Making Our Music Room plus See How We Painted the Piano and Marketplace Bookcases
We have a room right off our main entry that has taken me a while to figure out what to do with it. The prior owners used this room as their formal sitting/music studio.
We had a similar space in our old house with our upright piano, so I thought I'd just move our old "piano room" furniture in after we moved and set it up kind of similar. But, like every other room in this house, I misjudged the amount of space we'd have, and how the scale and colors of our old stuff clashed with the new house colors. Right after we moved in, this is what landed here: a dingy couch, piano, chair and our Mediacom cable/internet command center. Honestly, this stuff looked great together in our old house, but just didn't jive the same way here. After a couple weeks, I moved out the chair and couch into another room (more to come on that another time) which left just the piano and cords.
Moving a piano on carpet is no small feat, but after some Pinterest browsing I decided to move it to the adjacent wall as more of a focal point walking in the room. Like I mentioned in our living room floating shelves project, we were really lacking shelf space and places to display photos in this house, so I started shopping for some bookcases. While most of our existing furniture is true browns and grey, I thought I'd go more neutrals and black in this room trying to connect it into more of the existing house elements. I couldn't find what I wanted for size - and price. Again, right after the move, I just didn't want to spend a bunch of money on this room that really didn't have a lot of purpose, so I hit up Facebook Marketplace again (since I had good luck with the kitchen table and chairs that I painted) and found a set of bookshelves that were perfect size and super cheap, just the wrong color.
My sister told me about a paint company she found online - Heirloom Traditions Paint - that claims to be "all in one" with no sanding or priming required, which sounded pretty great to try. Plus there's a Facebook group of people who use this paint and share their projects, and it's inspiring to say the least. From fabric, to lamps to furniture and cabinets, people use this stuff for everything! It's really quite the cult following so I wanted to give it a try. They offer a free sample (if you pay shipping) with first order and have a lot of how-to videos to help. I bought the deglosser they sell and recommend for cleaning the furniture and Iron Gate black.
Super easy process, just brush on the deglosser and scrub it down with a kitchen sponge. Then dry it off with a towel. Ready to paint! Their technique is important to follow but does give a really clean, streak free finish. Brush on pretty thick, then use a cheap foam roller to lightly roll out any brush marks. After a first "ugly coat" and then another, it covers pretty well. I did two full coats and a couple extra touch up areas here and there but it was pretty quick. Getting all the detailing on the side of the bookcases was a total pain in the you-know-what, but that's on me. Final product - some cheap (but quality) bookcases with a fresh little facelift.
I flanked my piano with them and loaded up the shelves with photos of our family and other random knickknacks, books, photo albums, and our not-so-pretty cable stuff. I'm not officially styling these shelves, but it's progress.
The piano itself was given to me by my parents - it's the one we all learned to play growing up. Not shocking to any of you, but I painted it a few years ago. I used a chalk paint that I found on Amazon which allowed me to paint it in small little windows of time and not have to move the piano out of the house. The process was pretty similar to the Heirloom Traditions paint, except it required a final coat of wax that was pretty simple to do as well. It's held up pretty well, a few scratches on the bench from kids, but nothing major.
Above the piano, I found these vintage looking hymn prints. I picked out two (Amazing Grace and Jesus Loves Me) and let Zach pick the third... Battle Hymn of the Republic. Ha! That's what I get. What's really great about these is they had Christmas songs too so I bought three of those in my favorite songs (Oh Holy Night, Silent Night and I Heard the Bells) and switch them out during the holidays!
I've been adding and changing furniture and decor in this room since we moved in, but so far have kept this new chair that I got from At Home and hung up this old parlor guitar that Zach got from his Grandma. It was hers when she was young and was pretty beat up, but we restored it so it's playable again. Hank is just starting guitar lessons so I'm hoping he learns something and sticks to it long enough to play something on here.
The rest of the furniture and decor keeps changing as I keep trying to make this room feel intentional and flow with the rest of the house it since it's so different from my "usual" color palette, but we'll circle back to this room later when I feel like I've made some more quality progress! Plus we're going to keep painting trim soon too.
Need a Fix Up? Here's what we used:
Chalk Furniture Paint by Renaissance in Ivory Tower - Antique White (affiliate)- Piano
Renaissance Furniture Wax (affiliate) - Piano
Iron Gate Heirloom Traditions All-in-One Paint (affiliate) - Bookcases
Deglosser from Heriloom Traditions (affiliate) - Bookcases
Oval Tapered Brush (affiliate) - works with both types of paint
Small Foam Roller (affiliate)
Jesus Loves Me Print, Amazing Grace Print, Battle Hymn of the Republic Print (affiliate) - they have a lot more songs too!
Black frames with white mat (affiliate)
Guitar Wall Hanger (affiliate)
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