Before & After: A Craigslist Piano With A Surprise Inside
We sure didn’t see this one coming. Lanae calls her boyfriend Brandon a “crafty DIY person.” You’re not wrong, Lanae, you’re not at all wrong.
Turns out, Brandon is a pretty awesome boyfriend, too. Lanae tells us how this totally inventive piano bar came into being:
For Christmas last year I mentioned to my boyfriend that I’d like a bar cart for our house. Brandon did not want to go to IKEA for the standard bar cart set-up. Instead, he scoured Craigslist for something he could transform into a bar cart and ended up purchasing a Barnes & Son piano, circa the early 1900s.
There aren’t really any instructions for this kind of transformation, so Brandon drew up the plans with the help of his equally crafty dad and got to work. The piano was completely gutted of its innards, including of the harp and strings, and hinges were added to the front to make a drop-down door. A custom-built cabinet was then inserted, along with a handmade wine rack. The whole project took around 80 hours of hands-on work, and there are still a few things that we’d like to do to it, including LED strip lights and additional staining and sealing. With everything closed, you can’t tell that it’s anything more than a regular piano.
We live in a Victorian home that was built around 1906, so this piano bar looks like it really belongs there. It’s definitely one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received —a one-of-a-kind labor of love.
We’re such softies for a sweet love story. Keep it up, you crazy kids.
Thank you Lenae!
Re-edited from a post originally published 3.26.14-NT