****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
There are alot of IKEA copy cats out there. This style of drawer system mimics the IKEA Alex series of drawers. I would have gone with IKEA since I have their drawers in my office but I was looking for a taller set of drawers with a few large drawers. This fit the need and style. When it arrived I should have known that it wouldn't be like IKEA. IKEA isn't great either with alot of particle board usage but they are well made and heavy duty. The hardware is high quality. This set of drawers seem to have been made to push to the edge such that it's just above the acceptable quality bar, literally. Yes, you can say that it's "real" wood but it's super soft wood, not a hard wood. Of course the latter would drive up the cost. I know realized that IKEA particle board wood is much stronger and sturdier than the "real" wood that this came with. So with soft wood there are caveats. It's much easier to break or crack. To assemble there will be a need to hammer or preferably rubber mallet pieces together. In fact, I highly recommend only using a rubber mallet vs. hammer as often as possible. However, you have to use the hammer as you have a ton of tiny nails to deal with. One wrong hit with the hammer and you can pretty much break a piece of the wood. The instructions are TERRIBLE!! And as a result, EXPECT to make a few mistakes. I made at least 3 or more. Luckily, none were so bad that I ruined it. I will say the margin for error here in assembly is very narrow. One wrong thing can really mess the whole thing up. While the wood panels for the sides and top are pretty solid, the drawers are soft wood, and there is not bottom panel. It's left open. The other thing I did not like was the use of plastic rails for the drawer slides. These had to be malleted in gently. IKEA came with solid metal rails for smooth, sturdy sliding action. The drawers for this do not slide out smooth. I also question how much weight it can handle. Luckily I have no plans to put heavy items in the drawers. I question the durability and it's already showing some dings and dents, not sure how since it just sits there. The paint job is sub par both in application (maybe it's a rustic look with the faded areas?) and quality of paint (cheapest possible).I probably wouldn't buy this again. I may end up getting IKEA again. But for now it works.TIP!!!! - Make sure you save enough of the tiny nails for your drawers. You need 2 per drawer. DON'T USE all of the nails for the back panel.I bought this for my wife's watercolor supplies. The completed cart is great and does exactly what she needs. The drawers are easy to open and spacious enough for her supplies and art books.The quality of the materials is fine and I didn't notice any flaws in the paint. I only had one issue where inserting the screw in the drawer front broke the wood off a little on the inside, but I was able to fix it with some wood glue.The construction was a pain. Some pieces were not pre-drilled or had to be held in place free-hand. Particularly, the drawers where the side panels needed to be attached in the right spot (sides are pre-drilled, fronts are not) for the drawer bottom panel to be able to slide in correctly, or the drawer backs where the back panel does not lock in or fit against a corner. You just need to hold the loose piece in the correct position between the two sides while attaching it. I highly recommend having a 2nd person for constructing this.One thing I did like about the construction was that uses just screws and dowels and none of those little round lock pieces like Ikea uses (Connecter Cam Locks?), but that is just my personal preference.I'll start by saying I have assembled a wide variety of flat pack furniture, so I know what I'm doing and I have a seen a lot of design options to compare against. This is by far the worst design I have ever encountered, at every single part. I think whoever designed this must have never seen a drawer or cabinet design before. This is like the first college project for a SCAD degree where the student didn't do the reading beforehand but still managed to come up with something semi functional.Most of it is held together with pocket screws, which are not strong enough for this purpose. There are no pilot holes for all the other screws (and there's about 30 of these, which must be lined up very precisely), so that's on you to manage.If this cost $50 instead of $150 I would find it almost forgivable, but at its current price it's a complete ripoff. There are loads of similar items in this price point, and I can't imagine one worse than this. Statistically speaking, any other choice is bound to be an improvement.I got this mostly assembled, but finally decided it wasn't worth the effort and I would rather trash this and buy something else. The cheap choices for the drawer slides (plastic bars and barely sanded groves in the sides of the drawers) means it will never operate well or hold much weight. It's not worth the money, time, or effort.If you do decide to get this, buy yourself some wood glue and corner clamps if you don't have them already, and use a drill to add the many, many missing pilot holes so that you don't have to eyeball how things go together, hold it together, and screw into solid wood all at once.This product is being used for holding sewing supplies. The multiple drawers are excellent in size for this. For the money, the product is quite decent. Assembling it wasn't very difficult, but it could have been made easier with parts of the instructions. You have to look very carefully to make sure you are assembling it correctly. Some of the differences are subtle and could be pointed out in the instructions. Also, having a few spare screws and nails would be useful. I found a couple of bad ones but I have similar in my own stock.I also added dividers to several of the drawers to more easily keep like spools of thread sorted. Details are in the photos.I’m so happy I finally bought this cabinet for my Office/Crafts room. It’s helped me get organized and it so well made and also beautiful. Great Buy. You won’t be sorry.It was easy to assemble and it is made of real wood..and very sturdy. Also easy to move around
