What families say after the work is done

We used the Records Consolidation service after my father passed away. Papers were in three different places — some at the family home, some at my uncle's, some in a storage unit nobody had opened in years. Vellum Row gathered everything, produced a clear index, and returned it all in proper folders. The process took about nine weeks in our case. What mattered most was knowing, finally, what documents the family actually held.

My mother had kept detailed records but in her own system that nobody else quite understood. After she passed, we needed the archive to make sense to the rest of the family. The custodianship programme has been the right arrangement — quarterly meetings, updates when new papers arrive, and now everyone knows how to navigate the index. It is a practical thing, not dramatic, but it has removed a source of ongoing uncertainty.

We commissioned the heirloom catalogue for my grandmother's effects — furniture, textiles, some silver pieces, and quite a few items whose history only she knew. The catalogue took about ten days and the photographs are considerably better than we would have managed ourselves. The condition notes were helpful, though for some items we had to follow up separately to understand the descriptions. Generally a clean, careful piece of work.

The copy sets were what made the Records Consolidation engagement worth it for us. We had been going back and forth with the land office for several months and could not always locate the specific documents being requested. Vellum Row prepared copies in the formats that the office accepted, and we submitted them ourselves. That side of the work alone saved a significant amount of time.

I was initially uncertain whether the Custodianship Programme was the right scale of commitment. We discussed what the programme actually involves at the initial meeting, and the quarterly structure made more sense once we understood it. A year in, it has become a regular point for the family to review where things stand. The end-of-year report last December was more thorough than we expected.

We are based in Miri but my family's estate papers are mostly in Kuching. Coordinating remotely was easier than I expected — the Vellum Row team communicated clearly about what they needed from us and when. The preparation log that arrived with the final handover gave us a precise account of which documents had been handled. I had not thought to ask for that level of detail but it was useful to have.