Custom Furniture Is Installed and the Balance Is Due: What to Check First

Walk it while the installers are still in the room

Once the last payment clears, every snag depends on the workshop's goodwill or on a formal notice under the UAE's Civil Transactions Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, in force since 1 June 2026). Before it clears, the snag list is a condition of payment.

Open the drawing, the WhatsApp thread where sizes, board and handles were agreed, and the deposit receipt. Screenshot the chat messages that changed the order, with their dates showing.

Bring a tape measure, a phone torch and a spirit-level app. If the crew hands you a delivery note that says "received in good condition", write "subject to inspection" beside your signature, or list the faults on it. A signed "good condition" can later be held against you, much as it is in a damage claim against movers.

Each check below ends with the line to send when it fails, with a photo attached.

Tall units: is it fixed to the wall

A tall unit that stands loose can tip forward when a loaded drawer is pulled out or a child climbs the shelves. EN 14749, the European safety standard for domestic storage furniture, tests stability and the strength of wall attachments, but leaves out the wall and the fixings that go into it. Those are the installer's choice on site.

Dubai apartments mix two kinds of wall: blockwork or concrete, which takes an expansion anchor, and gypsum-board partitions on metal studs, where the board alone holds very little. Ask which wall it is and what went into it. The guide to which anchors hold in block and gypsum explains how to tell the two apart.

Check: open the top doors and look for brackets or straps running from the carcass into the wall. Then push gently on the face at shoulder height. A fixed unit does not rock. If it moves, stop: leave it empty, keep children away from it, and leave the drilling to the installers, whose job it is.

What it cannot show: whether an anchor in a gypsum wall found a stud. Ask, and write the answer down.

Snag line: "The wardrobe rocks when pushed at shoulder height and has no visible wall fixing. Please fix it to the wall with anchors suited to [blockwork / the metal studs] before the balance is paid, and tell me which fixings you used."

Sizes against the drawing, inside as well as out

External sizes usually come out right, because the piece had to fit the alcove. Internal ones go wrong: clear hanging height under the rail, shelf depth, the usable width inside a drawer, the opening for a TV, a soundbar or a router. Measure those, then count shelves, drawers and rails against the drawing.

Lay the level app on a shelf and on the top, then hold it against a side panel. A carcass out of plumb gives itself away in doors that swing open or shut on their own and in gaps that taper. On an uneven floor, adjustable feet or packers normally correct a small error on the spot.

What it cannot show: very little, provided the drawing carries internal sizes. Without them, you can only test whether the piece does what you said it was for: long dresses clear of the floor, the receiver fitting its shelf.

Snag line, with example figures: "The drawing dated [date] shows 1,000 mm clear under the hanging rail; it measures 920 mm. Please correct this, or tell me what you propose, before the final payment."

Doors, hinges and drawers, with something heavy inside

Open every door and drawer fully, several times. Doors should close flush, with even gaps between neighbours and along the top, and soft-close should catch every time. Uneven gaps are the cheapest fault to fix: concealed hinges of the kind Blum makes adjust sideways, up and down and in depth by about 2 mm with a screwdriver.

Then load one drawer the way you will use it (books or bottled water will do) and pull it out to the stop. It should run smoothly, stay level and not scrape. Blum rates its runners in load classes from 30 to 70 kg and designs its Movento and Tandem runners for 100,000 opening and closing cycles. An unbranded runner arrives with no figure at all.

If the order named a brand, look for its name, usually stamped on the hinge arm or cup and on the runner. A different brand departs from the order even if it works today.

What it cannot show: how the hardware wears over years, or whether hinge screws went into sound board. Hairline cracks around a hinge cup on day one are worth a photo and a line in the snag list.

Snag line: "The order specifies [brand and model] runners; the drawers have unbranded ones (photo attached). Please fit the specified hardware, or confirm in writing what you are offering in its place."

Board, edges and finish, under a torch held low

Hold the torch close to each face so the light rakes across it. Runs, orange peel, dust nibs, sanding marks, thin lacquer on a corner and a door a shade off its neighbour all show up this way. Run the torch along the edge banding too: it should sit flush, with no glue line, no gap at the corners and nothing that lifts under a fingernail.

To identify the board without damage, look at a raw edge inside a cable cut-out, ask for an offcut, and read the board supplier's invoice for your job; colour proves little. Moisture-resistant MDF is MDF.H under EN 622-5, plywood for humid conditions is EN 636-2, and P3 is the non-load-bearing particleboard grade for humid conditions under EN 312. Those grades matter for a vanity, a laundry cabinet, a unit beside a balcony door, and a flat shut up for the summer with the AC off, where the air indoors can turn damp.

Solid timber raises one more question: how dry was it when it was made? Wood settles towards the humidity around it. In the Wood Handbook table reproduced by Purdue Extension, a room at about 21°C and 50% relative humidity brings wood to roughly 9% moisture content, while air at 27°C and 80% brings it towards 16%. Timber made up damp and moved into an air-conditioned room shrinks, and panels and joints can open over the following weeks. The same Purdue publication gives 6 to 8% as the moisture content for lumber dried for interior use, so ask the workshop for a pin-meter reading. One well above that range on a piece bound for an air-conditioned room means the timber has more shrinking to do, and gaps that appear in the first weeks belong on the snag list.

What it cannot show: glue quality inside a joint, or whether a panel's core matches its edge. Those show with time, which is why the invoice and the order are the evidence you keep.

Snag line: "Two door fronts have runs in the lacquer, and the edge band is lifting at the lower left corner of the TV unit (photos attached). Please refinish or replace these before the balance is paid, and send the board invoice for this job."

A strong smell on delivery, and the labels that answer it

A freshly sprayed piece smells of solvent, and part of that is a finish still curing. Mipa's data sheet for a two-pack polyurethane furniture lacquer gives stacking after 2 hours and full cure after two to three days at 20°C. A piece delivered the day after spraying can be handled but is not yet fully hard, so keep heavy objects and rubber feet off it for a few days, and air the room.

Smell tells you little about formaldehyde, which comes mostly from the glue in the board. Ask for the board's emission class instead. E1 is the European class under EN 13986, set at 0.124 mg/m³ in the chamber test. "E0" belongs to no European standard; China's GB/T 39600 uses E1, E0 (0.050 mg/m³) and ENF (0.025 mg/m³), so ask which standard an E0 claim refers to. CARB Phase 2 and TSCA Title VI are the American certifications, and certified panels are labelled as such.

The proof is the panel maker's certificate or the label on the board, matched to the supplier's invoice for your job.

Snag line: "The order specified E1 board. Please send the supplier's invoice and the emission certificate for the panels used in this job before I make the final payment."

Pay, hold part back, or refuse the piece

Pay in full when every check passes, or when the only failures are ones the installer fixes before leaving: a hinge adjustment, a wall fixing, a handle fitted on the spot.

Sign off with a written snag list and a holdback when the piece is usable and the faults can be corrected: a lacquer run, a lifting edge, a runner swap. In the same message, agree what gets fixed, by when, and that the held amount is released when it is, keeping it in proportion to the work outstanding.

Refuse the piece and ask for a remake when it departs from the order in a way no adjustment cures: wrong internal sizes, a board other than the one specified, the wrong finish or colour, a carcass that will not sit plumb. If the workshop will not remake it, other workshops that build to a drawing can quote the remake from the same drawing and photos.

The law's own sequence for defects runs along similar lines: written notice, time to correct, then other remedies. A made-to-order piece where the workshop supplies the materials is generally treated as a works contract (muqawala), now Articles 812 to 839 of the 2025 law. Law-firm commentaries read Article 815 as making the contractor answerable for the quality of materials it supplies, and Article 818 as letting the customer give written notice of a defect with time to correct it, then end the contract or have someone else correct it at the contractor's cost. The Arabic text prevails, and a lawyer should read it before a dispute goes further.

The executive regulations of the Consumer Protection Law (Federal Law No. 15 of 2020) add two points, as commentators summarise them. Work supplied in phases should come with a payment schedule tied to the completion of each phase. Where a service falls short, the consumer can ask for it to be redone correctly as the contract describes, or for a refund.

Not ordered yet: what the order has to say

Every check above needs something written to compare against. Before paying a deposit, get these into the drawing or the quote:

• A scaled drawing with internal dimensions, and a tolerance you both accept on the sizes that have to fit, for example ±2 mm.
• Board type, grade and thickness for carcass, shelves and back, with the emission class.
• The finish: lacquer type, sheen, colour reference and number of coats.
• Hardware by brand and model: hinges, runners, lift-up fittings, handles.
• Edge band material and thickness.
• Wall fixings, and who confirms the wall type before installation.
• Installation scope: levelling, fixing, silicone, taking the packaging away.
• Payments staged against sign-off, with the balance due after a signed acceptance and snag list.

Pay a workshop licensed in mainland Dubai against a proper invoice. Dubai's Department of Economy and Tourism takes consumer complaints through consumerrights.ae and the Dubai Consumer app against the businesses it licenses, and the invoice is the first document a complaint needs.

A short internal size or an unnamed board gets harder to argue with every month: once the balance is paid and a summer has moved the timber, the workshop can blame the room. Everlook connects you with licensed UAE custom furniture makers, with verified credentials and reviews from Dubai customers; send each one the same drawing and specification, and the quotes will describe the same piece.

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