Eleven classrooms of cupboards, shelving and desks for an island school, to be made by a carpenter on the island who had a workshop the size of a room.
Everything was cut here. Sending sheets would have meant a carpenter cutting eight foot board by hand in a small room with no panel saw, which would have taken weeks and produced parts that were not square. Instead the whole fit out went as labelled, cut and edged parts, bundled by classroom.
Sheets and parts were crated with battens across the faces rather than strapped, which is the difference between board arriving flat and board arriving with a bow the carpenter cannot work out. Two loads on two sailings three weeks apart, so the island was not storing the whole job at once in a building with a leaking roof.
The carpenter assembled the lot in five weeks. His only complaint, which was fair, was that two bundles were labelled by our room numbers rather than the school's, and we have labelled to the customer's own numbering ever since.