There is no good way to say an average time to rebuild a player piano.
The time it takes varies with the person, with the brand of player
system and with the condition of the player system and the experience
of the restorer.

I have restored a complete player system in as little as one week.
Don't ask me to do that again, though -- that is not enough time,
in my estimation.

In our shop a player system restoration actually averages two to
four weeks and it depends on the brand and condition of the player
system.  That time can be spread out over the time it takes to possibly
rebuild the piano action, restring the piano, wait for a refinisher
to do his work, wait for the action to be regulated so the player
can be regulated to the piano action, and wait until the piano is in
a condition where the player can be reinstalled into the piano.

I have seen one player restoration in process for nineteen years.
I went to pick up the piano and player as the novice had lost interest
in getting it restored and sold it to me very cheaply.

I had another one that had started restoration thirty years previous,
had all the supplies to do a good job (now too old to actually use) and
he never got it finished, but the stack was all in millions of pieces
(ten thousand, actually -- literally!).  They luckily wanted to hear
that player play so I was asked to fully restore it and in a few months
they got back a great player piano.

In both of those cases, the novice had reached a point and could not
get past it.  In one case the pneumatics had all been recovered with
pneumatic cloth, however the pneumatics were very stiff.  They would
not close and if they did it took lots of muscle and they sprung back
open really fast when you let go.  Needless to say they were all
severely hinge bound.  Each hinge end was packed full of a massive
glob of glue.  It was the same as if he had put a wedge into the middle
of the pneumatic hinge to keep it from closing.

If you want to know how long it will take you to restore a player,
I would need to know how experienced you are, how good a quality your
work is so you don't have to keep going back and redoing things and it
would help to know how much time you plan to devote to the job over
a day, week, or month.

Our shop recently restored a Standard where the _piano_ had been redone
by a good quality professional piano tuner/rebuilder.  The job on the
player took about two months but since it had been recently "restored
at" by six or seven other "restorers" before us, we had to undo a whole
lot of substandard poor quality work and repair so much stuff that no
one should have to do on any player unit.

So how long does it take to do a good restoration?
If all things are favorable: 2 to 4 weeks.
If all things are not favorable: up to or beyond 30 years.

Doug L. Bullock
Alton, Illinois
http://thepianoworld.com/