4 Upcycled Piano Ideas You Can DIY
Creative refurbishers, like Diercks and Marchini, have converted old pianos into inventive furniture and tchotchke ornaments—and they encourage you to play around with the grand instrument, too. “Think about [an heirloom piano] like an old car,” Diercks says. “Unless that car is meticulously cared for, it’s going to break down and has to be scrapped.”
To disassemble and upcycle a piano that won’t be giving concerts anytime soon all you need is a few basic tools and a new coat of paint. “You’d be surprised what you can do with Phillips-head [screwdriver] and a flat-head screwdriver,” Diercks says.
Check out these four creative ways to upcycle a piano and give it a new life. (AD Mag, Bridget Reed Morawski)
Piano as a book shelf
One of Diercks’s friends had a baby grand piano with mold issues, meaning it couldn’t be refinished properly. But instead of abandoning it at the junkyard, she painted it with an antimold paint and primer and converted it into a multitier bookshelf.
“If the owner had wanted to restore that piano, it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars—just unaffordable,” Diercks says. “And so instead of that [piano] going to the dump, I was able to take it and turn it into a piece of art that’ll be around for a long time.”
Piano Display Table
You can sustainably refurbish a piano into something more practical: A large plant and display table, complete with grow lights and a glass top over the keys to highlight its musical past.
If the owner had wanted to restore that piano, it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars—just unaffordable,” Diercks says. “And so instead of that [piano] going to the dump, I was able to take it and turn it into a piece of art that’ll be around for a long time.”
The couple decided to sustainably refurbish the piano into something more practical: A large plant and display table, complete with grow lights and a glass top over the keys to highlight its musical past.
Piano as a Desk
Dutch journalist Ron Onrust crafts a variety of wooden gems—from tables with circuit board centerpieces to hanging wooden lamps—and chronicles it all on his YouTube channel. But after seeing the number of ultracheap or free pianos available in Aalsmeer, Netherlands, he decided to convert one into a stand-up computer desk as a sort of conceptual art project.
But once he got started, “it turned out to be not so much an art project as more of an engineering project,” Onrust says. After chipping away at the project three days a week for five months, the components he repurposed enabled him to mechanically raise the piano desk to as high as six feet. He also added several electronic gizmos—speakers, lights, a computer monitor and even a functioning electronic keyboard—to maximize the piano’s functionality.
Piano as a Bar Cart
Dakotah Scavarelli sources local reclaimed wood from coasters to charcuterie boards to custom furniture she crafts in her studio, located in London, Ontario. She gutted a drab, worn piano and repurposed it into a stunning, jazzy bar cart with LED lighting and glass shelves.
Scavarelli came up with the final layout by “taking the entire piano apart and discovering the natural voids left after removing the piano’s main pieces.” She found that she could incorporate most parts of a standard wet bar into the deconstructed frame.
The foldout table at the back is used as a bar top, so drinks can travel easily to the bar on the other side. “I found this made it more of a functional bar that didn’t need to be stored always against a wall,” Scavarelli explains.