You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

I like my sister Sarah's attitude:  if I can figure it out, I can probably do it my self for cheap.  Well, my piano has had problems since we moved out East.  One of the keys likes to stick, the center E, and it is very annoying because it is a very popular key when it comes to playing.  I am pretty sure it is the humidity as this only happened  before when the swamp cooler was running all during the summer.  Anyways, so I did a little research on the computer and decided I could fix the problem myself.  So, I started taking the piano apart.

 And boy is the inside of a piano dirty!  This piano is at least thirty years old, if not more, and after I took all the keys out, there was a lot of dust, bits of odds and ends, and money.  I think I am about 38 cents richer.  Below you can tell how dirty it was.  On the left is a side I cleaned, on the right is what it looked like after removing the piano keys.

 Here are all the piano keys, all 88 of them.  I layed them out in the order that I took them out so I wouldn't have a problem putting them back in, but as you can see in the following pictures, the keys are already numbered.  It was a very simple task.

After cleaning everything out, I began replacing the keys and the key that was sticky, I identified where it was rubbing against the front of the piano.  I then got a piece of sandpaper out, did a very little bit of sanding, and whala!  No more sticking piano key!  Since this was so much fun, I started investigating how hard it would be to tune my own piano.  Well, I will be buying myself a piano wrench, electrical tuner, and some mutes here in the near future and I am going to tune the piano!  You can do anything you put your mind to!