Purchased two of these for placement in an AV closet holding media rack for home theater room. Packed well for shipment, the units arrived in good shape despite the delivery handlers' best efforts to wreck them. As others have noted, the dozens and dozens of pieces arrive finely coated with copious amounts of sawdust. Not wanting to generate a cloud of sawdust next to my AV gear, I wiped down each piece as I removed it from the box. However, given the magical static-electric properties of both the sawdust and the vinyl lined pieces, wiping them with a dry cloth just re-arranges each sawdust particle instead of removing them. You'll need to wipe these down with a swifter, then with a damp cloth to really remove everything.
Next, assembly was straightforward. The instructions were very iconic, though. A few words would have been nice to clarify things, but, consider it a visio-spatial skills test. The four vertical members look alike, as well as the top and bottom, so careful attention must be paid to the location of the pre-drilled holes and their relation to their front/back, top/bottom orientation. Everything fits with dowels and screws, though the precision of the hole line-up when inserting the front trim isn't very good. Nothing a hammer and scrap wood can't overcome.
Mounting is easy with a notched strip and matching strip for the wall. Given the heft of the unit itself plus the weight of the media, drilling into studs is essential. The width of the strip pretty much dictates that you'll only hit two studs, however. In hindsight, adding a drywall mount or two in addition wouldn't hurt, but I just hung with two large 1/4" x 3" wood screws driven into the studs, and I'm too lazy to take everything off now to add more screws.
The shelves are, of course, adjustable. I use one for CD media, and the other DVD media and they look fine.
Now the complaints. First, the vinyl covering must be vapor-sputtered on, as it is microscopically thin. Thus, is damaged by just looking at one spot for too long. Luckily, black magic marker covers the damage. Next, given how much money the manufacturer saved by the thickness of the covering, they could have had the decency to cover the BOTTOMS of all the shelves. Instead, they are a lovely MDF-tan color. Solution, mount the rack low and don't look at it using an upward gaze.
All-in-all, a decent media rack for a decent price when you factor in free shipping. Would I buy these again? Yes. Would I put them somewhere else other than in a closet? Probably not.
This shelf is ridiculously easy to assemble. The first and last assembly steps were the most difficult in my opinion. Hanging on the wall was a breeze just needed some good wood screws, a level and a drill. Also, the backing is high quality and the finished product looks quite solid and professional.
The cons are that this thing arrived with a lot of sawdust in the box though this is not totally unexpected and not something that can't be easily cleaned off. Also, I am concerned about mounting this thing using only the supplied wall bracket. I recommend going to the hardware store and picking up a 1" thick solid wood board and adding it to the back of the shelf. Once the cabinet is hung, drive some additional screws into the studs through this board. It's just me, but you can never have too much support especially when the safety of your family or your media collection is at stake. Also, I don't recommend using a screwgun to assemble the cabinet, as you run the risk of stripping out the screws due to the particle board nature of the wood. There's a lot of weight hanging on two pieces of particle board and 4 screws.
Other thoughts: This is a high quality, thick hard pressed particle board backing. It is quite solid. I will be buying another one of these.
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This storage wall unit is delivered in pieces for you to assemble so be prepared to build it. It is well packed and designed. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. No nails are required. Some screws and dowels are included to assemble it. What really impressed me is just how good it looks when you're done. It comes with a great wall mount design and actually looks alot more expensive than it is. A great value.
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I won't duplicate all the other reviews, except to confirm that I'm very happy with the product. It's attractive, solid, and is exactly what I expected, based on the reviews I read.
A couple assembly tips that might be helpful. First, based on the reviews, I planned to spray paint the bottoms of the 12 shelves before I assembled the rack. Worked great and I recommend doing the same. Took me about 15 minutes up front to spray them (about 1 hour of drying time). Well worth it.
Second, be careful about assembling things backwards. There are a few things that can just as easily be assembled backwards as properly. Make sure the vertical support pieces are assembled with the dowel holes toward the front (they can be assembled either way, and if you make a mistake, you'll have to go back and undo it). The dowel holes are for the trim pieces later on. The horizontal trim pieces can also be put in backwards (there is thin seam on the back side), and once installed, are probably not to easy to uninstall (the dowels fit snug as you'd want). And finally, the back brace that's becomes part of the wall mount can also be installed backwards just as easily as correctly. Just be careful.
And of course, with the wall mount, I of course recommend, as the directions state, finding a couple wall studs to anchor the wall mount to. But I used a couple extra wall anchors (rated at 75lbs each) just in case.
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The Prepac CD cabinet looks great, is very sturdy, and holds everything I have. The only minor negative is that the side molding is wide to the point it covers the first cd or two that are at the edge of the cabinet. Otherwise a great product.
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I have eight sets of these around, and they are great. No need to put them together...just unfold and lock. They are very strong, and move anywhere...just fold back up...move...and unfold where needed.
