Once upon a time . . . in a hotel not long ago, new casegoods arrived. There  were lovely armoires with high lacquer finishes, upholstered chairs in luxurious  fabrics and shiny brass mirrors that reflected the beauty of the guestroom. The  hotel thought for certain that these casegoods made it the loveliest property in  the land, until . . . the guests came, and left their marks on the new  furniture, forever.  Just like Snow White was brought back to life in the 1937 Walt Disney movie  after a kiss from Prince Charming, a hotel can bring its furniture back to life  through refinishing and reupholstering. 

"Casegoods are an expensive asset, representing possibly the largest individual  asset in hotel real estate-aside from the real estate itself," said Mario  Insenga, president of Alpharetta, Ga.-based The Refinishing Touch. "Casegoods  and upholstered seating represent approximately 40 percent to 50 percent of the  room renovation budget. If a hotel can reduce that budget expense  to 10  percent, it can put more money back into the facility or dramatically boost its  bottom line." 

Insenga said that due to the natural aging effect on furniture, the life cycle  of casegoods is roughly seven to 10 years. However, he said casegoods in  business-class hotels will tend to hold up longer than properties that attract  leisure travelers due to the length and nature of the guest stay. 

For example, he said  coastal hotels, and those that feature swimming pools and  water sports, tend to have more furniture damage due to high humidity climates  and wet bathing suits being draped over chairs or thrown on dressers. 

"Good wood never wears out," Insenga said. "We've found that newer products on  the market are not as well constructed as some of the existing items in hotels.  Tired, worn and out-of-style furniture can be made to look great once again  [through refinishing] at a budget savings of 80 percent, compared to purchasing  the same items brand new." 

In addition to the cost savings, Insenga said there are two other benefits from  refinishing casegoods. First, all casegood refinishing and reupholstering from  The Refinishing Touch and a few others, is done on site. This, he said,  eliminates the need for the hotel to ship casegoods to an off-site refinishing  company, and it eliminates the need to take guestrooms out of inventory for an 
extended period of time. 

Door-to-door service  

"All our work is done safely-using waterborne materials that are odorless,  nontoxic and nonflamable-and efficiently on location," Insenga said. "Rooms  restored in the morning, typically 10 to 14 a day, can be occupied that same  evening. " 

The second reason refinishing is so attractive, Insenga said, is that it helps  save the rainforest. Millions of trees are cut to make new furniture, he said.  "We believe we're doing something beyond the dollars and cents of the business  by reducing the number of trees that are used for furnishings that are  ultimately dumped into landfills," he said. "In one minute, 80 acres of  rainforest is destroyed." 

There are other options, however, to throwing out worn or out-of-style hotel  furniture. The Algonquin Hotel in New York recently donated some of its worn  furniture to Furnish a Future, a not-for-profit organization that helps find and  furnish homes for the homeless. 

Bob Meyer, director of architecture and design for the Camberley Hotel Co., the  Atlanta-based management company that operates the Algonquin Hotel, said the  property recently refinished almost 75 percent of its casegoods as part of the  hotel's $5.5 million renovation. 

"We were driven by our budget," Meyer said. "When you start out on a project  like this, you want everything to be the best. But somehow, the budget has to  match the reality of the concept. Our result was one of 'value engineering.'"  Meyer said the cost to refinish the casegoods was one-third of what it would  have cost the hotel to purchase the items new. He said $53,000 was spent to  refinish casegoods in 165 guestrooms and suites; and approximately $28,000 was  spent on reupholstery. The woodworking in the lobby cost approximately $145,000. 

"We refinished anything that was worth keeping," Meyer said. "A lot of the  furniture was in bad shape, and repair couldn't stand the test of time, so it  was tossed." 

Encore Renewal Systems of Atlanta did the refinishing job at the Algonquin.  Tom Chance, national sales manager for Encore, said that for those hotels that  bought better furniture, refinishing and reupholstering has becoming a popular  option, and is hitting all hotel segments, from luxury properties such as Ritz-  Carlton and Four Seasons to economy hotels such as Comfort Inns. Chance warned,  however, that there are newer products on the market that are of inferior  quality and will not tolerate refinishing. 

Anything goes  

There is no apparent trend in selecting finishes for furnishings today. Industry  experts say that hotels are taking traditional mahogany pieces and are applying  a white-wash or crackled finish, while hotels with more neutral-style furniture  are going more traditional. 

"Owners and operators of hotels today are looking for new ways to define their  product," said Brad Elias, president of Elias Design, New York. "One chain that  may have been contemporary is now moving toward traditional and vice versa.  Anything goes. Adding new finishes really helps to change the entire design of  the room." 

Elias said some of the newer hotel owners and operators have abandoned standards  and are experimenting with fabrics. For example, he said, he has seen newer  hotels add suedes to chairs and fabrics to headboards. He said, however, that  these products don't meet durability standards and will be difficult to  maintain. 

"There needs to be newer, fresher standards that include durability with  design," Elias said. 

One way hotels can maintain control over the refinishing and reupholstering  process and make sure that work is being done to specifications is to have a  shop in house. The Broadmoor  Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo., for example, has  had its own refinishing and reupholstery shop on premises for more than 20  years. 

"We are fortunate enough to have our own maintenance building at the Broadmoor  that had enough space to set-up two separate shops under one roof," said Mike  Rolla, engineering department manager. "Doing the work ourselves has eliminated  disputes between second and third parties. We control the quality, and we can  blame only ourselves if the job isn't done right." 

Rolla said the cost to have a five-foot sofa reupholstered by an outside  contractor is equal to the salary for one week for a Broadmoor refinisher or  upholsterer. However, he said it has been difficult to keep staff at the hotel  because it's hard to compete with private sector wages. 

"We are aggressively looking for qualified people to staff our refinishing and  reupholstering shop," he said. "It's important to the Broadmoor to have staff  in-house that can do anything from routine touch-ups and prepare rooms for  quality inspections to complete woodworking projects and reupholster jobs. The  cost savings and quality control is substantial."