Repurposing an Antique Organ

So my parents have had an antique organ for pretty much my whole life. It belonged to my grandmother's grandma. Nobody ever played it, it wasn't super fancy, and after almost 30 years of it just sitting there, my parents started to think it was time to sell it. So I put it up on Facebook market place and reached out to quite a few antique shops about selling it. Well guess what? No was interested! Each month I would lower the price a little bit more hoping it would catch someone's eye..... but nothing happened.

It became clear that if my parents wanted to get rid of it, they would either have to donate it or trash it, and neither of those really seemed like good options. So instead, I started thinking of ways to repurpose it into something that could be functional around the house and still keep it in the family! Let me just say that Pinterest is AMAZING! Being able to see what other people have done to repurpose pianos BLEW MY MIND! Bookshelves, sewing stations, speak-easy bars, coffee karts, and many many more amazing transformations. So I decided I was going to be repurposing this old organ into a coffee bar/wine bar type thing so that it could be multi-functional for whoever it ended up passing along to as well as providing some kind of storage space for the insane amount of kitchen stuff my family has.

The first step was to take it all apart!

It was an electric organ, so it had a good bit of tech/circuit board/wires and stuff on the inside. I also planned to save as much of the inside as I could, even the little bits of hardware! I planned to use all those pieces to make other things out of down the road. One of the things I did was make key racks for family members for Christmas! You can read about that here!

Once that first top layer of keys came off, it got a little more difficult from there. A lot of it was put together with wood glue, so parts basically had to be pried off. Then there were the screws that were super old and worn down. In the back there were also some pretty heave speakers/drum system set up which was cool but also GROSS! It was gunky and there was definitely evidence of a mouse living back there at some point!

When it was time to take the front section off, I actually had to completely lay it on its back and have one person unscrew a part on the outside at the same time as I unscrew the coordinating part on the inside....

After I got the basic frame taken apart, I set the parts aside and would work on taking things apart even more one section at a time on the weekends. One weekend was JUST for getting each individual key unattached!

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Side note: I was also watching my niece that day and she helped me for a little bit but then started playing on her own and at one point I turned around and saw her having a picnic with my dog! 😂

CUTEST THING EVER!!

Annnyyywaaaaayyyyys.... back to the repurposing!

So I had gotten it down to the bare bones and slowly worked on deconstructing all the separate parts of it.... But I was definitely ready to start coming up with a plan for the what the new structure would be!

The Original frame was not very sturdy at all, so it did need a lot of new support added in. A new backboard for sure, and I wanted it to be pretty ta.l so I could add some shelves in there. It needed a new piece for the tabletop area as well. So I took some time drawing up a general plan of what I wanted it to look like with all the shelves I'd want for it. Then it was time to start measuring and figuring out exactly what materials I need to buy! That part involved a lot of talking out ideas with my dad and figuring out the best way to build it and which steps to do in which order. Once we figured all that out and bought the materials, it was finally time for me to start measuring, making cuts, and sanding! And when I say measuring, I mean measuring over and over again to make sure there would be NO MAJOR MISTAKES! I did not want anything to be slightly out of place or not fitting right, otherwise it wouldn't be sturdy or good quality and then it would just have to be done again. Always better to double or triple check measurements!

And of course my dog had to be RIGHT THERE in middle of it all!

After I got most of the wood cut, I propped it up in place to check and see that it all looked how I wanted it to

As far as the design, I wanted the main frame of it to be painted a dusty blue/teal kind of color and the table top part and the shelves to be stained a dark walnut.

The next few days was all about the priming and the painting! That was one part I would not let my dog be around for.... Finding dog hairs dried to past projects was not something I ever wanted to relive.......

Once all the painting and staining was done and thoroughly dried, it was finally time to start putting it all together!

In order to not have any visible screws, we had to do pocket holes, which I hadn't done before so my dad helped to show me how to do all that! We managed to get all those done in one afternoon!

This step was almost like a puzzle though....figuring out the best order to attach certain parts.

Once that part was done, I painted over the wooden pocket hole filler things? Not sure what they're called....

We came across a little trouble when it came to reattaching the legs though because we had to adjust their length a little bit. Basically we had to add an inch and a half on to the tops of them and figure out how to then attach them on to the underneath part of the table top.

We managed to get them attached with some wooden dowels, but one of the legs actually broke off as soon as we tried to move the whole thing, so then I went back and secured them on with the pocket hole method and it was much sturdier after that!

Once I touched up all the areas that needed to be sanded, primed, and painted, I had to start thinking about the additional shelves, racks, and hooks I wanted to add on!

I turned the original part of the organ that was used to hold up sheet music into a wine glass holder by cutting little notches out of the sides in order to be able to slide an upside down wine glass on to it, so that was one part I knew I would be adding on, but figuring out exactly how I was going to do that was the tricky part! I couldn't attach it directly to the backboard because it wouldn't be sturdy enough, but I wanted it to at least look like it was attached to the back. So I thought it could be cool to figure out a way to attach that shelf to the very top and have it hanging down.... I found some cool pieces to help with that in the piping section at Lowes!

That is probably my favorite part! I love the industrial look and being able to use that piece from the organ and give it a modern function.

Next to the wine glass holder, I also put in some rack that could be for wine bottles or water bottles, or pretty much anything that can fit!

That is kind of where I paused the big part of the project for a couple months in order to get started on using all the small pieces to make gifts to send out for family in time for Christmas! I still have a big part of the original organ that I plan to add on the lower half as an additional shelf or even do some kind of cupboards!

But for now..... that's a wrap!