The Refinishing Touch Blog

All government measures have their casualties. In the case of the legislation of February 17th 2009 the victim is the armoire. Once a flagship of French regional furniture and a staple to many hotel rooms, it is soon to be obsolete.

In five months' time federal law dictates all television stations must turn off their analog broadcast. Before then, many hotels, motels and apartments will be forced to upgrade to newer technology. This means soon hoteliers will find themselves stuck with hundreds of pieces of furniture, which simply don't fit modern equipment.

The solution and problem is the HD flat screen television. These bear little relation to their chunky old fashioned counterpart and have very different dimensions. We all know about the environmental implications of discarding old televisions and are constantly reminded of the necessity for the safe disposal of out of date apparatus. Yet nobody remembers the functional piece of furniture, the armoire, which has been housing televisions in guest rooms, hotel suites and ordinary households for decades.

The sad fact is over the coming months, in the run up to the switchover; literally thousands of perfectly good armoires will be dumped. Solid, wooden and bulky the majority of these solid pieces of furniture will just be tossed and something quick, new and flimsy, will be purchased and put in its place. Perhaps in a world without financial or environmental repercussions this solution would be perfectly acceptable. But we at The Refinishing Touch believe in an environmentally responsible world and modifying these existing pieces … and if that's the most cost effective solution all the better.

Because even if the new television doesn't fit the old armoire - many parts of the furniture are critical and can still be functional. This piece of furniture typically houses important elements like the mini-bar, glassware, and drawers for guest's personal items. In any other circumstances many of these would be good for years to come. This is a phenomenal waste of resources. So, to counter the problem we've developed an environmentally-friendly program for refurbishing old armoires. We've got (number of years) years of experience in doing this, and now we can help to meet government measures.