I guess if you are just looking for a cheap place to park your microwave, to free up kitchen counter space, then you have found it. I was a little worried when the package arrived, as it honestly looked like it had been run over by a truck. It was marked "damaged" and "resealed". Had about ten yards of tape on it, and it was still falling apart. Turns out, that was the Amazon box. Amazon had put the cart box into a larger box, with no filling. SO the outer box got squashed pretty badly. The cart box itself was OK, no damage that I could see. After unpacking , there appeared to be no damaged parts, either. SO far so good... Assembly was well, not as smooth as it should have been. The directions clearly state do NOT use a drill (as a screwdriver) to assemble the microwave card. What is not stated in the directions, is that you probably shouldn't assemble this thing by HAND, either. I spent a long time hand-tightening each bolt so that it was firm, but not TOO firm. In the process, I managed to damage several connectors. There are pre-positioned inserts that the bolts will attach to. The problem is, the inserts get pulled OUT by the bolts. This causes the area around the inserts to get damaged / warped. It can also cause the table top to be misaligned. Knowing what I know now, I probably would have had better luck assembling this cart with a cordless drill, ironically. I can certainly understand why they would warn you to NOT use the drill to tighten the bolts. If you set the drill incorrectly, you could easily destroy this cart with the drill. But my electric drill has an adjustable clutch. If I set the clutch around 2 or 3 (on a scale of 1 to 30) it would have nicely seated all these bolts without pulling out the pre-installed inserts, I believe. So how did I manage to mess the job up doing it by hand? Well, the bolts all start at a very high torque setting. You are putting a LOT of pressure on the little wrench (included) to get the bolts to move at all. So when the bolts are pulling too hard (pulling the inserts out) you don't necessarily notice that right away, even if you are tightening the bolts by hand. But if I'd set the clutch on my electric drill correctly, I think the drill would have been more sensitive to the subtle change in resistance to torque.... Or in other words, while tightening the bolt, there is no obvious "stop here" point. If the normal resistance level is 8, then you are done when it suddenly jumps to 8.5. Will you feel that in your hand? Maybe not. As the bolt gets deeper, you EXPECT the resistance to increase a little. You don't stop tightening just because it's a LITTLE bit harder to turn. That's why I kept going past the point where the bolt was done, and that is how the connectors got damaged. What could they do differently? Well, I assembled a printer stand recently where the corner posts pass through the shelves and are held in place by friction connectors. That assembly didn't go 100% smoothly either, due to bad directions included with the printer stand. However, once I figured out how to assemble it...it was a much easier job to assemble and the finished product is totally undamaged and VERY sturdy. Why am I mentioning my printer stand? Because if you look at the printer stand and the microwave cart, they are virtually identical in terms of size and shape and intended use. They both have three shelves. They are the same height. One of them says it is for a microwave, the other says it is for a printer. But I could easily swap them, and NOBODY would know the difference. That is, the microwave cart could be a printer stand, and the printer stand could be a microwave cart. My point is...I'm not liking the way this microwave cart was designed. You shouldn't be able to damage it simply by assembling it PROPERLY. I can understand the need to keep the cost down. But if the average guy will over-torque the connectors without realizing it...then the connectors themselves need to be re-imagined, somehow. I was able to do some after-assembly repair work to get the microwave cart set up pretty much according to factory specifications. After assembly, it looks good and is certainly sturdy enough to hold a good sized microwave. I don't think I'd buy this particular microwave cart again, though. If I needed a microwave cart, I'd probably buy the printer stand I compared it to. (!!!) Neither piece of furniture is perfect, but at least the printer stand can be assembled without damaging it during the assembly process. If you buy this, assemble it very carefully. It's nice enough for the price, but easily damaged simply by following the directions.
