Oh piano

Ted and I spent the day over at F's apartment dismantling the piano she had ill-advisedly rescued from the side of the road. We ill advisedly did not do this dismantling when she was around. We foolishly trusted her to get the same group of strong young men who had pushed the piano up the stairs to her second floor apt and bribe them into pushing it back down the stairs. But then what would happen to it? Leave it by the dumpster to become someone else's problem? Push it back out to the side of the road where she found it?
We watched several videos on you tube as to how to dismantle a piano, but this turned out to be harder than it looked, at least in some ways. Pieces that looked like they came apart easily in the video took a crowbar to loosen up.
In the video the guy just lifts up the harp and walks off with it. Don't be fooled, the harp weighs a ton, I'm hoping I didn't do any damage to my back, but even after two ibuprofen it still feels tight. Uh oh. It will take some strong young men to move the harp down the stairs.
The back of the piano without the harp is also very heavy. We need to come back with a sawsall and cut that into manageable pieces. We salvaged a good deal of the wood, the big pieces are all plywood. They can at least be used for shelves in the garage or shed. The sides were glued on and the plywood splintered when the sides were pried off, so that was all trashed. It took about 5 hours of work.
Normally after such a crazy day we would head out for a rejuvenating bike ride but we are both tired and it's still 93 at seven pm, so forget that!


Update 7/18/2010
Finished the piano dismantling.
Took the sawsall and Ted cut apart the back. That solid piece at the bottom is where most of the weight is.

Then he put on the metal blade and cut the harp in two. Now we could carry all the pieces down the stairs ourselves. Swept up the dust and headed back home. This the process went very quickly and we were done in about 1.5 hours.