Most of us wish that our instruments had wonderful original finishes.
On player pianos in the Midwest, this tends to be the exception to the
norm.  You always have to evaluate a finish as to "can I live with it",
"can it be cleaned or touched up" or "does it need a full refinish?"

Just as with the pneumatic work or piano work, shortcuts typically have
short-cut results.  A really good refinish job is a lot more work than
stripping the case, giving it a light sanding and then a couple of coats
of a varnish or poly.  Really fine finishing is very labor intensive
and it often involves fully stripping the instrument, light sanding,
grain filling, repair work, staining, and coat after coat of finish with
lots of wet sanding to get a really beautiful or professional finish.

Some woods are more forgiving than others.  Most pianos are mahogany,
oak or walnut; mahogany is incredibly beautiful if done correctly but
it is by far the most difficult of the three to do.

On those rare occasions when a good original comes by, and this assumes
no alligatoring, you can many times get by with cleaning and polishing.
This is a rare one from my experience.

Professional finishers in the Minneapolis area used to charge about
$1000 per foot to do a grand piano.  Uprights quite a bit less.  A 5'8"
piano with a full finish would run about six grand.  This kind of a
finish looks like the instrument was new and had just been uncrated.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, like everything else, it
depends upon what you can live with.  But like the actual rebuilding
of the player itself, the instrument is only going to be as good as
the quality of the instrument [was] in the first place, the degree
and precision of the rebuilding of the piano and player, as well as the
quality of the finish on the instrument.

Unfortunately, in today's market you really must love the instrument
and plan on keeping it for yourself to warrant this kind of expense,
because the secondary market will not support this kind of investment.
There are some really fine instruments on the market right now that
look good, play well and are high quality instruments for a fraction of
the expense of restoration.

Randy Hammond