What have I bought?

[tommo666]

Afternoon all.
New here today and bought my first piano at 61yrs of age.
Saw it in a charity shop for £100 and thought it would be a nice feature on our old stone cottage. Then remembered my old nan who played in the East end of London when I was a boy, I should learn a little.
So, I'll try and attach a photo of my Bachmann upright.
What have I bought?

[essence]

Will it polish up nicely? It looks like it might.

Do you have a serial number, date/place of manufacture?

From what you say, you have never learnt the piano? How are you at DIY/woodworking?

The obvious thing is to give it a good clean and polish the woodwork, and hire a piano tuner/technician to tune and evaluate.

Is it even remotely in tune? Where was it stored before you bought it? Do all the notes play?

is it overstrung, underdamped? Do the strings overlap? Any condition of the soundboard on the back?

The piano keys do not look too bad, although many are very dirty.

The state of all the felt, hammers, strings, pins etc. is completely unknown.

Another photo of the action? Can you remove the front panel?

if you take it apart a bit, and for example remove each key one by one to clean, be very careful to keep the keys in order! they may already be numbered.

It may not be worth spending lots on restoring, but it may be possible to do some work and make it an enjoyable treasure. You could even make it into a DIY project - if it is a disaster, you haven't lost much.

I am not a piano technician, but have done a bit of DIY on a cheapish piano.

Don't try to tune it yourself until you have researched it a lot.

I think it would be quite easy to evaluate whether it is worth restoring a bit, or just have it as a nice display furniture.