The reuse of two deconstructed upright pianos to make a staircase is shown on the kilometre zero running eye blog. Old pianos are often just dumped or even burnt - as SalvoNEWS reported a few years ago - by Chancellors Church Furnishings.
 
The two pianos had been given away by a man who would usually pay another man to burn them. The staircase project - described as an extraordinary swan song - for a cellist with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, was to create a staircase sculpture and mezzanine level bed. Care was taken to dismember the old pianos much like a butcher, saving the best parts and paying homage to a past life.
 
In doing so the skill of the craftsmanship involved in making a piano was revealed. The woods used are from many different trees. Woods from the maple in the solid frame to boards of poplar or birch under a veneer of walnut or mahogany. Then beach limbs form the pinblock to space the strings over a soundboard of Sitka spruce and hornbeam connects felted hammers through an intricate arrangement of joints and pivots to basswood fingers coated with wafer thin slices of white bone ivory and in the gaps between these teeth, black ebony wood.
 
The finished staircase appears in the shape of a glamourous high heeled shoe and another is revealed in a mirror of dark veneer which reflects the staircase to form the other shoe. Vertical keys appear on the risers giving a clue as to it's former life.
 
Some maybe upset by the reuse of ivory especially with the recent call for its destruction but others may appreciate the reuse of an old item into something both useful and beautiful.