Good quality parts, but poor instructions and a couple of flaws.
1) First, the quality of the materials in this platform is quite good, as others have stated. This is real solid wood, and not crappy wood either. Its high quality in the sense that there are no knots, the grain is straight, and many (but not all) corners are rounded. It could use a little more sanding, and some ends are a bit rough, but its sufficient to use as is. It does need wiping off with a damp cloth, however. Theres a fair amount of sanding dust on the wood.
2) Very little of this is put together. Some dowels are already installed, and the holes are pre/drilled, but thats it. And some of the holes that are pre/drilled arent very well done in the sense that you WILL need a rubber mallet or something to hammer the clovis pins through. This makes it VERY difficult when you are trying to push a pin through three boards. Its hard enough just trying to line them up, but now the pin wont go through because the holes arent smoothly drilled out. I cant stress enough how little of this is pre/assembled. It comes in a box with a mountain of boards. It took two of us 1.5 hours to assemble this, with much of that time spent trying to make sense of their TERRIBLE directions.
3) The directions are atrocious. Its almost as if they were trying to make it difficult. In their drawings they leave out critical information, so youre forced to guess. For example, when you get to step 4 it is crucial to know that the dowels, which should have been illustrated in that drawing, should face UP, and the cut/outs should face down. But they left the dowels and the cutouts out of that illustration / they just drew a straight board! So you find yourself looking for a straight board that isnt even there, and when you figure out that they probably mean something else, you have no idea which direction it should go. Stupid. After assembling it, I can now see that it is possible to discern some of this based on other photos, but when youre sitting in front of a mountain of boards, and you have no idea what the finished product should to look like, its very difficult. And they do NOTHING to make it easier. In fact, they almost go out of their way to make it more difficult by leaving out critical details in the drawing when it would be SO easy to include those.
4) There are 16 wood screws in the surface, and the mattress will lay against those screws. However, they didnt counter sink those 16 pre/drilled holes, so you have screw heads sticking up that will be dragging across the bottom of your mattress. This is a design flaw that would have been easy to correct. I ended up installing carpet on top of the bed frame (and on top of those screw/heads). The carpet I used is thick and plush, so the screws I used to attach the carpet to the frame do not come in contact with the mattress. This serves two purposes: First, it covers the screw heads they should have counter/sunk. Second, it keeps the mattress from sliding all over (and it WILL slide around if you dont so something to prevent it).
All things considered, this is a good quality piece when finished, but they wasted our time and greatly raised our level of frustration with poor illustrations and by leaving out important information in their instructions, they didnt counter/sink 16 pre/drilled holes that should have been countersunk, some of the ends were pretty rough and should have been sanded a bit better, and they did a poor job of drilling the holes that the clovis pins pass through. Im knocking off two stars for the senseless and easy to correct sloppiness. This is a product that could easily be a 5 star item. The CEO needs to take one home and try to put it together.
Good quality parts, but poor instructions and a couple of flaws.
1) First, the quality of the materials in this platform is quite good, as others have stated. This is real solid wood, and not crappy wood either. Its high quality in the sense that there are no knots, the grain is straight, and many (but not all) corners are rounded. It could use a little more sanding, and some ends are a bit rough, but its sufficient to use as is. It does need wiping off with a damp cloth, however. Theres a fair amount of sanding dust on the wood. 2) Very little of this is put together. Some dowels are already installed, and the holes are pre/drilled, but thats it. And some of the holes that are pre/drilled arent very well done in the sense that you WILL need a rubber mallet or something to hammer the clovis pins through. This makes it VERY difficult when you are trying to push a pin through three boards. Its hard enough just trying to line them up, but now the pin wont go through because the holes arent smoothly drilled out. I cant stress enough how little of this is pre/assembled. It comes in a box with a mountain of boards. It took two of us 1.5 hours to assemble this, with much of that time spent trying to make sense of their TERRIBLE directions. 3) The directions are atrocious. Its almost as if they were trying to make it difficult. In their drawings they leave out critical information, so youre forced to guess. For example, when you get to step 4 it is crucial to know that the dowels, which should have been illustrated in that drawing, should face UP, and the cut/outs should face down. But they left the dowels and the cutouts out of that illustration / they just drew a straight board! So you find yourself looking for a straight board that isnt even there, and when you figure out that they probably mean something else, you have no idea which direction it should go. Stupid. After assembling it, I can now see that it is possible to discern some of this based on other photos, but when youre sitting in front of a mountain of boards, and you have no idea what the finished product should to look like, its very difficult. And they do NOTHING to make it easier. In fact, they almost go out of their way to make it more difficult by leaving out critical details in the drawing when it would be SO easy to include those. 4) There are 16 wood screws in the surface, and the mattress will lay against those screws. However, they didnt counter sink those 16 pre/drilled holes, so you have screw heads sticking up that will be dragging across the bottom of your mattress. This is a design flaw that would have been easy to correct. I ended up installing carpet on top of the bed frame (and on top of those screw/heads). The carpet I used is thick and plush, so the screws I used to attach the carpet to the frame do not come in contact with the mattress. This serves two purposes: First, it covers the screw heads they should have counter/sunk. Second, it keeps the mattress from sliding all over (and it WILL slide around if you dont so something to prevent it). All things considered, this is a good quality piece when finished, but they wasted our time and greatly raised our level of frustration with poor illustrations and by leaving out important information in their instructions, they didnt counter/sink 16 pre/drilled holes that should have been countersunk, some of the ends were pretty rough and should have been sanded a bit better, and they did a poor job of drilling the holes that the clovis pins pass through. Im knocking off two stars for the senseless and easy to correct sloppiness. This is a product that could easily be a 5 star item. The CEO needs to take one home and try to put it together.