Pallet Shelves for the Shop

Well, what's been going on since the piano you ask? A short trip home, and now enjoying some down time before starting summer camp work. With this time I've been sorting out the scene shop, junking some stuff, recovering from the ballet I had last weekend, and FINALLY after a year getting around to reorganizing it all as I'd like it.

This as included building some new shelves. While I've got a lot of lumber I need to get rid of for various reasons, I saved it and decided it was easier to use the pallets I already had stacked up in the shop. Since this is going to be paint cans sitting on it, it didn't need to be solid and I've built a solid top shelf for other stuff. The pallet on the floor you can see here surround by tape is because I've sprayed a yellow box on the floor in an attempt to hopefully get the paper deliveries I get stuck with dropped in that spot instead of all over.

The important thing for making something like this easier on yourself is to measure them and find some with matching rails. I had about 10 of them to choose from and those two were the only one with the same dimension, so I didn't have to match supports and add extra 2x4. That pallet of paper on the left is exactly what I was talking about. Right in my way, as usual.

While technically all of that rack is finished, except for a top long shelf that will run along that wall, I may still take it outside and spray it so it's all the same color. Partially because it's mismatched and because I want to use my new Husky air sprayer. We'll see what happens.

ALSO, construction on the new dorm addition/renovation are right on schedule, I snuck in this past weekend to look around and see what they had going on, the rest of the pictures are on facebook.

This is actually par of the old dorm that they've gutted to the bones.







I assume this will be the new entry way with a big open tower like my building as on the one side.



It's looking pretty nice. So far I'm just enjoying the weather and working at my own speed. Production meeting tomorrow for the Rapunzel tour we're doing this summer, then I suppose I'll work some more. Also, as a last thought, GO SEE BRAVE. Pixar rarely lets me down, but with this one they really knocked it out of the park. It was an awesome, fun movie. They continue to excel in bringing characters that can't speak to life and making it clear without the dialogue. This also holds true for the short at the start, it may be my favorite Pixar short to date.

A Piano Desk Finale (part 3)

Part 1: The Piano Desk Project
Part 2: A Day from Hell

Well it was roughly a week's worth of work on and off and a couple of things changed but generally speaking I've reached a final product. One aspect I scrapped was doing a drawer under the desktop, the reasoning behind that is, the materials that were left after I had used the good pieces were mostly chipboard that had been laminated with nice stuff on the outside, if I were to cut into it, I'd have rough edges that I'd then have to laminate and I just didn't want the extra time and expense. In the future I may still add one, I'll have to see once I start using it as a desk if I need the extra storage. When last we met I had just declared victory over the cast iron piano harp after spending about a day and a half trying to remove it. That was tough boring work. After that I moved on to easy boring work, removing the finish from the piano. Now I didn't REALLY have to do this because it looked alright from the start but it had marks from paint on it, things carved in, and various other blemishes I wanted to get rid of. I also wasn't a huge fan of the color, so I started to sand pieces down. I used a combination of hand sanding, power sanding and stain/varnish stripper to remove everything.

A warning about the stripper, when I worked in paint we always warned people that unless you get the orange goopy "safer" stripper, it can be pretty caustic and you should wear gloves. I got a ton of the heaviest duty stuff on my hands and arms without even a tingle or burn. So I don't know if I'm just desensitized from years of working with chemicals or if it's a symptom of the over safe-ification of the country. In either case, having gloves couldn't hurt.
The varnish softens and scrapes off looking kind of like used oil or in some cases shed snake skin. it's nasty, having something to scrape it out on is important.

Here's everything sanded down. It looks like the legs had a little more do to but that was what it looked like. Now in this picture you can see the back panel, its clearly lighter in some places and still a little yellow in others. The yellowed sections still have a clearcoat sealing it in. I decided I didn't care enough to take it off and get that intricate so I gave the whole back panel a quick rough power sand and I'll show you why later. From here on out it's easy going you just need some patience. At this point you should pick a color of stain you want. I went with Jacobean since I wanted something really dark. I was really hoping for an almost black chocolate brown, but the water based mixed by the paint desk was really dissapointing. I'll stick with oil based stains thanks.

Like I said, just stain away, you can brush it on, you can rub it on with a rag, you can use a foam brush. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes (the longer it sits, the darker it ends up because more stain can soak in). I took the desktop off to get into the sides and back more easily. Here you can see what I was talking about. The back ended up with a great rustic look, you can see scratches from the sanding giving it a great texture and the areas that are more heavily sanded and varnish free soaked in the stain better. Again, partially to save time and because I really liked the sort of raw look this had, I didn't varnish this piece because it looked great as is.

Here you can really start to see the difference in color on the areas that got a heavy sanding (the top and sides) they took it much better and have a deeper reddish color to them. I think I only did one coat of stain on everything, but if you get done staining something and don't think it's dark enough, let it sit for 24 hours and go over it again. You can see the pedals here. I left them just because they are a nice look, they don't depress anymore since they aren't in tension anymore, but its a nice reminder of where the desk started. After this step I reattached the desktop and I was all set to varnish. I chose to go with a gloss finish because A: I like shiny the best and thought it would be reminiscent of the upscale glossy shiny grand piano type look and I thought it would be a nice contrast with the unfinished sections. And B: because gloss is the purest varnish. Essentially what happens with semi gloss and satin is that as you work towards a lesser sheen they actually add in material to dull it. So it's like adding milk to water until it becomes opaque. This extra material can actually cloud up later in the pieces life and dull the finish sooner and I don't like that. Also gloss is ends up the thickest, most durable surface.

Here we are before varnish. The top is still on hinges and flips open if for some reason I wanted it to. What I did with the old keyboard cover is use it for the middle shelf. I wanted to preserve a piece completely original, it just got a clearcoat so the sheens match up. It's still the original color and still has the logo painted on the front. The flat desk surface ended up a little like the back panel in that I didn't get it all sanded down perfectly but up close the color variation it has is gorgeous. I also cut a bottom shelf to sit above the pedals where you can see bare wood in this picture. I used the panel that was vertical in that position blocking off your view inside the piano and since it matched nicely on it's own, after I cut it I was done.

That leads us to today. This is after 2 or 3 coats of varnish. The key to a nice surface is twofold. First BRUSH it on. Don't use the cheap foam brushes and don't use cheap chip brushes, buy a nice natural hair varnish brush. It makes for a better application and it won't shed junk hairs onto it that you'll have to pick out. The foam brushes add too much in the way of bubbles that it's not worth it. The second part is, after every coat sand it lightly to take out all air bubbles that form. each coat after that will be smoother. What I tend to do is finish one surface and move onto the next, once I'm done with the next I go back to the first one I did and brush it all again lightly. That gives it time for the air bubbles to rise to the surface and then a light drag across the top after it's sat for five minutes breaks the bubbles and smooths the whole thing. Then let it sit. Ideally you'll need at least 3 hours, I like to let a coat dry for a whole day. It will depend on humidity and where you're doing it. As a rule let it sit for 3 or 4 hours and then you can touch it to see if it's tacky or if it's ready for another coat. I also say you need at least 2 or 3 coats. That's where you start to really get the best coverage and the smoothest surface. Sometimes the shine doesn't really show up till the second coat, then the third is what give it the nice glow.

 There's the original registration plaque that had been on the back of the piano. I left the outer frames for the keys in place because they looked nice and this seemed to fit just about perfect here so now it's on the front and you get to see the information about it. The picture below it is the keyboard cover shelf, with the Chickering logo that was so nice I just left it all. It's attached with a couple of L brackets into the bottom of it, that are screwed into the back and then then ends of it are supported by two pieces of wood so it's nice and solid.

And there you have it. A week long project refinishing a piano and giving it a new life as a desk rather. Saving it from the junk pile. Sometime next year when the innards get used in our art classes I'll post and show what the rest of it turned into and maybe even a picture once it's buried under my paperwork and living in it's new home on campus.

Piano Desk Project (Part 2 Day from Hell)

Part 1: Piano Desk Project Part 1
Part 3: The Finale

Another day down, very little accomplished. With how fast the first days worth of work went I had high hope for finishing up the breakdown quickly today. That was not the case. After 6 hours of work I finally had my one major goal for the day accomplished. With some research my knowledge of piano innards has probably tripled, I still don't know enough to speed up removing a harp. For those who were in my boat here's an explanation. I've found that (generally speaking) the cast iron piece of a piano with the strings attached is referred to as a harp, because essentially that's what it is. If you could tune it and keep it in one piece, outside of the piano you could set it up and sort of play it. Dates back to harpsichord days. Once you remove it all and take the strings off it's usually considered a "plate". Also, being cast iron... it's pretty darn heavy. This one I'm guessing was somewhere between 200 and 300 pounds.

So the first few hours were slow going, I was trying to figure out how it was all attached. Finally I got it laid onto it's back with the desk removed and had access to lift it straight out once I had it loose. There were about 30 giant lag screws and I removed all of them and it still wouldn't budge. I had been trying to keep all the strings intact if I could but that didn't happen, which ended up making this the more dangerous day. I had snipped a couple of strings in this picture to access the covered screws but it was still solidly attached. It was around now that I decided to try to loosen one of the tuning pins to see if I could just take the strings off without cutting it. That's when I realized they were almost 3 inches long and went into the wood, serving as screws to hold it all on. There were about 300 of them. The danger here is that now I knew I had to snip all the strings, some of them were under pretty serious tension, so if I didn't put anything on top to dampen the snap they would shoot about 30 feet out the shop door or until they hit something. Safety first here.

Now I started to remove the pins one at a time, but they are square headed so I had to use vise grips and spin one at a time. I did about 15 of those and thought "there has to be a better way" I sat and thought for awhile, I had already tried sockets, but they didn't fit because it was square. Then I had the idea to turn it upside down because a ratchet is square, and it fit! But I still didn't have a way to turn it any better. Then I had the bright idea that I could reverse a bit in the drill so it would fit the socket end, and magic, now I had a powered way to remove the pins. Thought it still took about an hour.







Here you've got square peg, square hole.

And here you have round peg round hole?

I just matched up the right size socket and put it in a a corded drill (if you're actually doing this you need the extra power)

About an hour later I finally had everything removed and the harp free. Then I could just lift it out, which was awkward because of the shape and weight, but not too bad compared to how tiring the rest of the day was. If it weren't so heavy it would be a great piece of something. I'll ask Nancy if she wants it for her class to use, but it's so heavy you can't have it stand up on it's own, can't hang it on a wall, can't do anything much with it except sit it on the ground and be glad you don't have to take out another one. With that out I decided to call it a day and stop working since technically the breakdown is done now. Anything else that get's removed will be because I want to change the shape or put in shelves or do something along those lines.

Here it is, standing back up, with the desk back in. The "lid" to it, the top piece on hinges actually fits pretty nice still and makes a good top shelf. I'm not sure what to do about the back still. I kind of life the curved soundboard pieces that are left over, and the curved holes from the tuning pins, but I may open all of that up to expose the support beams on the back and have it open completely



I like the look of the supports from the back and think that seeing those open from the front would look really nice. Pros and cons of that are:

A: it would lighten the whole thing even more which is good and
B: I think it would look nice

BUT:
I'd lose the curved pieces.... though I'm not entirely sure that bothers me. The bottom is the cracked one that started this whole project and I cracked the top right corner of the curve trying to pry the harp up.

Something to think about. I'm also leaning towards stripping it all down and staining it an almost black brown, that would let just a show the wood grain on it, the downside of that is I'd lose the fancy script name, but I'm not sure how I'll be using that piece anyway. I'll give it some thought while I start to lay out the actual desk tomorrow.

The Piano Desk Project (Part 1)

Part 2: A day from hell
Part 3: The Finale


Here's the background, the school has 4 or 5 pianos, 2 of them are always in our practice rooms and aren't in great shape. We've got one of those however that simply can't be tuned anymore, the soundboard is cracked and there are various other issues with it that we decided it has reached the end of it's life. So, because we're a crafty bunch we've decided to save as much of it as we can. Which is where I come in. Yesterday I started to strip the piano down and take out the guts inside. All of the keys/hammers/etc everything I can pull out will go to Nancy and Janet and be used in 3D art pieces. The rest they've left to me. Once I get it all apart I'm going to turn the frame into a desk (which may be a little less work than I had originally thought, more on that later).

Here is where I started, around 2pm yesterday. I have a picture of the registration tag on the back, and I've saved it to reapply to the new desk when I'm finished, but I can't figure out how old the piano is. Partially because Chickering and Sons doesn't exist anymore, they were bought out by Baldwin, and Baldwin is owned by Gibson guitars, so there are a few layers of obscurity there and I can't just enter the number anymore and find out the details.

Though once I get back down to school I can check the serial number and have a general range that should  give me the approximate age of the piano and then I can do some more research.

This was an easy level to get to because all of the pieces here that are gone are made to come off. The face just clips in and out and the bottom section just slides in and out, the nice part is I think I'll leave the bottom open for storage which means the front panel will make nice wood to turn into shelf pieces or drawers.

Here you can see all the pieces I've laid out. I've got them sorted with all the hardware I've removed and even though I'm almost done breaking it down I'm 90% sure I could reassemble it all successfully and have it back to working order again if I had to. The keys here are on a sort of tray, it's part of the mechanism but once you remove a couple of screws the whole thing can lift out.

This is what the frame looked like at the same point in time. (almost) the green felt and frame are the tray I just mentioned. In the previous picture the keys are all resting back on top of that frame. The only pieces left to remove at this point really are the hammers which you're staring directly at, and the cast iron (that's where the weight comes from) Plate that the strings are attached to. I haven't really figured out how I'm going to remove that. It's screwed to the frame with big lag screws and some of them fall under the strings so I don't have access to them. I'd like to keep these all intact and not have to cut any strings so I may try to drill out the screws that I can't remove. If that works the only remaining hassle will be actually pulling the cast iron out. Though I may sit the piano down on it's back which would allow me to pull the iron out the top.

Here's what it all looks like with the key frame removed as well as the hammers. The hammer mechanism is pretty complicated but it also is one solid unit. So it's held in by a couple of thumb screws for adjusting (which will make nice pull knobs for drawers on it) and once they are removed the whole thing lifts out. I was actually pretty surprised at what a solid desktop it already makes. I thought I'd have to make a new top, but other than some screw holes in it, that is a solid smooth piece of wood. I'll sand it down and find some stain that matches the rest of the piano and the top may be done. I'll leave the rest of exact what I'm planning to do a secret for now since I haven't gotten around to testing any of it or sketched anything with measurements yet. I am however, confident that I'll be able to reuse about 98% of this piano. In this picture and the last you can see 3 strips of what I think is poplar which connects all the pedal mechanisms, I'll even be able to use those. The only stuff I'll be throwing out is some of the old hardware and maybe some small scraps once I start cutting pieces down. ALL of the rest will become art projects and so this whole thing will get a brand new life. I'll leave here with some final pictures of pieces. Everybody may have seen them on facebook already but I think I'll have to print and frame a couple for my office because of how they turned out. I only wish I'd had my real camera and not my ipod camera. Boooo.

Headboard Makeover

About a week ago I started my next big project, a headboard out of a recycled door. Today I finished said project. I think I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and it was generally pretty simple (once I figured it out).

The final product took about 3 coats of paint, a little more for the cream sections and I'd say... maybe 6-10 total hours of work, but I spread that over a weekend and a week so it wasn't really too bad. It sat in my office most of the week and I'd give it another coat of paint each night until I was satisfied.

General Supplies:

* 2 colors of paint (I prefer two tone because having it all the same color is boring and the panels of the door make it easily doable for some nice contrast.)
 Over the years I've learned that paint samples can be your friend. Lowe's sells all of their samples in Satin which tends to be the most general paint choice people use in their houses. Home Depot seems to have theirs all in flat, with the exception being one of their other brands which I think had eggshell. Satin was perfect because its just enough sheen and right in the middle, so it looks nice.

* lumber: I used a 1x5 for the cap piece to make a nice overhang, and some 1x3 for the rest of the frame. Then pick a piece of crown molding or casing that you like to frame off the top and give it some nice detail.

* Nails: I used a combination of small brad nails to finish some of the lower sections as well as finish nails for a pneumatic nailer which makes the work a whole lot faster, though you could hammer all of them in and set them if you don't have any air tools.

* Wood glue and wood filler, to glue all the pieces and fill the nail holes.

* A door in a style you like.

First step is to cut the door to the length you want. The bed this is going on currently is a full bed, but in the future it may go onto a queen bed. Luckily those measurements aren't too different in width and the panels on the door lined up pretty nice, so I shot a little wide for now and it ended up framing the bed nicely and once it moves to a queen bed it will be a perfect fit, around 60 inches... give or take.

The next step was to lay everything out so I could start to get a visual of what I was doing. The plan was to run 1x3 down the sides of the door and to frame the edges and run crown molding along the top. Somewhere in all this process you should clean the door up. This one had paint on one side and was stained and sealed on the other. For paint to adhere nicely you should sand everything down, and I didn't want to put all that work into the stained side, so I decided to use the already painted side. So when I needed breaks I'd sand off and chip away any of the loose paint that was there to get a solid base layer that wouldn't pull off once it had new paint on it. Then I gave everything a quick sanding and was done.  This picture on the left shows it with more paint stripped off and with the frame clamped down after being glued and nailed.



This is where I started to run into my first problem. Without thinking about how I'd need to attach things or form corners, I cut the crown molding too short. On top of that with the frame intersecting things I had a gap looking under the crown and couldn't think of an easy way to tie it all together. Also the molding took up most of the free space at the top of the door. You can see here that the bottom of it is butted up to the top of the panels in the door. I ultimately decided I was too tired to try to figure out how to fix all of this and I didn't like it being that close to the panels, so I ran back to the store and chose a different solution.

This was my second major problem. So here you can see the other piece of 1x3 nailed to the side of the door to form part of the legs. The clamp is holding the top 1x5 to the top of the door as it dries. I was going to put the 1x3's together differently when I started and changed my mind. So I forgot these were going to be too long. This left me with about a half an inch that would push me off of the wall and leave that gap on the back of the cap piece. Not happy. So I had to take the jigsaw and rip this extra off of both sides.

I decided to worry about fixing the overhang till later in the project and moved on to cutting and nailing the molding for the top of the bed. Here's a picture of what I settled on. A bit different and a cleaner look and easier corners than the crown molding that was at a 45 degree angle. Also despite the corner pieces being pretty small I just about nailed the 45 cut and got them lined up nice, you can see there's a bit of filler on the point just to even out some of the torn up wood but it came out pretty smooth.

At this point I was just about done, everything was glued and setting up, nailed, and the holes were filled in, so it was time to take it home and get painting.

Here it is on my office floor with the first coat on everything. After working at Lowes doing paint I have come to despise yellows/creams. I like the look of them as long as I'm not trying to match or paint with them. Everything just keeps showing through and you have to do coat after coat until it finally covers everything up, and this is true of just about all paints. I don't care if you have a built in primer, it just can only cover up so much. And trying to color match a yellow? Kill me. They are impossibly tough, the machine can't do it. They never read yellow right and to match we would always dispense a little less and then start to inch up on the color until we got it right, adjusting the formula a drop or two at a time until the customer couldn't tell the difference, most of the time those we could still tell we were a little off. Yellow is just mean. The only other things I did after this was box the legs off by adding a short piece to each of the insides for the door to sit on top of and so you couldn't see the inside of the legs. After that I just had to clamp it to the bed frame, drill holes in the boards I attached at the bottom of the legs where the bedframe lined up and then put a couple of bolts through and unclamp. I think I'm pretty happy with this, another go at it would be a little smoother but I don't have any major complaints. Now for a 4 day weekend and some relaxation.