Painted Piano (plus a living room update)

As I type this, I can literally feel every music teacher and musician I've ever known cringing. 

Before. A sad, beat up piano.

Just a sample of some of the damage.

Lonely piano leg, table for 1.

Very recently, we moved my childhood piano from my mother's house to our home. It was already very beat up, with it's varnish flaking off in every imaginable place. There was a leg that wouldn't stay on, some of the keys have coating rubbing off, and it hasn't been tuned in at least 10 years. It needed something done to it to give it new life. So I painted it Robin Egg Blue.

After a coat of primer.

Now it's so pretty and still very much playable.

Many music experts believe painting a piano in such a "crude" manor will damage the sound quality and overall health of the instrument. Here is my opinion: It was already not in the best of health, something needed done, and it's not a brand new, baby-grand Steinway being used for the best concerts Carnegie Hall can have. It's an old, beat up, at home piano that my fiance and I use to keep up with our once brilliant music skills, for warming up and practicing our singing, and for preping for any community theatre auditions. Can it really harm it that much that it won't be useable for those things? I think not. 

I love it so much. It matches the canvas above the sofa almost perfectly and the pillows I made look great with the colors. As a temporary fix for the leg, we've kind of just shoved it under so the piano has more support. We're also going to bring a piano tuner in soon. I can't wait to see that reaction. 

This is the living room now...

... a far cry from what it used to be!

In addition to the piano, we also added some Ikea shelves for storage and decor and a new floor lamp. Now it feels like a finished space.

Hand Painted Pillows

Aaron’s least favorite decor item is accent pillows. He thinks they are totally useless items of decoration that serve no purpose. I, however, love them. I think they can really pull a space’s colors together and they’re super easy (and cheap) to change out for different looks and feels. 

I had a very specific vision of what style of pillows I wanted for our new sofa. I couldn’t find them anywhere for a good enough price, so of course I made them!

Fabric Squares

I used a very basic quilter's cotton, cut out 2 19" squares for each pillow and sewed them together, leaving a little room at the top for stuffing. 

Shells of pillows

After turning them inside out, I layed them flat and began to paint my designs on with basic craft paint. 

For the striped pillows, I used painters tape to get clean lines.


For the dotted pillows, I used the shape of my brush to place them in an almost even pattern.

The ampersand pillow was the most complicated. I hand drew my design on paper, cut it out, then traced it onto my pillow. After that I painted the outline with my grey paint as carefully as I could. Then I filled in the rest.

Aaron helped me stuff them. It's a lot more of a process then one would think.

I gave the paint a whole day to dry, but I bet I could have only waited a few hours. Then I stuffed them and sewed them up. 

Here is their new home in the living room. I love how they look with the floral arrangement I made.

Printable Artwork Download

As I said in the post about the family room makeover, I made the artwork for above the sofa. I just used Photoshop to alter some text and images, but I figured I would make the files available to you to download for free, print, and use however you'd like in your home!

 I just printed mine on basic card stock and framed them, however you can send them to be professionally printed for a really quality look. I chose these two themes specifically because they relate to us as a couple. Adventure is out there, because Aaron and I love the movie "Up" and Titanic, because we met in a community theatre production of Titanic: the Musical. 

Here are the files:
Adventure
Titanic

Enjoy!