French Polisher and Furniture Restorer Insurance

If a polishing workshop burns down, the most likely cause is not a flame. It is a pile of cloth.

Linseed and other drying oils cure by oxidising, and oxidation produces heat. In a loose heap of soaked rags, that heat cannot escape, the reaction accelerates, and the pile can reach ignition temperature on its own with nobody in the building and nothing switched on. It happens overnight and it happens in small workshops. Add solvent soaked cloth, open containers of methylated spirits and shellac, and spray residue on surfaces, and the fire load is substantial for the floor area.

So the controls are specific and most policies will condition them. Oily and solvent soaked rags into a metal bin with a self closing lid, emptied daily rather than when full, and never left in a heap or a plastic sack. Flammable liquids in a designated metal cabinet in quantities appropriate to the work rather than stocked up. Containers closed between uses. Spray residue cleaned rather than allowed to build. And an honest answer to your insurer about whether you spray, because a spray operation in a general workshop is a different risk from brush and pad work.

This trade's advisory risk is unusual: doing the work well can still destroy value if the work should not have been done at all.

An original finish, an old patina, an untouched surface and even old damage can be a large part of what an antique is worth. Strip it and refinish beautifully and the piece may be worth a fraction of what it was, because what a collector valued has gone. The customer may have asked for it, but a professional who did not explain the consequence is in a weak position afterwards, particularly if the piece turns out to have been more significant than anybody said.

So the conversation before the work is the protection. Ask what is known about the piece and record the answer, explain plainly where refinishing would affect value and offer the conservative option, and get the instruction in writing where a customer chooses a full refinish against your advice. On anything that might be significant, suggest they take a valuation first rather than proceeding. This is also why professional indemnity is worth holding here: the claim is loss of value, not a damaged table.

The property figure that matters on this policy is not your stock. It is the furniture waiting on the floor.

A workshop in a busy period holds pieces in for stripping, pieces drying between coats, finished work awaiting collection, and the items a dealer dropped off as a batch. Each belongs to somebody, some are irreplaceable, and a fire or a flood destroys all of it at once. A standard public liability policy excludes damage to property in the insured's care, custody or control, which is the entire contents of the room.

So confirm that cover explicitly, set the limit against a busy week including uncollected items rather than a typical day, and check the single article limit separately because one piano or one significant antique can exceed it alone. It is also worth being deliberate about how much high value work is in the building at once, because the cheapest risk control available here is not having everything in one place. Photograph pieces on arrival with existing damage noted, which settles the other common dispute.

A large part of this trade happens on site, in finished interiors, with materials that mark whatever they touch.

On site polishing of staircases, panelling, doors, bars and fitted furniture means solvents, stains and finishes in a room with carpets, floors, curtains and other furniture in it, frequently in a listed building or a house people are living in. The realistic claims are a spill on a floor, overspray on a wall or a window, a stain mark on a carpet, solvent smell that makes a room unusable for days, and damage to an adjacent piece nobody moved.

Preventing it is sheeting and sequence rather than care alone: protection down and taped before anything is opened, adjacent items moved or covered rather than worked around, ventilation arranged and the household told what to expect and for how long, and containers never placed on a surface they could mark. In a listed interior, record the condition of the surrounding fabric first, for the same reason that matters in masonry and framing work.

Customers' furniture and the rag bin decide this one. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.