But first things first- a couple of the keys were sticking down after being played. After some Youtube research, David was hoping there was just a little something stuck under the keys. He carefully removed the keys and we were kind of shocked.
Look at all that dirt and those pebbles under there! David ended up removing all the keys and just vacuuming it out to get everything.

As he sanded and the wood lightened we both realized this guy looks great lighter. With the darker stain it's kind of massive but lightening it makes it much less visually heavy. We realized we want to strip it and restain it a more modern weathered color. We both loved this stain used by The Created Home.

Interestingly, as I was listening to my favorite podcast about DIY & Design (Young House Love Has a Podcast) they just talked about how obvious DIY projects, such as painting pianos are going out of style. People still want to DIY but they want it to look custom, not DIY. For example, stenciling walls, floors and rugs are trending out because they are obviously DIY. Non- DIY projects like shiplap, wall paper or built-ins or wainscoting are hot. You still do them yourself but they look like they could have been custom finish work.

I definitely felt like in 2013 a painted piano would have been amazing but in 2018 it felt outmoded. I'm glad we caught ourselves before putting in a bunch of work to make this pretty piano outdated in a new way.


The only reason we didn't follow through and finish the project right then is we value our brains too much. We didn't want to sacrifice all the brain cells it would require to use stripper indoors without cross ventilation. (I mean I guess we could have thrown open all our windows and put on our snow clothes for a few days straight but something didn't seem smart about that...haha).

So we'll restain the piano in the spring when we can throw everything open and Scotty, baby and I can go to the park/outside to escape the worst of the smell. Stay tuned for the finished piano coming Spring 2018- also I'm so punny bahaha.