Merry Christmas to Josh

I'm nuts. Just ask anyone. Nuts for sure, but a happy, productive nut. So when Josh left town this week, leaving me alone with the 4 kiddos from Sunday afternoon until Thursday afternoon, I saw my big opportunity.

A few years back we bought a piano off of craigslist. It was old and beat up, but you couldn't beat the deal we got on it. It's a baby grand and though it was out of tune, it played well and had character.

When we prepared to move to Utah we decided to sell it. We listed it on craigslist for the same price we paid for it and not a nibble. After a week or two of this, some serious thinking started rolling around in our brains and we realized we would never find a piano like this for the price we paid again. We decided to keep it and pay the extra cash to have it moved to Utah. Someday, we told ourselves, we will refinish it, get it all fixed up, make it nice. Let's keep it.

Well, someday came this week. While Josh was gone, I refinished it. I have refinished exactly 1 thing prior to this in my life. Dal's dresser-I did that about 2 months ago. That went so well that I figured, hey, how hard could a piano be?

Thanks to pinterest and some nice tutorials on how to refinish furniture, I felt vaguely confident. At least confident enough to try it, though I admit I was VERY nervous and dreamed about it and worried about it a lot the week before I did it.

First thing Monday morning (Josh having left on Sunday) I got to work. I decided not to sand (after trying and feeling like it wasn't going to be worth it), so I got some primer that is intended to be used without having to sand. All day Monday I primed. Primed the whole thing that day. That was a lot of work. I also got help from my brother to move the big top piece to the basement to the work on it down there.

Tuesday I got paint and started painting. That was a little trickier because it was oil based paint and took forever to dry and I was on a time limit! And I was scared to death that I was going to spill it on our carpet or something.

After having my other brother help me lift the big lid part back on to the piano while it was still sort of wet, I had some touching up to do, but in the end, it got finished. (All except the bench. I didn't start that until today.)

Josh was scheduled to come home Thursday afternoon. His flight got in at 1:30 and he was supposed to go straight to work for a meeting at 4. I suspected he might stop by home to surprise us and say hi on his way to work. He did. Darn him. The piano tuner was coming at 3:00 that day and Josh was there when he showed up, so the surprise didn't go off quite as well as I would have liked. Also, the very first thing Dallen said to Josh when he saw him was "Dad, you gotta see what mom did to the piano" to which Jack responded "shhh Dallen! Dad, ignore him. Don't even look in the piano room." So much for the element of surprise that I was going for.

Anyway, that was a long story about this process. Let's just see the pictures now.

Here are a couple of before pictures:

 And here's the finished product:

It's not perfect. But it looks pretty neat. And, it's tuned and repaired and sounds beautiful. I love it when Josh plays it! And I may have found a great new hobby...