Superb installation. Congratulations. Adrian

Way to go Carol! This D could not have found a finer home and caretaker.

You are now in a unique position to report on the differences among your Steinway, Bluthner, and Estonia. How do you decide which one to play? Do they get jealous if you don't allocate your playing time fairly? Do they have preferences for particular composers? Details, please!

THAT'S SO COOL! CONGRATS!

Thank you for letting us follow your interesting journey. It has come to a fabulous end. The piano with a "history" has found a perfect home. Congratulations!

Congrats Carol... glad everything finally worked out... looks great at home

Les

Beautiful piano. We would love to hear some sound files. The D is an amazing instrument. I have an 1891 D that was rebuilt 2 years ago and I know how you feel. Congratulations.

What a beauty! Wishing you lots of happiness as you play your beautiful music with your new pride and joy! What a gorgeous piano! Congrats!

Thanks everyone for all the compliments on the piano! It’s very gratifying - away from the Piano Forum, most people aren't all that interested in hearing about my new piano! ("A piano? I thought you already had a piano. You could have put a pool table down there!")

I can’t imagine making a decision to buy a piano like this if I hadn’t had the Piano Forum to learn from and to pose questions to. Thanks to all of you who offered thoughts and feedback while I was making up my mind about this piano. And most especially, thanks to Les Koltvedt for putting me in touch with Patrick DeBeliso, the restorer who did such a beautiful job on the piano.

The piano really does sound and feel wonderful. And the acoustics seem to be very good down there; there are enough sound-absorbing surfaces for a piano of that size not to be overwhelming, even with the lid up.

Thanks also for the compliments on the basement. In my previous threads I’d avoided mentioning where we were making space for the new piano, because I was afraid there would be objections to putting a D in a basement! Especially since our basement looked like this just a few months ago:



(In case anyone noticed the stairs in the earlier photos – we’ve held off finishing them until the piano was moved down.)

Our builder put moisture barriers and plenty of insulation in the floors and walls, and he made sure no heating vents would be aimed at the piano. (He also hacked off part of the ceiling above the stairs; otherwise the piano would likely have gotten stuck going down!) I'm hoping the humidity and temperature will be relatively stable. And I’m going to install a Dampp-Chaser soon.

You’re right, the movers did a great job. They said they’d moved CD-888 many times before, in fact. (And I said this would be the last time, because we’re never leaving this house!)

As for comparing our various pianos, right now the only one I want to play is the D! Maybe the novelty will wear off and I’ll go back to playing them all; if not, we may decide we don’t need quite so many pianos. After all, I don’t have to compete for time on the D from my husband - his favorite instrument of all is our Roland digital harpsichord!

Carol

I love the way you incorporated the steel support columns into the cabinetry and then surrounded them with the fluted woodwork. It kept the space open. Very nice planning!

BTW, typically the basement humidity will run a bit higher and most likely more stable.