After taking an unintentional month long hiatus I decided I needed to do something to get me back into posting content and sharing ideas with you all. That's when Jonathan started re-tuning our piano after having it for a year and that kicked me into gear about refinishing it. I have always loved the look of painted pianos had this idea to make ours two-toned with paint and my favorite wax stain as well as to add some wainscoting detail ever since we brought this piano home. We got it right before we bought our house so I decided to wait to refinish it until we moved to avoid any scratches from moving it around. And those who have been reading my blog for awhile know we renovated our great room and started renovating our kitchen shortly after moving in. So naturally I didn't get around to refinishing our piano. After taking this break I really wanted a project that was quick and fairly easy to refinish to ignite my creative side again. So voila! A piano makeover that took me three days to complete and resulted in a beautiful makeover!
Here is a full after and before photo:
Doesn't it look so lovely? It looks like it belongs in a little cottage in the countryside! And it really brightens up our front room quite nicely!
This was a pretty easy refinishing project, which was perfect for me because of my two toddlers running around the house. I took off the parts that I was going to strip and re-stain and sanded the rest of the piano and bench. The most time consuming part was adding the trim details to it. I had to miter cut all of the pieces and I used E6000 to secured to trim pieces. I used tape to keep them in place while the glue dried for 24 hours. Another part that took a lot of time was stripping the varnish off of the top bench seat, the music stand, and the fallboard (the keys cover). Once the glue for the trim pieces dried I applied a coat of primer and then followed that with three coats of paint. The paint color I used is called White Down by Benjamin Moore. It's a light cream/putty color and I also used this paint for my kitchen cabinets. I think the color looks lovely next to the wax stain that I used for the wood parts I decided to refinish. After I stripped the wood, I used my favorite wax stain: Antique Wax by Folk Art. I absolutely love this as a stain! The smell is not nearly as powerful as a regular wood stain and since it's wax I didn't need to take an extra step to seal it. After everything had dried, I put all of the parts back together.
Here are some progress shots:
My most favorite part of this makeover is the trim details that I put on the piano! It simple, but it adds a little bit of elegance to our piano. I just love all of the details on it now and I really can enjoy sitting down and playing piano now that it looks this beautiful and in tune!
Now some beautiful detail pictures:
I just love how everything turned out in this project and I am looking forward to playing our piano and watching our boys play with it as well. And to be honest, I am also looking forward to decorating it throughout the changing seasons. To make this project even better, it cost me less than $25. The only things I had to buy were the trim pieces and the glue. I already had the primer and paint so this project was very budget friendly. I hope you all enjoyed! Comment down below on simple project that you did that made a big impact for you design-wise.
With love and until next time,
Brittany