One of the items on my friends’ list of challenges was a musical instrument. This is a photo of me and an edge of the piano I painted. I’ll try to dig up completed photos of the piano — it was colorful and sparkly and fun!

This was a particularly fun challenge because I got the call from a business contact who asked if I’d be interested and willing to paint a piano for Pacific Symphony on behalf of Downtown Disney. While I had never painted a piano at that point, a challenge on its own, the real obstacle was completing it in less than a week while still engaging with family, going to school, working full-time, and, you know, life-ing. My schedule for the rest of the week went something like this: Work 9am until 5 or 6pm. Leave and do family/school/life stuff. Go back to Anaheim to a small office with a piano jammed inside, barely enough wiggle room to move around the piano and paint. Turn on some music, start working. I would work on the piano from 9 or 10pm until at least 2am. A couple nights I worked until after 4am. Then I went back to work at 9am.

On delivery day I went to work early, around 8am, and applied a clear protective coat to the entire piano, then I started work at 9am. Around noon I took my lunch break and ran back over to the piano to apply a second protective clear coat. That was the last I worked on it, and I felt so accomplished. I believe the number of days between initial phone call and final delivery was something like 5 or 6 days!

When the piano was complete it was placed at Downtown Disney as part of a county wide public opportunity to play pianos that had been placed throughout the county. It was such an awesome thing to walk in to Downtown Disney and see people playing the piano and taking pictures with it!