apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Heres the plan: Get one backpack style parachute and tie all the strings to the piano. Put on your Wile E. Coyote costume. Approach the window.

Meanwhile, down below, one of your friends is dressed as the Roadrunner....

you should absolutely paint it - why not? does it have a 'piano finish' gloss surface? sand or buff that down and go to town. i don't know if you want to bother removing the sound board - i took an upright apart to paint and it really had to come entirely apart, but i don't know about grands. if you can do something sweet, like an ombre or some kind of wacky scene, it would have a really powerful presence. fun!

If you want to get rid of it without paying someone, you could always try putting in on Freecycle or on Craigslist for "free" ... meaning that the price is that the taker has to move it him/herself. Though it seems unlikely that someone would want an unusable piano, you never know ... .

Donate it to a school that can fix it...

Modfan, you made my freakin' day. How about, for extra credit, drawing a picture of a hole in the wall that only you can walk through?

Someone may want it for parts (?) mising keys, pedals, etc for their own piano. Dismantle and sell on ebay in small pieces! :)

go phillipe stark on it and paint it all white (everything) just yes, remember to sand the gloss off

Just an idea but if you want to keep it and make it into something usable what about making into a bar or maybe some type of counter you could eat/work upon?

I also had an unusable piano and desperately searched for someone to take it when I moved (pre-Craigslist and Freecycle). I was able to find, in Minneapolis at least, a company that fixes them, rehabs them and then gives them to schools. I think they paid me $50.00 for it AND they moved it from my home. best of luck!

I would pursue the piano tech training school option first, like the one at the North Bennett Street School in Boston. Maybe some of it is still useable in the right hands.

Keep the top and use it as a dining room table? I've seen this done before. The keys could make an interesting art piece on the wall if kept together.

Remove all strings from the inside and plant tons of ivy in it. I think it would look spectacular as a planter/living sculpture. It might require a bit of grooming every now and then though...

What a shame! If a professional is unable to repair the damage, or it's too expensive to repair, give it away to someone who will pay to have it professionally removed from your home. Just curious... why would you mention that you are open to destroying it?

you can still post it on craigslist explaining its condition and if someone wants to buy it, THEY would be responsible for paying for a mover...

Pianos can be fixed. it would be a shame to take this puppy apart.

A few ideas from art history
Arman, Chopin's Waterloo, 1962 :
http://www.laboratoiredugeste.com/IMG/jpg/piano.jpg

Nam Jun Paik, Prepared Piano, 1960's:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r292/frans16611/blog67.jpg

Please don't destroy it. There a lots of people out there that will gladly "rescue and rehab" a piano in need. I yearned for a grand piano for years, and I just know there will be someone willing to put the effort into making it into something worthwhile.

Rebecca Horn, concert for anarchy, 1990

http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/T/T07/T07517_9.jpg

There's a mecanism that makes the keys move.

Turn it into a wall unit.
1. Gut it as much as possible.
2. Remove legs.
3. Add some shelves parallel to the keyboard (maybe out of pegboard so light can peek through).
4. Mount on the wall with the keys pointing down.

You've got storage that's also sculpture.
Sounds like a fun problem. Good luck.

Wow. This reminds me of a teacher I took harp lessons from when I was a kid in the 70's. (She was rather well known and considered an innovator of harp music arrangement.) She loved mu-mu's and bright orange nail polish -- and now that I think of it, the first home of hers that I took lessons in was a very mid-century modern ranch. The music room took up the full back expanse of the house and "the wall" was pretty much ceiling to floor windows.

The room was huge and she had a baby grand that was completely unusable flanking the harps. Then she would open it up and all of the sheet music she had arranged and handwritten and mimeographed were stacked up inside where there would have been strings.

Alas, when she moved to the split level, the piano filing cabinet was history.

There are lots of places to donate it to who would be thrilled to take it away and rehab it into playing condition.

You are smart to look for uses for your piano other than a musical instrument. A full restoration of a grand piano could cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

The worst thing you could do is donate it to a school where some poor kid is going to give up on learning to play because the instrument is not in good repair. What you have is more like a classic car, and based on the damage you described, it will never be "street legal."

If it is a Bösendorfer, call the company and they will gladly buy it back from you, otherwise make it into some kind of sculpture.

Please don't use it as a canvas (I once saw a piano with a beach scene painted on it, complete with sailboats and a lighthouse >>shudder<<) and please don't plant greenery in it. That would just break my heart. I understand that it is not playable. I second the notion of selling it for parts or turning it into something else entirely, like the wall cabinet or bar ideas.

Try giving it away through materials for the arts.

Convert it into a bath tub.

http://www.pianodesk.com

this site has some examples of instruments and parts that are converted into functional objects.

I'm brand new to this site and just registered to post this comment.

Six-legged pianos are becoming increasingly rare. Any pianist who could afford it (or make it so that they could afford it) would love to have and repair that piano. Universities and music conservatories would also have the resources to repair it properly.

Donating it to a small school or local community center sounds like a nice idea, but if they cannot make it playable it would just be more trouble for them. I suggest calling around if you don't get any responses off craigslist or the like.

I think that some piano art is magnificent, but a piano like that is already a work of art in both visual and aural mediums. Please consider finding it a new home with someone who will appreciate it for what it is. If it is truly beyond repair, then I vote for setting bar stools around it and using it as a dining table.

If you are not worried about the ghosts of Steinway coming back to haunt you, remove the interior guts of the piano, leaving everything that you would see if the top was closed. Fill this open space with soil/plants. you might want to line it first with plastic or something. You would have the most expensive planter that I can think of. Be warned that if you know any true music lovers they will always hate you for this.

Have you taken the time to research that particular piano online? Who was the manufacturer? What model was it? It shouldn't be hard to find out if it's a particular desirable and valuable piano or just something from some common old 3rd tier manufacturer.

It would help, too, to know what city you're in.

Please don't take this as a suggestion, but I couldn't contain it any longer: my grandfather once chopped up a beautiful old Kimball piano for firewood. Argh!! There - I said it!
Whatever you decide to do with the piano, please let us know. Yours is a very interesting submission. Best of luck!

I'm one of those who would cringe to see the piano disrespected. I realize restoring it to its original function might defy logic and economics, but whatever you do, please follow Hoyt Clagwell's suggestion and do a little research first.