As of this past week I am now responsible for the safety and well-being of my best friend’s baby grand piano until such a time as she has room for it again. She took a temporary job in D.C. and was not able to afford a place there big enough to house half of her furniture, let alone a baby grand piano. When she told us Jay automatically piped up that he thought we could make room for it here if that was alright with her. As you know, we already have one whole piano and another piano in lots of pieces. Jay and I really don’t have a giant house, so we had to do some measuring to make sure it would fit.

We moved some furniture around, switched out furniture in other rooms, and had Jay’s cousin inspect the floor joists to ensure that they could handle the weight. The piano is going in the family room, which was the addition that a very bad engineer added onto the house and managed to mess a lot of basic construction practices up when doing so. Jay didn’t want a piano falling onto his head if he was playing in his workshop, so we wanted to double check. Jay’s cousin has some kind of building/architecture schooling, so he knows what he’s talking about. He said that we were good to go.

I was nervous that it wouldn’t fit. I had never seen this piano in person before, but I know how much room they take up!

The morning that the movers were going to show up we cleaned the sidewalks really good (we had received quite a bit of snow that week) and I did my best to ensure that they would have plenty of room to maneuver it. These were professional movers, which was good because Jay and I had watched a few piano moving fails on YouTube. Talk about something that will make you cringe!

Luckily everything went smoothly! The guys were very professional and didn’t even track any extra snow into the house!

Bob, for some reason, has taken a shine to the bench. I think that it might be because he smells his brothers, Harley and Buster, on it. The piano isn’t anywhere near the heat vent, so I know that it’s not because of that. Also, I know that he’s not laying on it because he likes the sound that it makes. No matter which one I play both of the cats will take off and leave the room as soon as the music starts.

This weekend I managed to get the family room situated and in some fashion of order. We might end up moving the piano just a little bit, but pretty much this is where it’s going to stay. I took the vacuum to it today to dust it and get any extra cat hair out of it (Bob had already crawled onto the strings once!). Once it has been here for about a month I will call the piano tuner and have him come tune it. The sound/tone isn’t bad, but it’s been a while since it was tuned so I would like to get that done. I’m really going to baby it and take good care of it while I have it in my possession. It’s not every day that you get to piano-sit a baby grand. It has always been my dream to own one, so I will make the most of having one for now.

It’s not anything fancy, it’s an older Kohler & Campbell, but it has character and a voice. I have played it a few times now and am getting used to the touch. The one thing that I’ve noticed is after playing it for about 45 minutes my neck starts to hurt. I must be holding it differently, somehow. I need to take some time to observe what I’m doing. My first instinct is that I’m sitting lower than I would like and so I’m craning my neck up in order to read the music. Jay has said that he can make me a taller bench, but before he does that we’ll have to set the current one up on blocks or something to see if that truly is the problem. I’ll get it figured out, though, don’t you worry.