Some quality issues and difficult assembly, but final product looks nice and seems quite functional
Rating this product is difficult for me. The final product looks nice enough and works perfectly in the space we purchased it for, my daughter loves it, but the overall quality of the pre-fab panels are quite poor and the instructions, well, they are easily the worst Ive ever seen and miss out some key information that could really help.
To give some context, Ive assembled dozens of this type of furniture and it took my about 2 hours to put this together, which isnt too bad really, but a lot of that time was wasted due to poor instructions. For example, the bags of parts are labeled with letters, and the instructions on one of the first steps specified that I needed 16 pcs of the screws from the bag labeled I, except there was no bag I. After spending some time looking I eventually realized that bag B was also labeled as having the same size screws and sure enough, it was enough to cover both the B and I use cases. This only took a couple of minutes to figure out, but there were just so many things like this.
Another issue was with the assembly of the drawer rails. Its so much easier to put the rails on BEFORE you assemble the base together, but the instructions would have you do this after, which means your sticking your arm and trying to do things without really being able to see. Certainly doable, but I can see how it would be frustrating for some people. I was lucky to notice this and put the rails on before I assembled, but little things like that are just annoying.
In some cases panels can be assembled in two different directions but the drawings in the instructions only show the holes that this step uses, so you can put it together and then have to redo it. I also had problems with some holes stripping out way to easy. I fixed this with a little glue to make sure the screws would stay in place, but it just speaks to the poor quality of the materials. Ive never experienced this problem with all the other pre-fab furniture Ive assembled over the years.
Summary: I didnt find it overly difficult to assemble, but it was probably 50% harder than it could have been with better instructions, slightly higher quality materials, and clearly/properly labeled parts per-step, and Ive assembled quite a number of similar products that were better at all of these.
That being said, we shopped quite a bit for a stand, and the others of similar size and style were quite a bit more expensive, and, in the end, the final, assembled product still looks quite nice and seems solid enough and Im sure it will work well for its intended purpose for many years to come, so I decided on 4 stars overall.
Some quality issues and difficult assembly, but final product looks nice and seems quite functional
Rating this product is difficult for me. The final product looks nice enough and works perfectly in the space we purchased it for, my daughter loves it, but the overall quality of the pre-fab panels are quite poor and the instructions, well, they are easily the worst Ive ever seen and miss out some key information that could really help. To give some context, Ive assembled dozens of this type of furniture and it took my about 2 hours to put this together, which isnt too bad really, but a lot of that time was wasted due to poor instructions. For example, the bags of parts are labeled with letters, and the instructions on one of the first steps specified that I needed 16 pcs of the screws from the bag labeled I, except there was no bag I. After spending some time looking I eventually realized that bag B was also labeled as having the same size screws and sure enough, it was enough to cover both the B and I use cases. This only took a couple of minutes to figure out, but there were just so many things like this. Another issue was with the assembly of the drawer rails. Its so much easier to put the rails on BEFORE you assemble the base together, but the instructions would have you do this after, which means your sticking your arm and trying to do things without really being able to see. Certainly doable, but I can see how it would be frustrating for some people. I was lucky to notice this and put the rails on before I assembled, but little things like that are just annoying. In some cases panels can be assembled in two different directions but the drawings in the instructions only show the holes that this step uses, so you can put it together and then have to redo it. I also had problems with some holes stripping out way to easy. I fixed this with a little glue to make sure the screws would stay in place, but it just speaks to the poor quality of the materials. Ive never experienced this problem with all the other pre-fab furniture Ive assembled over the years. Summary: I didnt find it overly difficult to assemble, but it was probably 50% harder than it could have been with better instructions, slightly higher quality materials, and clearly/properly labeled parts per-step, and Ive assembled quite a number of similar products that were better at all of these. That being said, we shopped quite a bit for a stand, and the others of similar size and style were quite a bit more expensive, and, in the end, the final, assembled product still looks quite nice and seems solid enough and Im sure it will work well for its intended purpose for many years to come, so I decided on 4 stars overall.