Bought this unit to replace an old Ikea cabinet that didn't have as much shelf space. I'm not sure if the other reviews on this product come from a time when the price was much, much lower, or the build quality was much, much higher, but honestly the $300 Ikea cabinet we had was better than this thing. For starters—the unit is not 28" tall. It's just over 26". We actually counted on that, because 26" was the height we wanted. Other websites like Overstock and Wayfair had identical cabinets with different names with the correct height listed, so we chanced it. We obviously knew we weren't getting a $2k media console for ~$450+tax, but we at least assumed we'd be getting something of some kind of quality, whether it was ease-of-build, sturdiness, or something that looked nice at a distance, or at least up close. We got none of those. The unit was packaged well, every piece was intact with no structural damage, even after getting tossed around by Amazon. Still, the finish on the top of the unit had some gnarly gashes on it right out of the box. The bottom shelf (the one that would never be visible to anyone) was pristine. It seems dumb now, but at the time but we paid about $120 extra for the darker brown finish than what we would have paid for the lighter brown finish. As far as building the thing, nothing fit exactly. Other reviews are right, the directions are really not clear on what's the front or rear of each piece. Having read all those warnings, we scrutinized each piece before putting it into place, it was like a "spot the difference between these two pictures" exercise, with us looking for the tiniest speck on the instructions that represented an asymmetry to indicate a proper orientation. We managed to make it through without having to deconstruct and flip any pieces, but there were absolutely some moments were we had something in place and flipped it after noticing the instructions had ONE tiny hole represented where ours didn't. All of the cheap metal needed to be bent into place, exposing gaps elsewhere. Tightening stuff and actually putting it together went pretty smoothly, until we got to the rear panels. It was impossible to get proper leverage on any of the screws due to bad threading, cheap screws and poor design. The doors were a nightmare, see the tips I wrote below. The magnets designed to hold the doors closed are the cheapest craft store parts I've ever come across, and the screws to hold them in place are too wide for the holes they're meant for. They barely have enough strength to hold the doors shut. One of the metal cage doors had handle holes drilled a few mm off, which is not just an annoying thing to look at—you can't fully close the door with it off center like that, and there's nothing you can do to fix it, besides order a replacement part, which...see below. This build wasn't impossible like a lot of the reviews say, but there are a few tips for putting it together that I wish I'd had: -Look CLOSELY at the directions. The details on what makes the front of a part the front are extremely subtle, but they are depicted in the illustrations. It's usually something as small as a little dot on one side of the piece in the picture, which represents a hole that is super easy to miss in real life. -The rear panels can be flipped upside down if desired. This is particularly useful if you're going to be running cables from something in an upper or lower shelf. It's extremely silly that there aren't two ports per panel, because you essentially lose the ability to run cables to one shelf in the outer left or right with just a single port. -For the phillips head screws, use the largest driver head you can find. We thought it could be done with simply a phillips driver that fit securely, but the resistance offered by the poorly drilled holes made it impossible to tighten them. Until I switched to a larger bit, it was impossible to turn the screws in the holes, and even after getting a better tool, it required much, much more elbow-grease than I've ever had to exert when putting together something with pre-drilled holes. Maybe a powerful drill would have been better, but with the rear panels, there was no way to tighten the screws with that amount of resistance at that angle, regardless of what tool you use. The only reason it wasn't returned immediately was because repacking this thing would have been a nightmare, and it would feel terrible if it was one of those situations where Amazon says "ok we'll refund you, just throw it out." I contacted the manufacturer over five days ago about all of the above, and was instructed to file a part replacement request. Which I did, but then heard nothing back. I'm not even sure what parts I would request replacements for? Obviously the door with the incorrectly drilled holes, but are the rest of the screw holes supposed to be this poorly drilled? Are there different screws that should have come with this thing? Is there a better fitting door magnet? Would they replace the top of the unit that came with all those finish issues? Do I need new metal frame pieces because of how crooked the doors are no matter how many adjustments I make? I would have rather paid 2-3x the amount we paid for this unit for something of actual quality. For the price, you can absolutely find something better, and if you're looking for a product this bad you can definitely find something equivalent for less money. If there was a simple way to return this piece of trash, I would have done it. Skip this thing and buy something with a price that matches its quality. Edit: Amazon ended up refunding me for this thing, so I can’t be mad about the price, but I’m back to square one after all of the above, and the process I went through with manufacturer, see below. It took the manufacturer about two weeks to respond to my parts request. While the build quality made the entire thing bad and janky, it was still usable. The misaligned door handle, however, made the door non-functional. That part was unavailable and would take an extended period to ship, so they offered to replace the entire unit. A seemingly nice offer, until you consider what could go wrong with the second unit, that I’d have to build the whole thing again to find out what’d gone wrong, and that I’d need to do something with the “defective” unit. I opted to wait for the the door to be available rather than risk any more frustration. It took a few more weeks for the door to show up. The good news: the handle was properly drilled. The bad news: the hinge was misaligned, so the door is still crooked. There is no way to guarantee that this product will ever be what you want it to be. Anyone who got lucky on the first try, that’s awesome. I gave up and now just have a crooked cabinet door. Thankful for the Amazon refund but ultimately it feels bad—someone has to pay for it.
