A Kittinger Table, Safely Packed & Shipped to Budapest, Hungary

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a woman in California, asking me if I would be able to assist her in packing & shipping a replica antique table to Budapest, Hungary. I initially thought this offer was fishy and asked the woman if her Hungarian client was legit. She assured me that the client was in fact a legitimate person, an American author, in fact, living in Budapest.

I was now excited to take on the project. My client in California further informed me that the table was in a warehouse in Tonawanda, 10 minutes our store; once it was restored, it would need to be picked up, brought to our warehouse, safely stored, then packed and shipped via air freight to Budapest.

After I got off the phone, I went to the furniture website to find out just how valuable this table was and I found out that the woman in California had the following specialty listed on her site:

“We specialize in pre-owned furniture originally made by the Kittinger Company of Buffalo, New York (1929 – 1995). We can help you find your favorite pieces of vintage Kittinger furniture.”

Now I knew that this project was perfect for us, since we are in the business of making memories.

After six weeks of restoration, the table was ready to be picked up. My wife & I drove to a storage facility in Tonawanda to pick it up, prepare it for transportation to our warehouse for safe keeping, while we prepared it for shipment to Europe.  There’s a lot that goes into preparing such a shipment. We both have taken courses to be certified for freight, furniture and artwork shipping, but this project required constant communication with our #FreightGuru, Mr. Jeff Ballantyne, from Parcel Room, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. With over 35 years of experience shipping freight, delicate items and entire auction houses, we were in the right hands.  Jeff guided us with this project step by step, making things very easy for us. He even helped with filling out all the paperwork.

Furthermore, we had to source a heat treated pallet from Clarence, NY, in order to place the item on top, because Europe would not allow any normal pallets to enter into its respective countries, due to prevention of foreign insects coming into the land.

Here is a link to all the pictures for this packaging job.

After a grueling bout with customs and authorities in Hungary, the recipient received her table earlier this month and sent this email to our client in California – making us realize how important this piece of furniture actually was to her: