One of last year's entries to make the 2013 roundup was this piano that was converted into a workbench. Any time you've got 300-plus pounds of antique quarter-sawn oak sitting around, it is of course better to recycle it into something useful, even if the music-generating parts no longer work; and the cast-iron parts can be hauled down to a salvage yard for some extra dough.

It looks like a lot of folks are onto this. Vicky Neuman converted an old upright into a bookcase/desk, and exhaustively documented the process, with many photos, here.

Etsy shop Beethoven Cabinetry makes and sells piano bookshelves out of Indiana:

Entero is an Estonian company that moved into a new production facility—and found it filled with 52 old pianos. All were too damaged by age and humidity to be playable, but Entero just happens to be a producer of custom furniture, and they weren't about to let the piano hulks go to waste. Thus they now offer piano-based bookcases and coffeetables:

If you'd like to try building one yourself, Instructables user Monkeywork has posted an in-depth guide to how he did his wall-mounted number here.

You can find tons of additional photos of piano bookshelves on the interwebs, but this being the age of Pinterest, practically none of the photos are attributed. (We were not able to track down who did the two beauties at the top of this post, for instance.)