Once I re-hung all the profiles, I realized (yet again) that I am a complete idiot.

The saying goes “measure twice, cut once” but it does NOT say “measure three times, taking into account three-dimensional design, the fact that you’re not on level ground and that you’re a complete numbskull, cut once.”

I had failed to take into consideration the … aw, hell, I won’t bore you with the details. Anyway, the top-line `1x4s were misaligned by a good 4.5 inches.

Suffice to say, I trimmed the tops of the front profiles on both sides to bring them into line with the rear profiles, then kludged together the 1x4s – the whole line will be hidden somewhat by the cloud shapes that we’re attaching later to the top of the piano lid, so all’s well …

Anyway, Biomass (my 11-year-old son, a four-time Burner and my excellent helper) and I worked together to tie all the profiles together down below, and install the tabletops.

Here’s the completed left-front tabletop – the “shoulder” of the piano.

to allow the doors to open wide enough, I added cutouts to the front tabletops.

Then I spent an hour or so shifting the hinges up and down on a couple of profiles to bring the whole thing into level, sanding down all the wood corners so they’re less likely to tear the canvas with which we’ll be covering everything, and voila: JANUS’ skeleton is complete and ready for skinning: