· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Junk Removal
The upright piano in the living room was usually bought new by a grandparent, played for a decade and then kept because it seemed wrong to get rid of it. When the house is sold or the room is needed, the family finds out that almost nobody wants it. Thrift stores decline, listings for a free piano sit for weeks, and the few people who reply back out when they learn about the stairs. A piano is one of the heaviest single things in a house and one of the hardest to move, so it pays to know what it is worth, who might take it and how it comes apart before anyone lifts it.
Find out whether it is worth anything first
Age alone does not make a piano valuable. What matters is the maker, the condition of the soundboard and the pin block that holds the tuning pins, and whether it will still hold a tune. A piano technician can look at those in a single visit and tell you whether the instrument is worth restoring, worth selling as it is, or worth nothing but its parts. That visit costs far less than moving a piano to a new home that turns out not to want it.
The serial number, usually stamped on the cast iron plate under the lid, dates the instrument. A well-known maker in good order may be worth selling through a dealer or a private listing. A piano that has sat in a damp basement or next to a heating register for years often has a cracked soundboard or loose pins, and at that point restoring it costs more than a good used piano.
Why nobody takes it for free
Most donation centers will not accept pianos at all, because they rarely sell and take up a lot of floor space. Churches, schools and community music programs sometimes want one, but only an instrument that plays well, and they usually expect the donor to arrange the move. Call before anyone loads it.
A private listing works when the piano is playable and the new owner hires movers. When the reply asks about stairs, porch steps and the door width, the move is usually the reason the offer disappears. Piano movers charge for that difficulty, and a free piano with a steep delivery bill is not free to the person taking it.
Getting it out of the house
An upright weighs several hundred pounds and carries most of that weight in the iron plate, which sits low and toward the back. It rolls on small casters that were never meant to move it across a room, and they dent hardwood and can crack old floorboards. The safe way is a piano dolly or a padded skid board, straps, and enough people to control it on every step. Porch steps on older Nashville houses are often narrow, steep and a little soft, and they get checked before the piano goes near them.
Some pianos were carried into a house through an opening that has since been changed, or put in a basement before the stairs were closed in. If it will not leave in one piece, it leaves in several. Our crews walk the route first and decide before lifting anything.
- Door widths and the tightest turn on the way out
- Stairs inside, porch steps and anything soft underfoot
- Floors the piano will cross, and how to protect them
- Where the truck can park, and the slope to reach it
- Whether it leaves whole or in pieces
Taking it apart, and where the pieces go
A piano that is not going to be played again is usually dismantled. The strings together hold a very large amount of tension against the plate, and cutting them with snips is how people get hurt: a string under that load snaps back hard and fast. The safe order is to back the tension off at the tuning pins first, or to leave the strings on the plate and lift the whole plate out with them in place.
After that, the parts go different ways. The iron plate and steel strings go to scrap metal. The cabinet is solid wood and veneer that can go to a wood recycler or to landfill depending on the finish. Keys on older pianos may be topped with ivory, and selling ivory is restricted, so those are not listed for sale without checking the rules first.