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About Us
How it all started...
We realized early on that our neuro-divergent son loved music! It wasn't just his passion, it was who he is. His motivation for learning to crawl was to get to his toy piano across the room (we were lucky to catch it on video!). Once he was able to walk, he would hold instruments in any store we went to, and usually try to find his reflection or shadow while playing the instrument. We began finding old, broken, well loved instruments for him to play with...and he LOVED them. Slowly he began to learn to play the instruments so we had to buy better ones for him to actually make music on. That left us with a dilemma; we had a small stack of broken instruments and really didn't want to just throw them in the garbage. After experimenting on a couple of them, we had our first guitar curio shelf that was worthy of putting on his bedroom wall. It moved a little quicker after that as we chatted with local music stores and searched online surplus auctions. Now we have a somewhat steady stream of beautiful instruments to pull inspiration from. We have been fortunate to keep thinking of new ways to reimagine instruments and highlight their beauty in a useful way.
How We Get Our Instruments
From one at a time to an entire truckload...
The first few instruments that started our reimagined journey were found in a warehouse sale. We would find one or two at yard sales and thrift stores, but we wanted to make sure we weren't taking usable instruments out of circulation. It took a few years, but we slowly built relationships with local music stores and repair shops. When they get a large stockpile of instruments that are beyond repair, they call us to see what we can use. This also means we have to buy in larger quantities. Usually its a pickup bed full, but we have also had to borrow a trailer to get larger finds/auction lots home. When we come across instruments that still have some life left, we do our best to repair/clean them up and recycle them back into local school music programs.
Decommissioning
Preserving history and reducing landfill fodder...
Occasionally we will come across an old piano that has been sitting in someone's house or on a patio for many years. Being in the digital age, traditional pianos in disrepair don't hold much value. Often times people end up paying someone to haul a piano to the dump. We've become pretty good at sizing up a piano to determine how many useable pieces we can get to incorporate into other projects. Whether it's the 1940's Everett, or 1890's Fischer piano, we are able to decommission the piano over about a week's time. Most of the bases for our lamps are actually made from pieces of piano!!! We also use the strings as jewelry pieces, the keys as decorative key organizers (a set of keys for your keys), use the hammers and dampeners to make earrings, and recycle as much of the metal hardware as possible. One piano can have 130 pounds or more of recyclable metal!!!