Operational Update: The Refinishing Touch completes zero wood waste project at the Michelangelo Hotel

The entire team at The Refinishing Touch is thrilled to announce the completion of a large-scale refinishing project at The Michelangelo hotel in New York today that successfully produced zero wood waste – our most significant environmental savings project to date.

The Michelangelo guest room: Before
The Michelangelo guest room: Before

Located within the Taft Hotel building – the historic skyscraper encompassing 7th avenue, just north of Times Square – The Michelangelo provides guests with luxury amenities, design and event space for both business and pleasure. 

The establishment upholds a strong commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, as well as eco-friendly products, practices and initiatives, and because of this The Michelangelo turned to The Refinishing Touch for help when it came time to revamp guest rooms.

In only five weeks, The Refinishing Touch’s on-site services refinished and conserved 184 furniture assets including armoires, built-in units, desks, island wall units, and then manufactured 138 refrigerator cabinets using the wood remnants of the armoire re-modifications. This resulted in zero wood waste being sent to landfills.

The Michelangelo guest room: After
The Michelangelo guest room: After

Through these sustainable and on-site processes, The Michelangelo was able to extend the life of its pieces, improve design aesthetics, eradicate a significant amount of downtime, greatly reduce carbon emissions and entirely eliminate waste.

Perhaps surprisingly, the process of refinishing and re-purposing existing assets – rather than replacing – also reaps large financial benefits. By choosing sustainable practices, the project was completed with an 83.2% savings in cost, allowing this budget to be reallocated to other causes.

We are always thrilled to participate in the greening of the hospitality industry, but are especially proud of this zero wood waste accomplishment and we hope to see more of these projects in the months to come.

For more information about this project or how The Refinishing Touch can help your hotel, university or government building achieve a zero-waste renovation, please get in touch at [email protected].