John Louis Home Deluxe 16-Inch Deep Closet Shelving System

My husband and I are experienced do-it-yourselfers. This left us in a bit of a conundrum. We didn't want to buy the melamine stuff at Home Depot or Lowe's it's better than it used to be, but still pretty cheap looking. But we also didn't want to hire a custom place who wants to do it all themselves (at quite the cost) since we could do most of it ourselves. Nor did we want to go with one of the cabinet companies (like American Woodmark or Kraftmaid they make kitchen and bath cabinets, but also have closet options), because that would also be more expensive than we wanted.

We came across this John Louis Home solution originally on the Costco website. Costco sells a complete kit which includes the standard kit as shown here, plus a package of 2 extra tower shelves, 3 8" drawers, and 2 6" drawers. Target.com sells individual components in addition to kits, so we purchased from both places. This seemed like the only available middle-ground: better quality, with some configuration options, but not custom and not top-of-the-line (especially in price). So we ended up buying enough components to fill our fairly large master closet plus two other bedroom closets.

All-told, we installed 4 of the 16" towers with drawers, 2 of the 12" towers with shelves only, plus the connecting shelves and bars. We also installed some extra stand-alone shelves in an alcove in our master closet.

Our review of this suite of products is very mixed. There are some good and some not so good aspects of this system.

The good:

It is solid wood, which gives it a sense of quality and sturdiness

The drawer glides are the type with ball-bearings and full-extension capability. It's really nice to be able to open the drawers all the way and the ball-bearings make for a very smooth glide

As other reviewers here and at Target.com have mentioned, the finished product really does look good

The instructions are pretty clear the install as documented is time-consuming, but accurate and easy to follow

The packaging is quite good. Although most of the boxes sustained some shipping damage, with one very small exception, all the contents were in perfect condition when opened

The John Louis customer service was really good. One of the drawers was missing a cam bolt and none of the others had extras, so I called their 800 number to request a replacement. I got directly to a human without a maze of phone selections, and she was very friendly and professional. She UPSed replacement parts to me right away.

Assembling the drawers is easy.

The not so good and the bad:

Although the drawer glides are smooth, they are also somewhat stiff you can't just nudge a drawer closed you have to push it all the way in.

The screws provided aren't of very good quality they strip pretty easily

The manufacturing is somewhat careless. There are places where the wood was damaged in the fabrication process. They patched those areas with wood filler and stained over. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad thing, but the patch jobs were fairly sloppy. I also had one drawer part with the cam bolt holes mis-drilled, and another drawer part with the track guides on a diagonal, instead of straight across

Installing the drawers is very tedious. Although the tracks go into specified places in the towers (the 16" deep ones), the drawers don't have pre-drilled holes for their half of the tracks just guidelines, which sometimes are right on, and other times aren't at all close

The ugly:

The installation method is unnecessarily complicated, and in our opinion not structurally sound. The towers themselves are quite heavy, especially with drawers. And yet the towers are held to the wall by just 6 thin, 1/2" screws, placed very close to the edge of the wood. The whole thing is also supposed to be supported in the top shelf, which doesn't make sense. We actually ended up using the materials but completely re-engineering the installation process. What we did is much more solid and faster. I would not feel comfortable installing the units as prescribed. I think within a few years (if not sooner) most installations would loosen or have some other structural failure.

Now that it's all done, and looking back, we would still do this again for two reasons (1) we have the expertise to deal with the challenges, and (2) it's still the only option in this class. If there were other options, we'd probably explore those, but there aren't at the moment.

My system (same as here, but honey finish) looks good, but before buying, you should know two things:

1. Unless you get really lucky, you are likely to need a fair amount of experience in rough carpentry to make these systems work in your space. We had to do a fair amount of sawing of wood and metal poles. The hanging hardware requires one-sixteenth-inch precision -not an easy goal in an older home with less-than-square walls. My wife and I are experienced do-it-yourselfers, and needed that experience to come up with a good solution.

2. The wood looks good, but it is really soft and splits along the grain easily. I would not recommend this system for a kid's room. During the installation, we had to take care in putting in screws.

On the plus side, the finish looks good, and I really like the hanger-bar system, which allows free movement of the clothes past the supports.

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Purchased (2) of the Premier version of this system which comes with 12 inch towers to do a 15ft by 7 ft walk in closet. After designing for the most efficient utilization of space, found I had to add two more 16" towers and (4) 2 pack shelves for the back wall and to get my shoes into the tower.I switched the 16 inch towers to one side of the room and place the 12 inch towers (for shoes) on the reverse side of the room. That alone cost another $500. Can you believe that the shelf system 2 pack does NOT come with the pins to attach to the towers? Even though you spend $60 for 4 ft of pre-cut russian pine shelf kit. These bozo's have priced out that you must be nickled & dimed for every shelf pin, bracket or metal attachment at around $ 1.00 a piece when you buy it from one of their dealers. The company itself doesn't sell it in bulk and their dealers are up on Ebay with ads trying to hawk a 4 pack for 4.00 + 8.00

Shipping & handling for a total cost of $12 for four shelf brackets.

What a rip off! After you have spent over $1,000 in 2 closet systems and shelf parts it should at least come with the required shelf pins & brackets.

Plus you can't even get these parts online at Home Depot or Target online.. you are forced back through the John Louis dealer system for these parts. With the economy the way it is I have seen 2 dealers who have gone out of business in my state so I am forced to shop OUT of state & incur a delivery charge for these parts. Not happy.

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Rough finish quality, they use an extremely soft wood that you can score even with your fingernail. I think after a year of use in the kids' closets, these would look like trash. Imperfections in wood filled with putty that doesn't stain and blend with the wood. Even cross slats are often not parallel with each other! Side panels are often warped making drawer operation (if you plan on using drawers) very difficult. The slots for shelves on the vertical pieces look like they were carved with a kitchen knife by a five year old, sometimes these slots are not even from left to right, making the shelves crooked.

Hardware quality varies from mediocre to abysmal: screw heads missing screwdriver slots, brackets that are rusty coming out of the plastic bag, wall anchors cast from plastic, but the casting halves never exactly match, making these a real bear to screw into drywall. I ended up throwing away most of the supplied hardware and buying them new from Lowe's.

Packaging is also very substandard, CHECK PACKAGE FOR DAMAGE BEFORE ACCEPTING FROM UPS!!! Small divots in the outer box translates to broken or cracked wood inside. The thin carton does a poor job protecting the wood inside.

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For less than $2K, I optimized my: two MBR walk-in closets, two guest closets, one office closet, laundry room, linen closet, and coat closet. I'll do the same for basement for not much more.

Now I have tons of storage for all my stuff. Yeah it takes a little bit of work, but it really is worth it. If you are going to buy the wire closet from Home Depot, you had might as well buy a circle saw, and good dry wall anchors, because the work will be about the same, but the results are a thousand times betterlooks like a Macy's or a Nordstrom display case instead of a Walmart.

The deluxe systems only worked for the walk-in closets, I put standard shelving everywhere else. I'd start with the standard closet, and see if you like it.

So in addition to the kit, you also need a few hundred dollars more to buy a good circle saw and blade, carpenters square, level, pencils, painters tape, clamps, good dry wall anchors (togglers), measuring tape, and stud finder, and 2" pipe cutter if you don't already have them.

Then go to a closet website to design it before you start to cut. After the first closet the rest will be easy.

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