Project: Refinish an old Piano

On Memorial Day weekend, my wife and her sisters gather for craft weekend, a magical time of wonders and sisterly bonding.

Unfortunately, the menfolk aren't invited. This year we decided that instead of sitting at home eating hot pockets and wallowing in despair, we would do something productive. We would refinish my sister in law's old piano, which had been making her children very sad.

So very, very sad

The piano is a Laverne, built in 1915. It began its career in a gold rush honky-tonk bar in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was later sold to a piano teacher, who painted it yellow, then painted over the yellow with black. This created the wonderful greenish hue you see above.

A closeup of each layer of paint. Note how thickly the paint is slathered on.

The first step was to take out the keys and clean out a hundred years of accumulated dust. When we removed the keys, we did notice an interesting series of markings on the A key

Keeping in mind that the piano was made in 1915, we have no idea what the markings mean. The internet postulated that they might be the initials of various people signing off their part of the construction of the piano, but no consensus was made.

We also discovered several other markings in the piano:

After the piano was disassembled and manhandled into the garage, we quickly blew out what dust we could with an air compressor, then vacuumed the rest of the fruit loops out of the piano.

We then began the most tedious and expensive part of the process, stripping the old finish. This took approximately 10 hours and 2 gallons of paint stripper.
In the process, we found the remnant of the maker's mark, but it could not be salvaged

After the stripping was completed, we sanded each piece smooth - a difficult process in some cases, as the veneer was worn extremely thin.

After sanding, it was time to put on the new finish, a 50/50 blend of cherry and medium walnut danish oil, which approximates a vintage mahogany. We bought three cans of each, but it turned out that only half a can was needed.


We were very careful to preserve the original damage, such as the cigarette burns above (and all over the rest of the piano) and the smell of old whiskey on the hammers.

We then coated the piano with some of Howard's Feed-n-Wax, replaced the keys, and let the kids try it out. They assured us that the piano sounded much better now that it was prettier.

Unfortunately, the paint had seeped through the veneer in places, and could not be removed without permanent damage to the piano. Fortunately, the distressed look is in at the moment, and the piano still looks much better than it did before.

The piano will soon be professionally tuned, and will hopefully have a long and happy life.

We started the project Thursday evening and were done Saturday morning. In total the project took about 20 hours of active labor, spread among three adults and four children.