Every once in awhile an idea in my head, a wild hair, really, turns out even better than I hoped it would.
And I’m SO EXCITED ABOUT IT going to play it cool and tell you how my idea to make piano harp art came to fruition.
When we took apart the upright piano that had been left in our house when we moved in, I knew I could use the parts of the piano to make unique, statement-making art for our home.
Of course, the pièce de résistance of piano parts is the harp and that was the hardest part to extract. Murphy’s Law.
The piano harp is the part of the piano that connects the tuning pins to the strings, so it needs to be able to withstand a tremendous amount of tension. That is why the harp is made of cast iron and is incredibly heavy. I’m guessing our piano harp weighs at least 120 pounds. Maybe 150?
Weight aside, piano harps have a really interesting shape and all the ones I’ve seen are painted gold.
Interesting shape + great color = potentially awesome art!
I don’t know if piano harp art is a thing, but it is now. At least inside my four walls.
All we had to do was get that heavy thing on the wall.
And then the universe laughed.
In our case, we were going to affix the piano harp to a stone wall. We live in a colonial era home and the wall on which we were going to hang the piano harp art was an old exterior wall. It was built using stones and has been plastered over to give it a smooth finish.
If you are planning on drilling into stone walls, I highly recommend getting a hammer drill
Our piano harp art is mounted to the wall using six 3-inch concrete screws with the corresponding concrete anchors. We placed our concrete screws in the holes that were already in the harp, which made it much easier to hang.
I did create a cardboard template of the piano harp art that we positioned on the wall in order to mark where we were going to drill. There was no way two of us were going to be able to hold the piano harp art in place long enough to make those drill marks otherwise.
The last and riskiest thing to do was actually attach the piano harp art to the wall using our predrilled holes.
I won’t tell you how we got the harp on the wall because I don’t want you to copy our questionable maneuver.
I won’t go into the headache that was caused when we realized the bottom screw holes lined up, but the top ones didn’t. This is something we are never EVER going to speak of.
I also won’t go into the sheer stupidity of the situation when I was holding the harp upright and Handy Husband said, “Watch out in case those bottom screws sheer off before I finish attaching the top screws.”
Wait. What?
WHAT?!?!
Sure. No problem. I’ll just “watch out.” Death by piano harp will look great on my tombstone.
Now, let’s address the last bit of flare I added to the piano harp art. You may be thinking “Hey, Annisa. There aren’t shelves and plants inside a piano. What gives?”
You’d be right, my friend.
What gives is that the piano harp has two ledges that make the perfect spot to support a shelf. And I felt that my piano harp art needed a little something extra. The shelf is a piece of leftover molding that is held in place with Command Strips
Today I have a hanging basket with a plant on there. Tomorrow? Who knows. I might take it down. The shelf. Not the piano harp. That sucker will probably have to stay with the house forever. The point is I’m having fun playing around with it.
If you take anything away from this blog, I hope it is encouragement to have fun creating a space that makes you happy and is uniquely you.
P.S. Every once in awhile I’d like to make you laugh or at least smile too. I’d also like to help you avoid getting yourself into dangerous situations where you are holding a piano harp against the wall and facing certain death.
If you enjoyed this post, bless you! Here are some others you might enjoy too.
Taking Apart a Piano is Hard (the prequel to this post)
That Painting I Found On Garbage Day
Display a Souvenir Pin Collection in a Shadowbox
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