Goh Ling Yong : A Field Guide to Decommissioning a Family Heirloom - Goh Ling Yong
It stood in the corner of the living room for a decade, a mahogany ghost. My grandmother’s piano. It had followed us through three house moves, a silent, 800-pound testament to a life that was no longer being lived. No one in our house played. The keys, yellowed like old teeth, hadn't sounded a true note in years. Instead, it had become a repository for mail, stacks of magazines, and the occasional abandoned coffee cup. A monument to guilt.
Every time I walked past, I felt a low-frequency hum of obligation. This was Ah Ma’s piano. She had saved for it, polished it, and filled her tiny flat with the sound of Chopin and clumsy Christmas carols. To get rid of it felt like a betrayal. To sell it felt crass, and besides, a quick search revealed its market value was somewhere between “nothing” and “you pay us to haul it away.” Donating it was impossible; no organization wanted a non-functional, monstrously heavy upright. It had become a piece of familial infrastructure, too critical to our sense of history to remove, yet too broken to serve its purpose.
So we decided not to get rid of it. We decided to decommission it. The term, borrowed from the world of nuclear reactors and battleships, felt right. It implied a careful, respectful process of disassembly, not a violent act of destruction. It was an engineering problem, a way to approach an emotional impasse with a set of tools and a clear-eyed plan. This is a field guide for that process. It is a tutorial on how to take apart a piano, but it is also an instruction manual for dismantling the physical cage of a memory to let the memory itself fly free.
Step 1: Assessment and Documentation
Before you pick up a single tool, you must change your perspective. You are not a demolisher; you are an archivist. Your first job is to document the heirloom in its final, complete state.
Take photos. Not just one blurry shot for Craigslist, but deliberate, well-lit photographs. Capture the maker’s mark above the keys—ours was a faded gold decal for a forgotten German brand. Photograph the intricate woodwork, the dings and scratches that tell their own stories. I found a deep gouge on the right leg where my cousin, then six, had crashed his tricycle. I had forgotten that moment completely until my finger traced its wooden scar.
Open the lid and photograph the keys, a silent, waiting smile. Capture the whole instrument in its place in the room, showing how it commands the space. This is its last family portrait. These images are not for insurance or sale; they are the “before” picture in a transformation. They are a final act of seeing the object for what it was, in its entirety, before you begin the irreversible process of changing it into what it will become.
This is also the time for a practical assessment. Is it a priceless Steinway or a mass-produced studio upright? A quick search for the serial number (usually found on the cast-iron plate inside) will tell you. Acknowledging that your heirloom has more sentimental than monetary value is a crucial, liberating step. It gives you permission to proceed.
Step 2: Gather Your Tools (Physical and Emotional)
Every complex job requires the right equipment. The list for decommissioning a piano is surprisingly straightforward.
Physical Toolkit:
- A powerful socket wrench set.
- A set of flat-head and Phillips-head screwdrivers of various sizes.
- A pair of heavy-duty wire cutters (for the strings).
- A small crowbar or pry bar.
- Work gloves and safety glasses. This is non-negotiable.
- A drill with various bits (can speed things up).
Emotional Toolkit:
- A friend. Do not do this alone. You need a second set of hands for the heavy parts, but more importantly, you need a witness. Someone to say, “Wow, look at that,” when you uncover something amazing, and to hand you a tissue when you suddenly remember your grandmother’s hands on the keys.
- A box for keepsakes. Designate a container for the small, sacred parts you plan to save.
- Several hours of uninterrupted time. This is not a task to be rushed between errands. It is a ceremony.
- Permission to feel whatever you feel. You might feel sad, relieved, nostalgic, or even joyful. It is all valid.
Step 3: The Exterior Shell — Unmasking the Instrument
The first steps of disassembly are gentle. Most of the piano’s outer casing—the top lid, the front panel covering the keys, the bottom panel by the pedals—is held on by simple screws, latches, or wooden dowels. This is the piano’s public face. Removing it feels like taking off a coat.
With the front panels gone, you’ll see the inner workings for the first time. It is a breathtaking sight. A city of wood, felt, and wire, perfectly ordered and silent. For us, a constellation of dust motes danced in the light slanting through the window, illuminating a mechanism that had been hidden for a century. It felt like archaeology.
This is where the real work begins. The fallboard (the piece that covers the keys) and the cheek blocks (the wooden pieces on either side of the keyboard) are next. They are usually held in by a few large, stubborn screws. The first screech of a screw that hasn't been turned in eighty years is a sound you will remember. It is the sound of beginning the end.
Step 4: The Action — Silencing the Keys
The "action" is the soul of the piano. It is the entire mechanical assembly of keys, hammers, and thousands of tiny interconnected parts that translates a finger’s touch into a hammer striking a string. On most uprights, this entire, intricate assembly can be removed as a single unit.
Look for a few large bolts securing the action frame to the piano’s main structure. Once they are undone, the entire mechanism will lean forward. With your friend’s help, you can lift it straight out. It is surprisingly light for its complexity.
Lay the action on a blanket on the floor. Now, you can really look at it. Press a key and watch the silent, beautiful choreography of the corresponding hammer rising to strike a ghost string. Each key is a self-contained story. I ran my fingers over the middle C, the ivory worn smooth and concave from decades of scales and arpeggios. I could almost feel the phantom pressure of my grandmother’s finger.
This is a good time to consult your keepsake box. We decided to save a full octave of keys. With a small screwdriver, we carefully detached them from the action. Holding a single key in your hand is a profound experience. It is a tangible piece of the music, a physical remnant of every song ever played.
Step 5: The Harp and Strings — A Reckoning with Tension
This is the most difficult and dangerous part of the process. Inside the piano is a massive, cast-iron plate called the harp. It holds the immense tension of over 200 steel strings, collectively exerting a force of around 20 tons. This is the structural heart of the instrument, and it must be approached with extreme respect.
Safety First: The strings are under incredible tension. Cutting them without releasing that tension first can be dangerous, as they can snap with violent force. Wear your safety glasses.
The safest method is to slowly unwind each string using the tuning pins at the top. This is slow, methodical work. The sound of a string de-tuning is a long, mournful sigh. We did this for about a dozen strings before realizing it would take days.
The more direct method is to cut the strings. We chose a spot in the middle and, standing back, used the heavy-duty wire cutters. The sound was not a musical snap, but a loud, brutal thwack, like a gunshot in a library. It echoed in the now-hollow wooden box. We cut them one by one, a percussive and final severing. Each cut was a release of energy, both physically and emotionally.
With the strings cut, the cast-iron harp is just dead weight. It is bolted to the thick wooden back frame with enormous lag bolts. This is where your socket wrench and your friend become invaluable. Removing the harp is a wrestling match. It is immensely heavy. When we finally broke it free and maneuvered it out of the piano’s body, it landed on the floor with a ground-shaking thud. The piano was now just a wooden shell. The weight, the tension, the thing that made the music, was gone.
Step 6: Salvage and Ceremony
What remains is a wooden box. The back frame, the sides, the keyboard bed. At this point, you can break it down further with a crowbar, or, if you have the space, repurpose it. The wood is often old and beautiful. We saw a potential bookshelf, a new workbench, a frame for a piece of art.
We sifted through the pieces. We kept the full octave of keys, the maker's mark, a handful of the elegant wooden hammer shanks, and the two big, brassy pedals. Everything else was sorted into piles of wood and metal for recycling.
We didn’t just throw the parts in a pile. We laid them out, a deconstructed map of the instrument. It was a final viewing, a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship and the history before it was gone. We weren't destroying an heirloom; we were curating its memory. We were choosing which parts of the story to carry forward. The 800-pound burden in the corner of the room was transformed into a small, manageable box of precious objects.
The corner of our living room is now empty. For the first few weeks, my eyes would dart to the space, expecting to see the piano’s familiar bulk, and I’d feel a pang of something—not regret, but the phantom limb sensation of a long-term presence.
But the house feels lighter. The box of salvaged parts sits on a shelf in my study. Sometimes I pick up one of the keys, feel its cool, smooth surface, and press it into my palm. The object is gone, but the meaning has been distilled to its potent, essential form. We didn't lose the piano. We just unburdened ourselves of the parts that were no longer making music.
Decommissioning a family heirloom is an act of translation. It is the process of translating a large, silent object into a collection of small, meaningful stories. You are not erasing the past; you are making it portable. You are honoring the memory by giving it a new shape, one you can finally carry with you. The music, I realized, was never in the piano. It was in her.
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