I'm going to hire a wino to decorate our home...

On the drive to work one day listening to the classic country station, I heard Dave Frizzell singing this 1982 Country Music Song of the Year nominee written by Dewayne Blackwell:

I'm gonna' hire a wino to decorate our home,
So you'll feel more at ease here, and you won't have to roam.
We'll take out the dining room table, and put a bar along that wall.
And a neon sign, to point the way, to our bathroom down the hall.

David Frizzell - I'm Gonna Hire A Wino To Decorate Our Home Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

When I heard this, I realized this is exactly what I'm doing to the cottage!  Rather than restoring the piano, we decided to convert it into a bar.  Here's how it started out.

The piano came with the house because it was too much of a pain to move.

It's a Bush & Gerts piano, and fully restored, could sell for up to $17,000 to a collector.

Unfortunately, the piano guy thought it would cost $15,000 to restore it...

But Mom found an inspiration photo that led us another direction.

These are the guts of the piano. We keep thinking we could convert this to some sort of art piece but the inspiration hasn't quite hit yet.

After removing the guts, Terry put a board to support a countertop. We found a marble remnant for just $60 that was later cut to size.

 After building slots for wine glasses and installing some lights, we now have a piano bar! It's still covered in construction dust and the wood is dry from so many years without conditioning. But she's ready for the next iteration of her life as a bar. As a side note, this is where the piano sat when the previous owner was a child.

Also much like the wino decorator in the song, we decided long ago not to have a dining room table, instead opting for a pool table. We had the pool table installed this weekend; a Craigslist find that was a bargain, but came at the cost of lots of driving.

The installers were very meticulous, and repeatedly checked the table to ensure it was level.

Even though we were trying to beat the post-Thanksgiving traffic back to Houston, I shot around a little bit.  Scratched twice, but otherwise didn't get a ball in a pocket. Clearly, practice is in order.

We are nevertheless, resisting installing a neon sign to point the way to the bathroom down the hall. Even winos have their limits.

That's all from Wisteria Bend for now.

~Christy