the projects from the piano parts in the coming months.

Comments

[Brian]

curious what has come of the harp? I'm in the same boat, cant bring myself to let the massive iron harp go the way of a recycling station and wanted to create a "piece." Wall mount, free standing structure, table base? not sure where go with it.

[Cheryl Jarl]

Hi Brian, I sold the harp to a woman who's sister is a concert pianist. At the time she had recently undergone surgery to remove a brain tumor and her sister wanted to create a wall piece to help her remember her love of music.

[cma40396@bigpond.net.au]

Hi there was just wondering I want to be able to remove the harp from the piano without damaging the outer shell. Wondered if you knew any secrets on getting it out without wrecking the shell want to use shell on another project your advice would be great thanking you sincerely Carol Martin Australia.

[Cheryl Jarl]

Carol, thanks for reading my post, I hope it was helpful. The harp on our piano was held in place by several screws and a few large bolts. The screws are usually pretty cooperative to remove, the bolts can be a little more stubborn. Depending on the age of your piano, ours was ancient which made the bolts a little more time consuming to remove. WD40 helped loosen them so my husband could use a wrench to twist them off. The final bolt was a stinker and that's when the crow bar helped out. The harp ended up cracking but the wooden back of the piano was still in tact and could still be used. Hope this helped, have fun with all the parts, there is great wood with which to be creative.