the piano.

have i ever told you that i like to take on huge projects, and then regret it immediately afterward? no? well it happens a ton.

last week i saw a post on craigslist. free piano it read. free? who can pass up free?! not i! well, i opened up the ad and saw this...

hmmm. i am going to make blake decide. i call him up and he says sure.. its free, and you have always wanted a piano. lets go get it.

we drive the half hour to portales, and get to the house. we get out and see the piano. its yellow. speckled with brown.

yum.

but, its from 1924 (that make it antique, which of course means its worth something... right?) its a gulbransen piano (that has to mean something... because it just sounds so fancy...)and it actually plays... (only one key sticks and the tone isn't too bad.)

so i decide to take it on. 

we load it up (barely) and carefully drive back to clovis. i decided we certainly can't leave it this atrocious yellow with speckles of brown color. we will just paint over it with black. easy, right? 

once its in our garage i notice all the dings and dents. the splintered wood and the peeling paint. i'll just sand it down first. just a simple step to make it look good. 

i start sanding, and sure enough, the atrocious yellow paint is also strong, super strong, and adheres to the wood amazingly.

hmm. what to do? well, we will just get some of that easy peasy paint remover. it can't be that hard to use. we'll just paint it on and wipe it off. simple. 
(notice how i jumped from i to we...)

we get the overpriced paint remover and get to work. and work it is. 

we paint on this horrible smelling gel and wait ten minutes. we get the putty knife and try to scrape it off. and yet again, the atrocious yellow paint is immune to the overpriced easy peasy paint remover.

we paint more on and wait for a while longer. this time, the top layer comes off. this won't be too hard, i think, there can only be a few layers. this is going to be fun! 

three layers later we reach the clear coat, and then the stain. that's right. it has three layers of paint, one (maybe two) layer of clear coat, and two layers of stain.

we bravely sand and scrape and sand and scrape till we get down to the actually wood.

the wood is beautiful. 

...pristine and preserved from the layers of paint and stain.

we have only sanded and scraped the lid and two doors that open to show off the player part of the piano. we have so much more to do. and quite honestly, i don't feel like i took on too big of a project or too much at a time. blake and i have had so much fun scraping away, taking turns to watch grace, or attend to the cries of grant.

~~~~~~~

i couldn't wait to see the stain we picked out, so i stained one door. 

and with that, i know

its all going to be worth it.