Upgrading the fretboard of the Harley Benton

Today's operation, while quite time consuming, is by far the most significant in terms of improving the overall performance of the guitar. You remember that already upon opening the box, I had noticed that the surface of the rosewood fretboard was very obivously not up to standard:

The rosewood looks very raw, and the frets look very tarnished as well.

It did look pretty bad, and it felt bad too. The oxyded frets and the poorly sanded fretboard have a rasping effect on the strings whenever you try to apply vibrato or bends. As a result, these - quite essential - techniques not only become very uncomfortable and inaccurate to perform, but they also generate a lot of parasite noise as the string rasps against the raw surfaces. That, very clearly, put this guitar several leagues behind what I would call a decent instrument in terms of comfort and playability. And to be frank I had doubts whether I would be able to sort it out...