We do not usually accept a hospitality fit-out with a sub-twelve-week deadline. Rumah Kitsu was the exception. Lim Wai Keat — front-of-house at Pavilion Lobby Bar for nine years before opening his own — called us in early January 2025 and asked if we could deliver a 64-cover restaurant by the second week of March. We said maybe. We meant probably not.
Week one: the timber order
For a job this size we usually pre-order timber. With eight weeks on the clock we had to commit to a wood, a fabric and a leather inside three days. Wai Keat picked a forest-green vegetable-tanned leather (Spinneybeck Aged Velvet) for the banquette, oiled white oak for the chairs, and a rattan-back panel on every chair as a nod to the Peranakan brief. Timber landed on day six, two days late, which we will come back to.
Week two: prototypes
Before we cut any of the 64 chairs we built three: one with a tighter rattan weave, one with a wider weave, one with a moulded plywood seat under the rattan for extra rigidity. Wai Keat sat on all three in the workshop, picked the middle one, and we cut the production batch the next morning.
Weeks three and four: the foam problem
The banquette is 14 metres of seating wrapped around three corners. We ordered a single 40m foam roll for the seat and the back, cut in two thicknesses. The roll arrived from Senawang in week three, and on the third sheet of cutting we noticed it was too soft — about 30 ILD when we had ordered 45. Our supplier had run the wrong recipe.
To their credit, they made us a fresh roll inside four days and absorbed the cost. We lost a week of bench time and worked the following Sunday to catch up.
Weeks five and six: chair production
Hafiz ran a small line for the chair frames — three benches, three makers, one finisher. We cut all sixty-four frames inside ten working days. The rattan panels were woven by a specialist team in Sungai Buloh’s old quarter; they delivered weekly in batches of sixteen, and Iskandar fitted them on the same evening to keep the cane moisture even.
Week seven: leather, seams, and a lot of hand-stitching
Mei Ling and her team upholstered the banquette in two halves — the run was too long to fit in the workshop in one piece. Hand-stitched topstitching on every seam, French seams at the corners, brass studs along the front rail. It took six full days and a Saturday.
Week eight: dispatch, install, and the 04:30 lorry
Final dispatch was 8 March 2025. Ravi drove the chairs over on a Friday afternoon. The banquette went next morning, in two pieces, on a single lorry that left our yard at 04:30 to avoid Federal Highway traffic. The install crew had it in place and bolted down by 11:00. Rumah Kitsu had its first family-and-friends service that Saturday evening.
What we would do differently
Pre-test every foam roll before cutting. We test now — a kilo block off the end of the roll, ten minutes on a hardness meter — and have done since.
Also: build the banquette in three sections rather than two. The two-piece join worked, but a three-piece install would have given us a spare day in the bench schedule for sanding the seams smoother.
If you are opening a restaurant and you have eight weeks, please call us before you sign the lease — not after.