Case Study: Renovate With Ease

Typical of many residence halls across the country, student rooms often are equipped with built-in furniture. Over the decades, as thousands of students occupy the rooms, wear and tear starts to disintegrate the surfaces of desks, beds, dressers and closets.

Georgetown University was renovating Harbin Hall, a 200-plus-room facility, and found itself dealing with furniture that was scratched, defaced and suffering from decades of abuse from students.

Researching the cost of having the built-in furniture dismantled, moved from the rooms to an off-site facility, refinished and reinstalled back into rooms, made it clear that the cost outweighed the benefits of refinishing the furniture substantially. Faced with the dilemma of how to improve the appearance of the furniture without spending a tremendous amount of funds, Georgetown turned to The Refinishing Touch for a solution.

The results of surveying the university's restoration requirements concluded in a $204,000 proposal for refinishing all 221 rooms. The company worked tandem with painters, plumbers and carpet-layers to complete a total renovation of the building. Workers averaged 10 to 15 rooms per day. For quality control, the work was first examined by the operation crew chief after the crew was finished with it. On a weekly basis, a representative of Georgetown officially signed off each refreshed room for final acceptance.