St John, WI Church Pew Refinishing Rescue!

We're human. We make mistakes. My mistake was to not visit St John Church when I had the chance. St John's mistake was to let the painters ALSO include the church pew restoration/refinishing as part of THEIR work for the church interior project. So when they told me of their decision I made sure they knew that my door would always be open.  "Painters PAINT church pews," I said. "If it doesn't work out, It's OK to call me."

Here are photos of how the pews looked BEFORE the work began.

The good news was that the structural integrity of the pews was excellent. They were all solid wood and the thickness was substantial. These were the kind of church pews that are worthy of investment. The bad news is that they had just plain NEVER been refinished- EVER. Take a look at the gray grease on the seats and the top of the ends. That's years of hand rubbed oils that had penetrated deep into the grain. There was very little finish on the seats.

Enter the painters. (Da dum dum dummmmmmmmmmmm - cymbal crash).

After 12 days of work they had only removed the finish from 8 pews. They were a "hot sanded mess." Notice the cross grain sander marks in this picture.

Then they prepared a stained pew sample that looked like this:

After which they decided that wasn't very good and then decided they would sand it off.

At that point- we got the call. We completed the work in 12 days. 

The carpet in the photos is the FORMER carpet. No- we wouldn't suggest matching the pews to the exact carpet color. The new carpet has grays with a slight touch of the new pew color mixed in. Hopefully we'll get pix in the future.

To be honest this is a circumstance we would generally run away from fast. It was the wonderful folks who just oozed friendliness that made us jump and help.

Just because things aren't perfect doesn't ALWAYS mean you should shy away. Sometimes very good things come from mistakes.

The we received after this work gave us goosebumps. This is one we won't ever forget.

For YOUR project. Call us. Remind me to stop by. And DON'T hire painters to refinish the pews! :)

Scott

262-527-8969

woodworkrestoration@hotmail.com

http://churchpewrestoration.com

http://churchpewrefinishing.com