Oscar Olea, Piano Technician

The paint, felts, and stringing cloth on the plate are ready and I'm starting to hand-painting the letters.

The plate of the Steinway with a new gold leaf.

When started working with this Steinway, since the beginning I was debating myself rather I remove the strings or not. From the performance point of view, it wasn't necessary since the strings sounded good and the tuning pins were tight enough. However, aesthetically didn't look so good. In the end, I decided to do the best job possible and remove the strings so I can, now, repaint the plate and the soundboard and install new felts, strings, and tuning pins. This way it will look almost like new.

Talking about the Steinway L I'm restoring. Done with the keyboard restoration, I left the original ivory keytops replacing the missing ones with others from old pianos. Looks good and feels good but not perfect. However, if a buyer prefers, I can change them for the new ones made out of some plastic with a fancy name. Still plastic though. But don't take me wrong, I'm so happy they don't kill any more elephants to make keytops or anything else. On the other hand, striping the old paint is messy and the least enjoyable part of this job... but as they say: somebody needs to do it :-)

Done with the bench and working to restore the keyboard with the original ivory keytops (I'm very happy they don't kill any more elephants to make piano keytops, but this Steinway was made in the 1920s).