Adventures of the Traveling Mold Guy

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Adventures of the Traveling Mold Guy

This happened a few years ago I was called by an environmental company as a subcontractor.  They asked me to go to South Florida to inspect a shipment of furniture that was being delivered to a new luxury hotel project.

The furnishings were being built in Indonesia.  The owner of the furniture company lived in New Zealand.  When the furniture arrived in the USA and was taken out of the shipping containers it was covered with microbial development . My job was to try to determine the cause and help devise a solution. 

The furniture had a live edge that was almost white and as you can see from the photos the finished product was beautiful, but it couldn’t be used the way it came in from the shipping container.

In my opinion the wood slabs had not been sufficiently dried when they were wrapped and placed in the containers.  That and a container ship trip from Indonesia to South Florida took some time. Conditions onboard a ship from the tropics of Indonesia to South Florida  were perfect for microbial development.

Considerable money was at stake.  The new hotel was near opening but the furniture could not be duplicated in time.  It was a big enough “deal” that the owner of the company flew in from New Zealand and together we developed a solution. 

Just cleaning off the growth would not be acceptable because growth trapped on the wood between the wood surface and the metal frame would likely re-develop and contaminate the brand-new hotel.  ( You know sometimes people leave the sliding doors open to listen to the ocean waves and fill the room with warm, humid, South Florida, kind of like Indonesia,  AIR)

In the end it was a good outcome. The furniture was disassembled. The frames cleaned,  the live edge slabs were cleaned and re sanded down to a fresh surface.  All was re assembled.  I believe the furniture is serving luxury hotel guests today.