Is it mold ( came after being shipped )

[RichterScale]

Another side note:
A bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide undiluted in a spray bottle is effective at actually killing the mold and spores.
The thing is, I don't know if that will affect the finish or the wood itself. As in stain or bleach it. I've only used it on basement walls where I wasn't concerned about discoloration. If I knew for sure it wouldn't affect the wood, I would recommend spraying it with peroxide.

 

[DJ Bebop]

Another side note:
A bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide undiluted in a spray bottle is effective at actually killing the mold and spores.
The thing is, I don't know if that will affect the finish or the wood itself. As in stain or bleach it. I've only used it on basement walls where I wasn't concerned about discoloration. If I knew for sure it wouldn't affect the wood, I would recommend spraying it with peroxide.

And how did that work on the basement?

 

[DJ Bebop]

I almost cannot look at that !!!!

Blocked you for being gutless!
(Not really)
It's a guitar!

 

[azureblue]

try hydrogen peroxide. It reacts to organics by foaming and will lift the mold out. OTOH, it will also suck water and sap out of the wood, so, as soon as the mold is out, re- nourish the wood.

 

[stuntbass77]

Another side note:
A bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide undiluted in a spray bottle is effective at actually killing the mold and spores.
The thing is, I don't know if that will affect the finish or the wood itself. As in stain or bleach it. I've only used it on basement walls where I wasn't concerned about discoloration. If I knew for sure it wouldn't affect the wood, I would recommend spraying it with peroxide.

When I moved in this house I bleached the walls. It doesn’t take away the dark area but does kill anything on it. After we moved in we immediately got a really big dehumidifier and a humidifier for really dry summer months. I also have a humidistat that sits in my living room so we can keep the humidity the same as much as possible in the house and the basement.

 

[RichterScale]

And how did that work on the basement?

Well, I'll set the stage first.
My wife "won" the house in a divorce. When she got it back, the basement was loaded with junk and a little room made of drywall and metal studs. Picture the show "hoarders".
We filled a dumpster with what was in the house and back yard. Before we could get to the basement, the sewer backed up and filled the entire basement with 6" of black water. After a few days of pumping and filling another dumpster with everything in the basement, there was mold all over the walls were stuff had been piled up.
Once the space was empty and relatively dry, I bought a case of peroxide and a pump up sprayer. I hosed down the walls several times and did some scrubbing on the bad spots. There are still stains, but no new mold has returned. Luckily, at some point someone painted all the floor joists and wood overhead with black paint. Stupid choice for a dark basement, but at least it prevented all the wood form getting moldy. Since then, the basement has been kept relatively clear, more lighting added and little windows in the glass block opened on occasion, no new mold.
I actually just fired up the dehumidifier 10 min ago as I'm working down here and it was at 75%. So, mold needs darkness and excessive moisture. But mainly, a food source.
Anyway, the short answer is yes, the peroxide worked, but it was also removing it and then keeping everything lit up and dry.
I could've given the short answer, but at least now you know I didn't just Google something and post it.

 

[stuntbass77]

Well, I'll set the stage first.
My wife "won" the house in a divorce. When she got it back, the basement was loaded with junk and a little room made of drywall and metal studs. Picture the show "hoarders".
We filled a dumpster with what was in the house and back yard. Before we could get to the basement, the sewer backed up and filled the entire basement with 6" of black water. After a few days of pumping and filling another dumpster with everything in the basement, there was mold all over the walls were stuff had been piled up.
Once the space was empty and relatively dry, I bought a case of peroxide and a pump up sprayer. I hosed down the walls several times and did some scrubbing on the bad spots. There are still stains, but no new mold has returned. Luckily, at some point someone painted all the floor joists and wood overhead with black paint. Stupid choice for a dark basement, but at least it prevented all the wood form getting moldy. Since then, the basement has been kept relatively clear, more lighting added and little windows in the glass block opened on occasion, no new mold.
I actually just fired up the dehumidifier 10 min ago as I'm working down here and it was at 75%. So, mold needs darkness and excessive moisture. But mainly, a food source.
Anyway, the short answer is yes, the peroxide worked, but it was also removing it and then keeping everything lit up and dry.
I could've given the short answer, but at least now you know I didn't just Google something and post it.

Ya, I bought a pump sprayer and some bleach ( thinned it out with some water ) and sprayed down the limestone walls of our basement. Unfortunately most the homes in the area all were built around the same time and have the same limestone.. it did work but had to leave the house for a couple days with a fan on downstairs to get rid of the fumes. Now it’s all under control thankfully. Running the dehumidifier as much as I do isn’t cheap but it works and is necessary.

 

[Robot.G]

Dr. Bronner's Tea Tree Soap works great for killing mold. I'm not sure if it will help with this situation, but it's worth a mention.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

So this table my wife had made with the last stimulus we got finally came. Problem is it has these black spots in one side ( and a few on the sides ) that look like mold. The crate that it came in had a foam board liner and that had it in the same spots as the wood top. The man who made it for use used “odies oil”. He recommends using the same product and some really fine sandpaper to try and get it out. I am inclined to sand it down and just use the same product myself to get it off and back to new. He offered to some extent to have someone near me do it but I do t want to have someone come in my house to do what I could do myself. Ya, I would rather not have to do work I payed for but I know “I”will do a good job ! I also don’t want to have someone have to take it out of the house to do work on it as it’s a living edge table and I worry about the edges. I as well as my wife am so upset as is the man who made it. He is sending me the “odies oil” and it should be here Monday. It takes two weeks to dry so it will have to be on its top side down till it cures enough to flip over again. I would have sent it back but we payed movers to come and help flip it over as we had no idea if we could do it ourselves and the same issue is likely to happen if it’s refinished and sent back to me. My wife is so over the moon about how the top looks and the grain but I need to get this crap off the bottom and side. Any help would be much appreciated!!!!

Seems to me if you are going to coat this again, you'll likely have the same end result at some time.

I would refuse to reapply only for the reason that if the man who made it and uses the stuff regularly can't adequately do it correctly, you are likely to be blamed when it happens to you.

No!

 

[stuntbass77]

Seems to me if you are going to coat this again, you'll likely have the same end result at some time.

I would refuse to reapply only for the reason that if the man who made it and uses the stuff regularly can't adequately do it correctly, you are likely to be blamed when it happens to you.

No!

That is why I want a professional involved. I believe the product is sound as I researched it at length. The inside of the crate was replaced when it was reused to ship it to me. With wood being so high right now he was able to save us quite a bit if money doing so. He said he has been reusing the exterior crating to ship products for some time with no issue. He was very honest from the beginning and that’s why we went with him. We went through a company that helps people find woodworkers in their area or that will deliver to the area but they get a percentage. Some of the people that contacted us through this service said that we could sidestep the service and pay them directly and it would save us money. This gentleman didn’t feel that that was great, he said that they helped him find the work and he felt he owed it to them to get their cut. I felt like that was very honest compared to the others. Hopefully in the end this will all get straightened out.

 

[Beej]

It's likely one of those situations where both the source of the problem and how to deal with it effectively are not clearly obvious to the person who made it. Sounds like he's not seen this before and so he's probably shooting fairly blindly as to how to soundly address it. I used to work in a cabinet shop and I can tell you firsthand that in that place, the carpentry experts were not the finishing experts and vice versa.

Odie's oil is nice but not a hard, resilient, durable finish, so it may be used by people who are looking more for ease of use and clean results than to create a lifetime finish. This is a dining room table, it's going to see lots of contact in its lifetime. Either a hard, glassy, gloss surface or a satiny, oily finish will work, but the glossy one will probably protect against these kinds of situations better over time. The oil finish will probably better hide little imperfections that the table gathers over time.

In the end, I think there will probably be some trial and error to both figure out what happened and figure out how to resolve it. I suspect the builder may also learn from this and explore other finishes, or be more cautious around packing and shipping in the future. The "liner" of the crate in the pics looks to be the thing that became moldy and it looks like it was some kind of cellulose based product, which are notorious for getting moldy in damp or humid settings. Overall, it sucks, but I guess what I'm saying is that a very simplistic solution and answer may not be forthcoming, so if it is a meaningful table for you and you love it other than the mold, it should be worth the time, energy and bucks to restore it.

I'd also just put out there from both building these things along with other furniture myself, and seeing prices in my local marketplace, that if you paid less than $5000 US for this, you did great. If you paid more than $5000, then I completely agree the builder should deal with it 100% with little to no involvement from yourself.

Edit: two of the more local suppliers of live edge tables here offer 5 year full replacement warranties on construction and finish problems.

 

[stuntbass77]

It's likely one of those situations where both the source of the problem and how to deal with it effectively are not clearly obvious to the person who made it. Sounds like he's not seen this before and so he's probably shooting fairly blindly as to how to soundly address it. I used to work in a cabinet shop and I can tell you firsthand that in that place, the carpentry experts were not the finishing experts and vice versa.

Odie's oil is nice but not a hard, resilient, durable finish, so it may be used by people who are looking more for ease of use and clean results than to create a lifetime finish. This is a dining room table, it's going to see lots of contact in its lifetime. Either a hard, glassy, gloss surface or a satiny, oily finish will work, but the glossy one will probably protect against these kinds of situations better over time. The oil finish will probably better hide little imperfections that the table gathers over time.

In the end, I think there will probably be some trial and error to both figure out what happened and figure out how to resolve it. I suspect the builder may also learn from this and explore other finishes, or be more cautious around packing and shipping in the future. The "liner" of the crate in the pics looks to be the thing that became moldy and it looks like it was some kind of cellulose based product, which are notorious for getting moldy in damp or humid settings. Overall, it sucks, but I guess what I'm saying is that a very simplistic solution and answer may not be forthcoming, so if it is a meaningful table for you and you love it other than the mold, it should be worth the time, energy and bucks to restore it.

I'd also just put out there from both building these things along with other furniture myself, and seeing prices in my local marketplace, that if you paid less than $5000 US for this, you did great. If you paid more than $5000, then I completely agree the builder should deal with it 100% with little to no involvement from yourself.

Edit: two of the more local suppliers of live edge tables here offer 5 year full replacement warranties on construction and finish problems.

I completely agree !!! We used our last stimulus plus a very generous gift of cash from a relative for our 10 year anniversary. It was going big as it’s more than I would spend on anything with our budget restraints. My wife has an illness that few have heard of ( Walter Paton died from it ) and it genetic called PSC for short. If she doesn’t receive a transplant at some point she will die. I as a husband want her to be as happy as I can make her for as long as she is with us as ever day is a blessing. With her illness she can feel fine one day and be really really sick the next. So we went overboard with this but it was under $5000 but not by much. I have a feeling the builder will want to refinished with the same product which is came with anyway. The only reason I accepted his use of this finish was after researching it seemed I could restore it in a could years by just applying more, buffing, and waiting the 2 weeks for it to fulling harden. Thank God I know a little about finishing and if I had to I probably could get it down myself but I would need a lot of help lifting and turning it as I worked on each side. Hopefully the man who made the table will pay to have someone by me do the work as it seems only fair that I not have to do the work as that’s what he was payed for. Most of the cost is labor which makes sense. Definitely a learning experience for me which I will not repeat ( and not just because i won’t ever have the money like that again, which I won’t ). And yes, I did look at the table and think, “ I could make some nice bass bodies out of this “....

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

That is why I want a professional involved. I believe the product is sound as I researched it at length. The inside of the crate was replaced when it was reused to ship it to me. With wood being so high right now he was able to save us quite a bit if money doing so. He said he has been reusing the exterior crating to ship products for some time with no issue. He was very honest from the beginning and that’s why we went with him. We went through a company that helps people find woodworkers in their area or that will deliver to the area but they get a percentage. Some of the people that contacted us through this service said that we could sidestep the service and pay them directly and it would save us money. This gentleman didn’t feel that that was great, he said that they helped him find the work and he felt he owed it to them to get their cut. I felt like that was very honest compared to the others. Hopefully in the end this will all get straightened out.

Let the builder supply you with a professional so there will be no question of the reputation.

All of this.......make his problem.

 

[arbiterusa]

This “discussion” is insane; if you buy a piece of high-end furniture and it shows up with one single flaw it goes back to the maker on their dime. That’s simply the way that industry works. When I bought my Moser recliner it was put in by a team in my living room and photographed from every single angle. This is part of what you’re paying for when you buy expensive furniture. The only discussion that should be going on here is when the maker is going to be picking up that mold-infested chunk of diseasewood from your house and sending you a new one or a total refund.

I have several friends who do high end handmade furniture. Beyond my ability to buy, for certain. What the OP is being asked to do is an outrage.