Baby Grand going, going, GONE!

[peabody58]

DW's dream was to have a Baby Grand piano. In 1989 we purchased a new Yamaha 5'3" GH1 Black Ebony Baby Grand. She has loved it lot, but we are now 52 young and are seriously thinking ahead to our retirement and downsizing. It's also now running $200 a year to keep it tuned up. DW has been bummed at the thought of no longer having a piano to play.

So today, we arranged with a local Piano Store to buy her Baby Grand, replace it with a new Kawai Concert Artist Series CA51 Digital Piano (141 lbs), and get a check for $2000!! DW is so excited. It's a WIN/WIN/WIN for us. She gets a wonderful piano which she's already thinking of teaching lessons on, we get the huge albatross off our back, and we have $2K to help pay down our mortgage.

In the final number crunching, over the 21 years, it only cost her $129/year to have a Baby Grand - not to shabby. And best of all - we just canceled our Oct tuning, saving another $100.

Now off to BLT to celebrate!! Be back in a week.

 

[Halle]

Congrats on you sale. DM has a 6'11" Steinway that she's had since 1966. Alot of upkeep over the years...proper heat/AC/humidity. New felts were costly too. Enjoy your new purchase!!

 

[Purseval]

My daughter took piano lessons for 4 years so we bought her a Chickering baby grand. About a year later she decided it wasn't "cool" to play piano any more and stopped. It gets tuned but hasn't been played in over 10 years, it's just a piece of furniture in the music room.

 

[reagan75]

That is great! Enjoy.

 

[disneydreamersx4]

Congrats on the sale and glad that DW is happy with the new purchase.

Purseval, hopefully your DD come back to the piano one day. Such a shame it just sits there.

 

[Shleedogg]

Glad you and your wife were able to find a compromise and are both happy!

If I ever got a baby grand, I don't think I'd ever be able to give it up. My MIL got a Steinway baby grand for Mother's Day 5 or 6 years ago. I think it ran FIL around $35k. Insane. I think MIL would be in serious mourning if she ever had to get rid of it.

 

[dfchelbay]

Don't mean to hijack your thread, but I wanted to share my grand piano "budget" find. Nearly ten years ago, we went to an estate sale. Apparently, the woman who was selling all the contents of her home was a piano teacher about fifty years earlier. We found all sorts of sheet music and recital booklets in the piano bench. We bought the piano for $300. We had the piano moved, set up and tuned at our home. It sat for a couple years without much interest by the kids. One day I decided I'd look on the internet for more information about this piano. It's a Vose. Never heard anything about the name...until I stumbled into all the information on how these pianos are quite collectible and very valuable. Well, after all the experts looked at it and appraised it, we were quite SHOCKED to find out our little piano was worth about $185,000.00. No, that is not a typo. This piano is worth the price of quite a nice home. Needless to say, NOW the piano has a prominent place in our great room, and is quite heftily insured.

 

[shortbun]

Too bad she had to give up her dream piano. You are retiring at the young age of 52 though so it's not a bad trade off. Me, I'd get a smaller house and get rid of everything BUT the piano. lol!

 

[peabody58]

Too bad she had to give up her dream piano. You are retiring at the young age of 52 though so it's not a bad trade off.

Clarification: We are not retiring at 52, only starting the process of being ready to retire in the next 10 years, and to downsize from a 3500 sq ft 100 yr old home into a proper empty nested dwelling.

DW is very happy with the transition. Yes the Baby Grand was a dream, but the new Digital Piano is unbelievable. 21 years ago, Digital Piano's like this were still on the drawing board, but wow - this one is awesome. We thought about geting an even higher quality Digital Piano, but for at-home recreational playing, the Kawai CA51 is the bomb. It's all about still being able to play, and she will actually be playing more. And no more MF's!!

I've had 4 Dream "trust me this is the last drum set I'll ever need" drumsets and 2 Zendrums in the last 25 years, so dreams do change. As long as the dream is still alive, that's what matters.

The biggest issue we have now, is where will all the Christmas decorations going to be placed.

 

[peabody58]

Piano movers arrived today and took out DW's baby grand. In it's place at 1/4 the size yet 100 times more versatile, a Kawai CA51 Digital Piano. The piano sounds wonderful, and the opened up space in our music room/library is impressive. I can actually play darts again on my electronic dart board. The extra $2K is going against our mortgage (goal to have paid off by 2013).

Speaking about Kawai pianos, on our Undiscovered FW tour last week, we got to tour the sponsor area of Living Seas. They have a 6 ft Acrylic Kawai Grand in the room. It looked awesome with the floor to ceiling aquarium view.

 

[SandrA9810]

Speaking about Kawai pianos, on our Undiscovered FW tour last week, we got to tour the sponsor area of Living Seas. They have a 6 ft Acrylic Kawai Grand in the room. It looked awesome with the floor to ceiling aquarium view.

Took the same tour a few years ago. That room is beautiful. The grand floridian is another place to find a few grand pianos sitting around. And of course in the afternoon/evening they have some one playing in the main lobby.