Steve Ryder - Saco's Piano Man
- Brick + Tides
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
The first thing I noticed was hanging outside a garage door in downtown Saco.
Birds made from piano keys.
I was walking to lunch at Quiero Cafe with two friends when I spotted them about 50 feet away. Behind the birds were old pianos, furniture, clocks, and enough interesting things to make us change direction.
We walked over.
That was how I met Steve Ryder.
Steve works out of a garage-style workshop at 12 Pepperell Square. The door is often open, and people stop all the time. During the 90 minutes I spent interviewing him, four different people wandered in. One wanted to know about the birds. Another asked about old pianos. One guy had a question about the parking signs outside. Steve stopped what he was doing and talked with every one of them.
After spending a few minutes in the shop, it becomes clear why people stop.
There are piano parts everywhere. Not just a few pieces sitting in the corner. Piano parts are built into furniture, hanging on walls, and stacked on shelves. Some have become mirrors. Others have become artwork. Steve even used wood from old pianos to cover parts of the walls themselves.
"People don't realize how much wood is inside them," he said.
The walls caught my attention because they don't look like pianos at all. They look like warm wood paneling. Only after Steve points it out do you realize you're looking at boards that once lived inside instruments in homes, churches, and schools across New England.
I asked Steve how someone ends up surrounded by this many pianos.
It started with a piece of veneer.
"Probably about nine or ten years ago," he said. "I do furniture and furniture restoration. I had a customer that needed some veneer work done. I didn't have the veneer, so I was looking around and found a piano that was free."
Most people would have taken the veneer and moved on.
Steve started taking the piano apart.
"When I was taking apart the piano, I found all sorts of cool things about it," he said. "And that kind of started the addiction."
Today, he estimates he has dismantled roughly 300 pianos. Some came from churches. Others came from schools, old farmhouses, and family homes. Many were more than 100 years old.
"A lot of people think they're valuable," Steve said. "When they're like 80 to 100 years old, it's kind of like the life of a human. They're kind of done or need to be rebuilt."
That's a difficult reality for many piano owners. The instruments are heavy, expensive to move, and often need significant repairs. Facebook Marketplace is filled with free pianos that nobody wants to move.
Steve became one of the people willing to move them.
He removes the pianos, takes them apart, saves what he can, recycles the metal, and finds new uses for the wood.
"If you look at all the mechanisms in there, you see how much effort went into these," he said. "It's such a shame just to throw it in the dumpster."
The work isn't easy. Upright pianos can weigh hundreds of pounds, and many are tucked into basements, spare bedrooms, and tight hallways.
For years, Steve hauled them away using a Prius and a trailer.
A Prius. For roughly the first 200 pianos.
"I got a lot of smiles, laughs at that," he said.
Most people don't picture a Prius towing a piano down the road, which is probably why the story still makes him laugh.
These days he uses a minivan and a larger trailer, but the work remains much the same. Sometimes his father, Paul, helps. At 81 years old, Paul still comes down to the shop to dismantle pianos, sort parts, and talk with visitors.
"He helps take them apart," Steve said. "He's retired. He gets to tinker around, gets him out of the house. We get to work together."
Every piano seems to hold a surprise.
Steve has found old bottles, silver dimes, Indian Head pennies, wheat pennies, signatures, and dates written in pencil. In one piano, he discovered a military dog tag that had been missing for years. He eventually tracked down the family and returned it.
"You never know what you're going to find inside," he said.
Sometimes the most interesting discovery isn't an object.
It's the wood.
Steve showed me pieces of chestnut, bird's-eye maple, and curly maple hidden inside old pianos. Some of those woods are difficult to find today. Others would be expensive to purchase. One of his favorite moments comes when a rough board passes through the planer and reveals something unexpected underneath.
"All of a sudden, out comes bird's-eye maple or curly maple or chestnut," he said. "It's kind of neat to see it going through and coming out like, 'Oh, that's useful.'"
That wood eventually becomes furniture, mirrors, cribbage boards, wall art, and the birds that first caught my attention.
The birds have become Steve's signature pieces. Made from piano keys, piano hammers, and old clock parts, they hang outside the shop and stop people in their tracks. Steve estimates he has sold dozens of them over the years.
One thing that surprised me was learning that Steve doesn't play piano.
After spending an afternoon with a man who has dismantled 300 pianos, I assumed he would.
He doesn't.
"No, I don't play," he said with a laugh.
His old piano teacher still lives nearby, and he joked that someday she might walk into the shop and discover her former student surrounded by pianos.
That would probably make for an interesting conversation.
Before becoming the piano guy, Steve graduated from Thornton Academy, attended Springfield College, spent two years in AmeriCorps, and traveled to Scotland in 2004 to study furniture making and restoration. The experience gave him the opportunity to work around historic homes and antique furniture, and it's easy to see those influences throughout the shop today.
At one point, I jokingly tried to come up with a title for him.
The Piano Man?
The Re-Piano Man?
Steve laughed.
"In high school and college, I pole vaulted. I was the pole vaulter," he said. "Through the woodworking, I was the veneer guy. And now, I'm the piano guy."
The nickname seems to fit.
Before leaving, another person wandered through the garage door to ask a question. It happened four times during my visit and, if I had stayed longer, it probably would have happened four more.
Most people stop because they see the birds.
Then they notice the pianos. Then they start asking questions. That's exactly what happened to me.
I stopped to look at the birds.
Then I met the piano guy.
Many thanks to Steve Ryder for this time on Thursday, June 11, 2026 at his workshop in Saco.
Find Steve and his contact info online: https://ryderdesigns.net
