Z-Line Deluxe Wood Lateral File Cabinet, 30", 2-Drawer, Letter/Legal Size, Espresso

Nice furniture, but some assy pbms

Great piece of office furniture & very stylish. We combined our office and guest room and are actually using this for double duty as a nightstand and it enabled us to get rid of...Read complete review

Great piece of office furniture & very stylish. We combined our office and guest room and are actually using this for double duty as a nightstand and it enabled us to get rid of our 2 ugly 2-drawer metal cabinets. Note that this if for hanging files only. The drawer bottoms are thin and only slightly engaged into grooves in the sides/back of the drawer. You can't put much if any weight on the bottom of the drawer itself or it will collapse. The hanging rails are very sturdy though. I have some binders that I stacked on the bottom of the drawer in my metal cabinet, but we got around that by buying some extra wide hanging folders (4-6 inches I think and they have a reinforced bottom) and that allowed us to hang the bulky/heavy items. Had a couple of minor assembly problems though.

Came packaged very well. Overall easy to assemble. Mostly dowels & glue and cam locks & studs, with a couple of actual screws thrown in the mix. Holes for the screws were all predrilled and the cam lock stud holes had a plastic insert so they were all easy to screw into place.

However, I broke a couple of the small cam locks on the drawers during assembly. I am used to doing a full 1/2 turn on cam locks and feeling a "click" as it snaps into place. I never got the click on any of the cam locks, but got close to a 1/2 turn on all of them. The large cam locks for the main frame were fine, but the small cam locks for the drawers are very thin/flimsy. I broke two of them while tighening them, and only had one spare in the bag. Also, the bottom of the hole for the cam lock in the drawer sidewall doesn't have much material left after they made the hole, so when I tightened some of the cam locks, they started to punch through the wall of the drawer, but my wife stopped me before they punctured through the finished side so it was still usable. Called Z-line directly and they shipped replacement cam locks free of charge and I had them in hand in 2 days or so. Only hitch was I had to make sure to pull the drawer apart right away and clean off all of the wet glue on the dowels and out of the holes w/ a screwdriver before it dried as I had already glued the dowels in place before torquing the cam locks.

Also, there was not enough glue included with the kit and it was very thick like maybe it was a little old. I used all of theirs, but also had to supplement with Elmers for the last 1/3 of the joints or so. Maybe when fresh it runs better and I wouldn't have used as much per hole, but to be safe make sure you have extra on hand.

One final tip, check twice before assembling the drawers to make sure the groove for the drawer bottom is aligned all the way around. The left and right side panels will go together on either side, but the groove for the drawer bottom will actually be on top if you get them mixed up. I was rushing a bit and almost glued/screwed one together with the wrong side pieces.

All in all, a good quality, stylish, sturdy piece of furniture and fairly easy to assemble. Just use caution when you are assembling the drawers, as you can break the cams and panels by overtorquing, and you'll be fine.