Giving an old piano a new life for the next century — as a beautiful desk

Earlier this year, my wife and I were searching for a new desk for our home office. We were planning to renovate the office and wanted to design the office around the desk, and wanted the desk to have character and be the focal point. After many hours spent online and dozens of desks pinned to our shared Pinterest board, we couldn’t find the right desk to meet our needs.

Watching a home reno show one weekend I saw an interesting project where they converted an older piano into a desk and I became quite intrigued by the concept. We hopped onto kijiji and Facebook Marketplace to see what pianos were available in our area. After a couple weeks of searching, we found the perfect one — an upright Baldwin, circa 1915. The body of the piano was in amazing condition, but it wasn’t fully functional. We purchased the piano and had it moved to our garage.

Never having worked on a piano before, and having watched a few YouTube videos about how to take one apart, the journey began.

To my delight, working on the disassembly was a pure pleasure at every turn. The craftsmanship of its construction made it so easy to work on without much more than a flat head screwdriver.

Piece by piece I took the it apart — not damaging a single piece in the process.