We're playing a show in June with Chris August, 3 time Dove award winner and fantastic songwriter. Join us for a wonderful evening?
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I walked out to my '96 Tacoma in the driveway last week, and had two thoughts:
1. "My car is dirty. Like, 'just got back from Burning Man' dirty."
2. "That tree only has one leaf left. Tomorrow, that tree will be different than today."
(see above picture I snapped)
Last night, Pastor Harvey spoke on the basics of idolatry, and how we as Christians have a means of escaping the clutches of idols in our lives. He defined an idol as anything the we trust, love, or obey. We're called to actively throw down our idols and run the race that God has marked out for us.
Over the past few years, I've had the painful experience of watching people I know quit their race...some have given up on God and others have given up on His people. Some have done both. A common thread I see is frustration with the pace of renewal. Many aren't getting the results they thought they would, or in some cases, what they were promised.
Salvation is typically addressed in three different ways in Scripture:
1. A starting point or decision to acknowledge Jesus as King
2. The ongoing process of becoming more like your King, what we call sanctification.
3. Our King Jesus' return and the end of all that is not as "it ought to be".
It has been said that sanctification is a crawl. That instead of the 100M dash, it's more like a marathon you run over the course of all of your days. There are seasons of rest and seasons of hardship. You are either gaining ground or losing it.
With things like bankruptcy, cancer, and divorce, it's easy to lose perspective on our trajectory. It's easy to not feel the presence of our King. It's easy to slip into discouragement or even frustration about our sin and the remaining brokenness in us.
Our identity is changed the moment we receive Christ. The power and penalty of sin has been dealt with. The presence of sin is here, but time is running out. The leaves are indeed falling, and soon...only one will remain. Then, it too will fall and all things will be made new. Even the presence of sin will be gone forever.
I can't help but long for the day the last leaf falls. We will then see how altogether different we really are.
Come Jesus.
Got the other half of the lid on, and put the 2nd shelf in. Freaked out that it wasn't level until I realized it was my garage floor that was off, not the piano. Oops. So close.......
(2014) P.S. I ended up chopping the top portion way down for visibility reasons. Still have the top shelf. Better layout for sure.
Next up was a set of new casters, because the old ones had seen better days and I knew I was going to be wheeling this thing around a lot. Excitedly I mounted them, and then realized maybe I should have waited. It turns out, my timing was right as I was going to be moving this thing a lot throughout the end of the project.
I knew I wanted to stain the inside and back, and paint the exterior frame complimentary shades of aqua and deep blue. Here's a quick shot of the finishes I landed on:
1. Behr primer/paint combo in flat. Sample can. Plenty of paint to hit the panels I wanted.
2. Glidden high gloss for the kick board. Easy to clean, durable, slightly different shade than the paint on purpose for depth.
3. Minwax water-based stain, dyed custom by the lady at home depot based on my paint swatch.
4. Clear coat for the stained areas.
5. Also, some serious wood glue I used for reattaching the bottom of the piano back on.
Then, a quick fit-test to see what kind of room I would have on the edges, and how big the plex would need to be that would function as my "bottom shelf". This 49-key Axiom fit nicely.
Next up: the shelves. I wanted the top one to be stained wood and the bottom to be made of plexi-glass so that I could inlay custom artwork in the 4 wood squares and they would be seen through the working surface. Picked up a piece of plex from a dear friend who is known for having this sort of thing on hand. Cut it with a jigsaw, then drilled holes in the notched sections to get the jigsaw running side-to-side to finish the notches. Despite all advice, I found running the saw quickly (instead of slowly like everyone suggested) made the cleanest cuts with no melted plastic.
Here's one of the glass laid in, with notches taken out of the back edge to stabilize any sliding. (It still has the protective blue coating on.)
Finally peeled the plexi-glass protective coating. Looks better than I expected. A huge thank you to Mr. Needham for the donation!
I spent the rest of my project time today fabricating some stops for the kick board on the bottom. Because of the pieces I took out, it doesn't have anything to keep it from falling forward or backward.
This one below is little more complicated because it needs to turn 90 degrees so that you can remove the kick board when access to the guts is required. Little square of foam on the end will keep the board from rattling too much.
Last coat of polyurethane is drying on everything that needed it.
The last step will be popping in the 2nd shelf, re-hinging the other half of the top, and getting started on the electrical wiring. The end is near!
Click here for Part 1 or here for Part 3...
STEP 2:
I knew the next part was gutting this beast. All 88 keys came off pretty easily once the guard plank was removed. I removed the cheek blocks to maximize the width of the "bottom shelf". If you're trying this sory of thing, you must check the length of your desired control unity or keyboard before you get rolling. Next was the piano strings...you know, the kind gangsters kill people with in old mob movies?
Rather than unwind all of them with a piano wrench I did not own, I opted to grab the bolt cutters and go one by one with protective glasses on. 88 wires isn't too bad, right? Wrong. Most keys hit 3 strings so do the math...I was cutting a couple dozen a day for several days. Then I had to take a pair of vice grips and pull the remnant rusted strings off of the pegboard. Nasty.
Next was yanking the cast iron plate. That meant finding a way to pull the huge steel piece (75 lbs) from inside the wood frame. That was the hardest part of the whole project. Other than being heavy, there was no clear path to pull it out without deconstructing some of the frame, which was risky because anything I disassembled had to be rebuilt creating more work. Finally, I decided to drive it out the bottom, which meant I pulled off the bottom piece of the piano. Here she is, free of her piano prison:
If I am still feeling ambitious when this project is done, I may turn the plate into a coffee-table. One side is perfectly flush and would hold a custom cut piece of glass well. Legs would be easy to attach. Just an idea...
Here's the pinblock cleaned of all its rusty whiskers.
In an attempt to have a clean canvas to begin rebuilding, I started pulling off wood pieces that were either cosmetic, or structurally unnecessary. Now we're getting somewhere!
Click here for Part 1 or here for Part 3...
On various tours, I've seen a few bands pull off a DIY project that I always thought would be a fun undertaking; converting an old upright piano into a MIDI workstation. The basic concept is:
Step 1: Find an old upright for cheap. Really cheap.
Step 2: Gut it.
Step 3: Refinish it to your liking.
Step 4: Install your favorite MIDI/audio devices.
The reasons for the project are functional as well as aesthetic. It could be used by the bands at my local church, as well as look cleaner and cooler than a table full of wires and cables.
So...
Last month I decided to stop just thinking about it, and try it. Step 1 was finding a piano for "free-fifty". I had noticed a guy on Craigslist that was always selling old uprights, and in some of his photos it seemed he had a storage space full of them so I gave him a ring. Our conversation:
DZ: Hello, I have a question for you that you probably don't get a lot. Do you have an upright that is damaged beyond repair?
GUY: Why yes, i was taking one to the dump tomorrow. Want it today?
Sweet. That was easier than I expected.
Sometime around age 14 I decided that my bedroom needed a major overhaul. I basically woke up one morning and realized that my disaster of a room wasn't as cool as I thought. It didn't communicate independence and freedom as I previously believed. In fact I was suddenly pretty sure that it communicated that I myself was a disheveled disaster.
As I gazed around the room, I noticed that the most noticeable visual offender was the stack of decrepit and dilapidated CB radios on the shelf closest to the door. I had gathered these from garage sales over the years, a hobby I inherited from my grandfather. Most of them were not working, but a man can never have enough CB radios. My conversations with passing truckers on the nearby highway were often salty and a great place for me to learn new words I could throw around at school.
I decided that this CB graveyard would be the starting point for my full frontal attack on the clutter in my room. After clearing the shelf and inhaling a whole farm of dust-bunnies, I stared at the newly resurrected shelf and wondered what should replace my communicative toys.
The first thing that grabbed my attention was a collection of dusty trophies. These were mostly obligatory "great attitude" or "most improved" type trophies. Most kids who were at my caliber of play knew that they really should read, "you used to suck worse" or "thanks for not quitting and making me look like a bad coach". I dusted them off and placed them neatly side by side on the shelf. Regardless of the means by which I obtained them, they were a bit of a treasure to me.
I was recently reading when Jesus said that casting out demons, while amazing and supernatural, was not the fix that a demonized person required. In fact he went so far to say that if you remove an "unclean spirit" from the space of someone's body, and don't follow up with a replacing of that same space with the Spirit, that the person is actually worse off. Not only that, but he mentions that the demon would return and find "the house swept and put in order". Those words bounced around my head for a bit, as I wondered what that means and if I knew what that looks like.
Immediately I began thinking of all the people that taste the things of the Kingdom, and maybe even experience a season of victory over an area of struggle, but quickly resort to tactics of self-reliance. They start removing the things that cause them to struggle but never address the issue of treasuring Jesus, making him utmost, and loving His kingship. The picture we have in Scripture of repenting has 2 parts: then turning from, and the turning toward. Yet the turning from is what is emphasized and what most people identify as repentance. I've assuredly seen this in my own actions and felt this in my own chest.
There are very few guarantees in life, but I feel confident guaranteeing that if you remove temptation, modify behaviors, or resolve to change but never receive and treasure Jesus, it is only a matter of time before things go back to the old way or even get worse.
Jesus isn't looking for clean shelves. He is interested in being our treasure and filling our shelves with the things that only He can provide. The beautiful experience of walking with Christ, is that when He is your trophy on the shelf, the rest of your house looks different. He takes your life of disarray and breathes peace and change into the messiest of rooms.
24"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' 25And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. 26Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first."
Luke 11