Let me tell you what not to do when trying to refurbish an old piano!

I have a tendency to dive headfirst into projects and rush through to the finish. Haste is the antithesis of a good refurbishment.

Before we get to the messy part, here’s what led us to tackle this project in the first place.

The Compelling Backstory

When my grandma passed away, I got to give her piano a temporary home. My aunt had wanted the piano but was living in Guam and couldn’t take it right away.

I had no idea just how much I would love having a piano in our home! I didn’t even know how to play the piano.

I loved listening to the kids plink away at the keys. I loved having them call me into the office to perform their latest masterpieces. I loved watching their faces as they listened to the different sounds each key made.

Eventually, I decided to make a New Year’s resolution to learn to play the piano. I found an alternative method for learning to play called, “Hymns In A Hurry.” The “Hymns In A Hurry” method clicked for me. For the first time in my life, I was able to play the piano with two hands and cause the instrument to produce sounds recognizable as MUSIC! It was such a neat feeling. I felt genuinely proud of myself.

This is how most of my practice sessions looked!

Cementing the Deal

As good as it felt to be able to finally play a bit of the basics, it was more or less a check off the old bucket list. What really cemented my dedication to learning to play the piano was our miscarriage in 2020.

My 2020 New Year’s resolution had been to learn to play Yiruma’s “River Flows In You.” There was a YouTube tutorial that dumbed it down to a bit above my level, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I made slow, gradual, progress for the first few weeks.

In mid-February, the rug was pulled out from under my feet. We lost our baby at about 12 weeks gestation and I was devastated. I mourned our baby’s death and I mourned hard.

As I made my way through the grieving process, I discovered EMDR therapy. EMDR therapy is a method of grief and trauma processing that capitalizes on how your brain naturally processes distressing events during REM sleep. During REM sleep, your eyes move from side to side, activating both sides of the brain. This is incredibly healing for the brain, and theory suggests this may be why a good night’s sleep or even a nap can leave us feeling “so much better” emotionally and cognitively.

EMDR therapy utilizes what is called “bilateral stimulation” to achieve the same results you get during REM sleep, but while you are awake. It requires activating both the right and left hemispheres of the brain to more or less knit the two sides of the brain back to harmony. It helps both the creative side and the analytical side of the brain work together to process and heal trauma.

There are many ways we can experience bilateral stimulation in every day life. One of those ways is, you guessed it, playing the piano. By playing the piano, both hands are engaged, thus engaging both sides of the brain. Not only that, but you are also engaging in something that is both creative AND analytical. Bilateral stimulation at its finest.

Playing the piano became an important part of my grief processing. I felt better after playing the piano. I felt connected to everything hanging heavy on my heart, and to every blessing buoying me back up. It was like someone was handing me one of those underwater breathing apparatus things that scuba divers use to breathe underwater.

She’s Gone!

I knew it was coming. I knew I’d have to say goodbye to Grandma Lou’s piano at some point. I still cried after she was gone.

The gaping space where the piano once stood seemed even more empty than before the piano had been placed there. I knew we needed to find another one!

But, pianos are crazy expensive. Have you ever tried to buy a piano?? Even the ones on display at Costco made my jaw drop.

Instead, I began to keep my eyes open for a used piano.

One day, while Bryce and I were at the zoo with the kids and my parents, I got a phone call. My sister in law had found a free piano listed on Facebook Marketplace! Free! And it wasn’t terribly far away, or located in a basement!

Needless to say, we gathered a crew and picked it up that same day.

A Project

When I had looked at the pictures on Facebook, the piano looked like it needed a little love.

When it arrived, it looked like it needed a lot of love.

Plinking away at the keys, it sounded like it needed a lot of love.

Plus, the entire piano was coated in several layers of grime. The keys were sticky. Yes, sticky in the sense that they didn’t play quite right, and also sticky in the sense that my fingers literally stuck to film coating the keys.

I guess you get what you pay for!

Undeterred, I do what I always do in these situations, I searched for the path of least resistance and charged forward. I scrubbed down the wood as best I could. I scrubbed every individual key with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol, and I started painting.

What Not to Do

If I had been a little more patient, there are a few things I should really have done before beginning to paint.

If I had done it the right way, I would have taken the piano out to the garage and sanded down the wood.

Why didn’t I do it?

I was being hasty. I didn’t want to make my husband and brothers move it again. I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. And I was worried that sanding it down would have gotten too much dust in the piano’s insides, and made it unplayable.

What I should have done was have them place it in the garage initially and sand the whole thing down after scrubbing it. Sanding it down wouldn’t have ruined it after all, and the paint would have stuck a lot better to the wood. I could have made all the mess of sanding and painting in the garage, and THEN moved it into the house. I also could have taped off the keys to protect them from rogue paint drips.

Instead, I meticulously painted the entire thing, on the carpet, in our office. I may or may not have had to cut a couple little paint drips out of the carpet. I may or may not have had to re-scrub every single key to get the blue paint off. And I may or may not have made more work for myself in the end.

Regardless of all the “should-a would-a could-a” business, I really love how the piano turned out.

We have a tuning appointment next week. I’ll leave that part up to the professionals. That’s one element of this refurbishment I refuse to mess up.

In the end, I guess what matters is that it is getting done! I love it and, kind of like parenthood, even though I messed up here and there, I did my best and the end product is even better than I had imagined.

When mommies get sick, and sometimes they do, how do things change for me and for you?