Anyway, we must have been inspired by being around Pianist Extraordinaire Justine again, because when we got home we decided to tackle our new piano. Recall that it used to look like this:
You can see that the wood grain is kind of nice, but, hopefully, you can also see that a lot of the wood is sort of banged up and, well, it just needed some TLC. After a few many hours with the power sander, stripper, and some high-gloss oil-based paint, it now looks like this:
(We also decided to paint over the manufacturer's name because, well, we had never heard of it before... and yes, we considered lettering 'Steinway' on it with a gold Sharpie, but that just didn't seem classy.)
The finishing touches: the stool I've used for cello playing since about 3rd grade, and a bunch of framed photos of us and various musicians in our lives -- some of our teachers & conductors, my brother, and an empty frame waiting to be filled with a picture of the two of us at Carnegie Hall in just two weeks! (Yes, I had that many empty picture frames lying around... it's very sad. I know.)
We are very proud of our project. Hey, it's definitely not the most spectacular instrument I've ever played on, but you get what you pay for (it was free) and there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. And it's getting a lot of use already -- as I write this, Seth is playing/singing tunes from Les Miserables and an old John Denver anthology (why do we have one of those?!*). I predict it will fill our home with wonderful music for years to come.
* ETA: Seth has just informed me that my mom gave us the John Denver anthology. Oh dear.
