This client had moved to purpose built premises. Everything was installed brand new. The boardroom table was made to order in Canada and shipped to the UK. It was HUGE! It was SOLID! It was HEAVY!

The table arrived and was stored in the new boardroom in its delivery box… unopened …. Until it was time to erect it on the new carpets. The chairs had been unpacked and were ready to put round it.

They opened the freight crate, removed the packaging and found DAMAGE!

There were deep bruises. The two 3 m leaves had been placed face to face with protection in-between. The obvious conclusion (as least to our thinking) was that it was damaged either at the point of packing or before. You won’t be surprised to hear that, as the table had been paid for in full 3 months before, the manufacturer were less that interested in any kind of warranty return. It’s not like you can return to sender in a padded envelope! The client really had no choice but to accept what they had.

The erected the table and then saw the atrocious filling of knots- they had been jammed full of black filler that protruded and had no finesse.

They then looked closer still to find sander swirl marks

and we won’t even talk about the blotchy staining!

We are not privy to the cost off the table but our estimation is circa £ 30,000.00- 40,000.00… + VAT or course!

So what could be done?

The first challenge was that, now the boardroom was finished it was almost impossible to remove the table from the building (that’s why it had been ordered and stayed in the room for 3 months as they knew it would not be an easy task to get it up flights of stairs and around corners). This meant it had to be finished in situ.

We stripped off all of the existing finish- all that nasty black filler and then sweat out the bruising before sanding and prepping. (Did we mention the boardroom was completely finished and spotlessly clean?)

Having stripped it we then applied French polish ( we had to use two polishers as our guys don’t have 2m long arms to reach either side). We could then properly fill the raked out filler and touch it out.

The pic below was after the end of the FIRST DAY- Stripped, filled touched out, sealed and sanded.

On the second day we could then bring the colour back out and finish it properly!

No nasty filler, no nasty bruises just a fabulous statement boardroom table!

And the boardroom was left as clean as the day we arrived!