Turn an Old Piano Into a New Dresser

I always thought it would be fun to take apart an old piano and re-use the materials to make something new, and I finally had the chance to do it.

This is a dresser I made from an almost 120-year-old piano and this instructable is the story of how it all came together.

The piano supplied a lot of great material and I have several more projects I plan to make from it.

The first thing I needed was an old piano to disassemble.

I looked for a while and eventually found this circa 1910 full-size upright made by the Bailey Piano Co. in New York. This company ceased in the early 1900s and I wasn't able to pin down an exact age.

The raw materials from the piano are shown in the second photo. The tear-down is covered in the steps below.

Taking apart a piano is a lot of work. If you have access to a piano that's otherwise going to be thrown away, it might be worth your time and effort - if you enjoy a big challenge and like to re-use unique old materials.

If you want to make a dresser similar to mine, I've included a few key measurements to help you get started.

However after the first few pieces were done, the dimensions of everything else that followed were dictated simply by what was needed to fit and work the way I wanted. When you use old reclaimed materials like this, your exact measurements will depend on what materials you're working with and how you choose to use them.

Tools required were common woodworking tools like a table saw, band saw, drills, clamps, routers, sanders, finishing supplies, and so on.

Here's a quick overview of the completed dresser.

I was aiming for a mid-century sort of style with a stout but elegant look, that prominently featured the beautiful tiger-stripe oak grain panels from the piano.

The dresser has a hinged top lid with a not-so-hidden storage space beneath, along with four very large drawers. The cabinet is about 44 inches tall, 18 inches deep, and 30 inches wide.

The drawer pulls are original metal hardware that was part of the piano, with the words "Pat. Aug. 9. 1910" cast into them.

These were attached to large bolts that went through the soundboard and cast iron harp (the part that holds the strings), and were visible on the upper back exterior of the piano.

I kept and incorporated all of the parts of the piano that had gold-leaf details, which is fun way to call out the unique history of the dresser.

The drawer boxes were made from mostly new material - Baltic birch plywood along with some 1/4" pine ply for the bottoms. The drawer faces were made from the upper front panel from the piano. The drawers ride on waxed solid maple rails that are attached to the inside walls of the case.

There are plenty of blemishes on the dresser that add to its character, like wooden plugs and wood filler-patched holes, along with dings and scratches and stains all visible from it's former life.

Taking a piano apart is a ridiculous amount of work, but I learned a lot in the process.

The heart of any piano is the soundboard structure that holds a cast iron harp. The harp holds the strings, which pass over bridges that are attached to the actual soundboard, which is a thin resonant wood panel typically made of Sitka spruce, like violins and such.

On my piano the soundboard was attached to a frame made of solid oak beams with a thick upper beam made of layers of maple and other hard woods, that the tuning pegs are screwed into. This structure has to handle the immense collective tension from the piano strings, so it's solidly built and very heavy.

The rest of the piano is built onto and around this structure.

I began taking the piano apart by removing the front upper and lower panels.

The lower front panel is held in with a spring clip, and just lifts out and away.

The front upper panel is held on with a couple of screws, as is the top lid piece.

The "action" is the structure that holds all the hammers and individual key mechanisms that transmit the key movement to the strings. The whole action is held in place with a few screws and is lifted out as an entire unit.

The individual keys can then be lifted out once the action has been removed.

After removing most of the easy parts, I got help and tipped the piano over onto its back.

Other parts and panels were screwed in place, some with glue and some without. You just have to start removing parts, examine what's left and then keep going.

The two side panels were attached directly to the sides of the soundboard with glue and large hidden dowels, with no hardware. I knocked these side panels loose with a large mallet. Some of the interior-facing veneer peeled off of these panels and looked rough, but these areas were patched and cleaned up later.

It took me a couple of hours to remove everything until there was just the soundboard structure remaining.

The soundboard took a couple of days to completely break down.

Before removing the iron harp from the rest of the soundboard structure, I had to remove all of the strings and tuning pegs.

This is not a quick and easy task.

For the lowest notes there is a single string and a single peg each, then the lower middle notes have two strings and two pegs each, and then the mid to highest notes all have three strings and pegs each.

Each string string has to be loosened in order to remove it - you can't simply cut them as they are under so much tension that they'll fly off and cause serious damage to people or things.

Tuning pegs come in different sizes and have square ends, which you can buy specific tuning wrenches for.

The ones on my piano were just under 1/4" square, so I was able to cobble together a variety of sockets and adapters to be able to use the open end of a 1/4" socket extension (so, backwards from normal use) with an impact wrench to turn the tuning pegs and loosen the strings.

Once the strings were de-tensioned I was able to snip and remove them. After many hours of work the strings were all removed, and I was able to take the all tuning pegs the rest of the way out of the block.

The harp was attached with huge screws to the wooden structure, and I had to use an impact screwdriver to back them out. I tried to come up with a clever use for the metal harp, but never could so I ended up recycling it.

I had to use an engine hoist to lift and move the harp as well as the wood frame, since they were both so heavy.

The soundboard panel was cut away using a variety of tools (router, jig saw, hand saws).

A chainsaw was used to cut up the solid beams that made the frame.

I used a band saw to trim the odd bits off of the beams so they were all in a somewhat uniform shape.

After all that, I finally had a fully torn down piano.

(In truth, the action is still all together as I didn't want to take it totally apart yet. Maybe someday if I come up with something to do with all the tiny wood bits, I'll tackle that).

It's worth noting how incredibly fun (and loud) it was to pluck and strum the strings before I took the soundboard all apart. It could be a fun thing to just have one of these mounted securely to a wall in the right kind of setting.

So, from this piano got a generous supply of oak-veneered solid wood panels, several large oak beams, a variety of wood parts of many different types (poplar, pine, maple, and others), all the piano strings and keys, tubs full of random little parts, and a lot of hardware.

Now I was finally ready to start building something.

This dresser was designed and made up as I went along.

When I started I didn't have an exact picture of how it would look at the end, but I knew the general shape I was going for. The ultimate size depended on which materials I used and how.

The side panels on the piano were tall and thick, and these were used to make the sides of my dresser.

However they had to be modified substantially. Each panel was cut into thirds and trimmed as needed, and then glued back together with each piece oriented horizontally.

Additional wood pieces from the piano were added and the resulting newly shaped panels were about 17 1/4" wide and 40" tall, and about 1 1/4" thick.

A rabbet was cut along the inside back edge of each panel to hold a panel that is added in the next step.

A sturdy frame was made using wood pieces from the piano key bed, with lap joints cut using a band saw. This frame is 27" wide and about 16 3/4" inches deep and joins the two side panels together.

On a piano, the key bed is a strong thick panel on which the keys sit. The bottom side of this panel on my piano was painted black, and I left the black paint on the pieces I used to make this frame (which you see in some of the photos).

This frame was glued together, and then glued and screwed to the bottom inside faces of the side panels (screwed from the inside).

The bottom side of this frame piece was covered with wood pieces that were glued and nailed in place, which came from the original very bottom, underside panel of the piano.

A piece of 1/2" MDF board was glued and nailed into the rabbet cuts along the backs of the side panels. This board strengthened and squared up the half-built cabinet, although it took a little coaxing with clamps to get everything into compliance.

The inside faces of the side panels were a mess because sections of the veneer had peeled off during disassembly of the piano. These areas were patched with wood filler and sanded smooth.

The front upper piece that features the piano logo was cut and trimmed as needed, and glued between the two side panels. The side edges of this piece had rabbets cut into them and small pieces of wood were glued and nailed to the main piece. This gave the piece a more secure way to fasten it to the side panels (larger glue area and brads).

This piece also had a rabbet cut along the inside bottom edge so a recessed panel could be added later on.

Pieces of wood were added to the inside upper edges of the cabinet, which will act as cleats through which the top panel will be screwed into place later on.

Various pieces of trim were cut from the piano materials and added to the front facing edges of the cabinet using glue and brads.

The top of the cabinet is made from the old top pieces of the piano. I thought it would be fun to keep it as a hinged panel that opens up to a storage space at the top of the cabinet.

These pieces were cut and modified to fit as needed, and attached temporarily to the cabinet (in second photo the cabinet is upside down on my table).

Some additional pieces were added to this area to make everything uniform and able to have a panel screwed in place from the bottom side later on.

A base was made using oak pieces cut from one of the beams that made up the soundboard frame. I tried to come up with a design that looked clean and simple, but was strong enough to hold this huge, heavy cabinet.

The pieces for this were cut as needed, glued, nailed, and in some spots screwed together. There are a lot of compound angles going on here, and this part was actually quite fun to figure out and make.

This was stained and finished along with the parts in the next step before being screwed to the bottom of the cabinet.

I didn't want to mess up the great existing finish on these panels, although I had to do some light work to get the raw wood areas to match everything else.

I lightly sanded everything (even the finished panels) with 220 grit paper with an orbital sander, and used the same grit with hand sandpaper to very gently knock off all sharp edges.

I took all the left over wood stain colors I had from years of making stuff, and mixed them all together (no joke), and used this dark mix of random colors to re-stain every part of the cabinet, including the boards that became the drawer faces.

I then coated everything with several coats of semi-gloss lacquer, buffing with a fine white Scotchbrite pad between coats.

At some point I cut some hand holes in the back panel to help in moving this, which you can see here. It is very heavy, even with the drawers removed.

The drawer boxes were made using 10mm Baltic birch plywood that was glued and nailed together. The bottoms are 1/4" pine plywood that was glued and nailed in place.

Additional pieces of birch ply were added to the upper sides of the drawer to act as rails, and pieces of wood were added to the inside walls of the cabinet as matching drawer guide rails. Scrap wood pieces were cut and used as props to hold these rails up to the correct heights so they could be fastened precisely where needed.

The edges of all of the drawer boxes and rail pieces were routed with a small round-over bit. The drawers were coated with a few coats of lacquer and buffed smooth between coats. The mating rail faces were rubbed with some wax to help them glide smoothly.

With the drawers in place, the drawer face boards were positioned using stacks of playing cards to create even gaps all around.

The drawers and not-yet-attached faces were then removed and kept with their specific stacks of cards for permanent assembly one by one.

Starting with the bottom drawer, the face was brad-nailed to the box from the inside by reaching in from above with my brad nailer. Then the drawer was removed from the cabinet and the face reinforced with screws from the inside, to attach it more securely.

The drawer was then placed back into the cabinet, and the next drawer up received the same procedure, placing the stacks of cards, placing the face, attaching it with brads and then screws, etc. until all drawers had their very precisely located faces securely attached.

Each drawer is numbered and has a specific location it goes so the grain and gaps all look how I intended.

The drawers can be put in any spot and they all fit just fine. But the gaps don't look perfect and the tiger stripe grain doesn't line up the way it's supposed to, so it's better to just put each drawer where it's supposed to be.

With all of the drawers completed, they were removed once again and an MDF panel was screwed in place from the underside to complete the hidden top storage area.

The fancy nuts that were originally hidden on the backside of the piano were polished up for the new prominent use as drawer pulls on the frontside of cabinet. These were attached with bolts to the fronts of the drawers.

This was a huge undertaking, but it was fun to see it all eventually come together and give a second life to some amazing materials.

And I have a large pile of left over piano parts for future projects.

This project spanned two months from start to finish, but I'm quite pleased with the results.

Thanks for reading my instructable!