Sauder Palladia File Cabinet with 2 Drawers, Safety Mechanism, Lateral File Cabinet - Select Cherry Finish

Positives? Shipping: Too often over the years I have received furniture in boxes that look like they had been in a plane, boat, or car that crashed. There are huge holes torn in the boxes and tops missing. So it's no surprise to find the furniture inside has damage to corners, etc. That leads to wasted time getting replacements from the seller. Not so with this box from Sauder. Extra sturdy cardboard corner pieces protected the unit inside--so that everything was pristine when the box was opened. Assembly instructions. I have assembled many pieces of furniture over the years. Too often the instructions are poorly written, featuring illustrations that do little good. I had gotten so frustrated by this, that I had vowed not to buy any more furniture that needed assembly. Until I priced wood lateral file cabinets in local furniture stores. Yikes! The prices quoted made me faint. So I searched anew for something more reasonable in cost and hoped I could get it assembled. The instructions for this unit eased my fears. My daughter helped with the first stages of assembly, and both of us noted how the instructions walked us through the many steps ever-so-carefully. These instructions were obviously written by someone adept in English--someone who also had a sense of humor! Since the instructions covered so many pages, at various stages the writer suggested taking a well-deserved break, getting a beverage, or--at the end--congratulating yourself by writing a review. The illustrations were drawn with meticulous attention to detail. I have never--never assembled a unit that had such well-organized, written and illustrated instructions. Kudos to the technical writer! The unit itself is solid in construction and well-designed. It has a feature that only allows one cabinet drawer to be open at a time, so the unit won't tip over. The drawer glides are solid (good quality metal and not flimsy plastic). Plus the glides allow each drawer to open fully. So no more will I scrape my hands trying to extract a file out of the back of a drawer. The cabinet is very attractive and will be a welcome-addition to the office I am setting up in my new home. Negatives? Assembly will take some time. This unit has extra decorative pieces which add to the assembly time. So budget your time accordingly and perhaps line up a friend or family member to help you. The unit is heavy--all press-board furniture is. So you may need a helper to get the box into the house and into the room where you want it. After it is assembled, you may need a helper to reposition it in your room. But, the positives far, far outweigh the negatives. Especially when I saw the finished product and thought, "This cost about 1/3 of the finished pieces I priced in furniture stores! $500 bucks saved? Hmm, I might reward myself with another German beverage, right after submitting this review."

First, this thing is very heavy because it is double-walled. Second, it took my wife and me almost 3 hours to assemble it. We have built a lot of furniture before and we are very anal about getting the needed tools ready (you really need a low-speed, electric, handheld screwdriver), setting up a workspace, locking up the dog, laying out and inventorying all the parts (we were missing one screw), etc. And there are a lot of parts, but they are labeled and individually bagged (keep them that way until you need them -- some screws are only an 1/8" different in length, and if you use the wrong one it can go through to the finished exterior, which you don't want to do). We did all that, followed the directions precisely, and watched the video in a few spots. For the most part, it all fit together as the instructions described. Not all the edges matched perfectly, so we used a black Sharpie pen to color a few of the spots that showed, which was fine. It was really nothing major, but we are anal. At the end, we put it into position and put in the bottom drawer, then tried to put in the top drawer. It would not close and was at a bit of an angle. We swapped drawers and realized that neither drawer would fit in the top. We spent 20 minutes trying to debug what had gone wrong without any luck. After three hours of careful work and it not working and it being way, way too heavy for us throw out without another hour of breaking it down, we were pretty unhappy. So we took photos and sent them to the manufacturer to ask for help. They responded the next business day with instructions for us to adjust the drawer side rails up or down slightly, which is a methodology not in the written instructions. So we tried that and it helped, but we still could not fully close the top drawer. One side still overlapped the edge by about 1/16" of an inch. I came up with the idea to insert a very thin washer between the side rail of the drawer that was sticking and the side wall the rail mounts on. It was tricky to do, but eventually found the right two washers and got them in place and the screws back in place and tried the drawer again. It closed by the narrowest of margins...you can not slide a piece of paper in the gap now between that drawer and the side wall, but it does close. Thankfully we were patient and careful and I had the right idea and the right parts to fix the misalignment. I doubt we'd buy it again if we had known beforehand what we were going to go through. In the end, it looks pretty nice and hopefully will hold up well. But it was a ton of work, and a lot of luck for it to come together.

Sauder gets an A+ from us for packaging, labeling of parts, clear, step-by-step instructions, and quality design and manufacturing! I had bought Sauder ready-to-assemble pieces over 20 years ago and I'm happy to report that Sauder still makes a high-quality product. The shipping box looked a little disheveled when it arrived, but the protective edges Sauder included on the box and the cushioning inside protected everything perfectly. The parts were ALL clearly labeled with letters and numbers that matched up with the instruction booklet. The different types of screws and connectors were pre-sorted, packed and labeled, and the step-by-step instructions have life-size pictures of the screws at every step to help ensure you use the right ones every time. Assembly was straightforward and only required screwdrivers, a hammer, some patience, an open space to work and a few hours of our time. The pieces and connectors all fit together perfectly. Assembly could be done by one "handy" person but I was happy to have my girlfriend's help with lining up the parts, turning a few screws and keeping me on-track. If you are new to ready-to-assemble or not handy with a screwdriver, maybe ask a more experienced friend for a helping hand. The finished cabinet is sturdy and looks great in our home office. We have the matching Sauder Palladia L-shaped desk on order. We know that will be a much bigger assembly job, but if it's as good as the file cabinet, it will be worth the effort.

When the product arrived, it looked like it had fallen off a truck at 80 mph on a very rough road. The box was retaped, had another customer's name on another label, and appeared to be a returned item. That was the impression before even moving or opening the box. The first thing was to take a bunch of pictures and save the delivery video. The delivery was fine, but the box was something else, which got only worse after opening the box. The first prong of this review will be the product itself, which is not good quality. The cabinet is made with particle board with poor "cherry" looking laminate. The quality of the surfaces was poor, but it was difficult to tell if that was because of the perceived return of the item or just poor manufacturing. But, there were improperly drilled holes that broke through the side of the hole, poorly attached laminate, and other issues that make it an inferior product. There were no instructions in the box, now assembly hardware, blue painter's tape on things, and things were just kind of flopping around in the box, presumably due to the return of the item. I do not recommend this product as it appears to be cheaply made. Now on to prong #2. Again, I assume this was a returned item and not a good product. I would not expect to pay over $200 for a particle board product. Anyway, the second prong of this review is that someone at Amazon had the audacity to ship the item as new in the condition it was in. It was obvious that the box had been stuffed with the parts that were returned, and there was obviously something very wrong with it without even opening the box. I am completely baffled that something like this could happen. Somebody at some point in the return process and re-shipping process must have seen this thing and thought it wasn't right. I finally figured out how to get hold of someone at Amazon with this problem and they were kind enough to refund my money and said I could do whatever I wanted with the product. I then opened the box and saw what a mess this thing was. Now I have to find some way to get rid of this unassembled piece of junk.

I'm very pleased with the quality and look of this cabinet. I purchased 2 of these and may purchase another one if I need the space. To clarify all of the negative feedback I have 3 observations: 1. The construction took me less than 2.5 hours and that included moving the parts upstairs in pieces because the delivery weight is 125lbs. I didn't rush and it was not complicated at all my. Directions were clear and only required a few tools. 2. The quality of this file cabinet is exceptional. Yes, it is a pressed wood piece, but the heavy duty nature of the unit is excellent. I compared this to full wood units that are nearly triple the price. For the cost, this lateral file cabinet is a much better deal and in my opinion a great value. For those who complain about the quality, I suggest you compare the price. 3. As far as the drawers not lining up, it only took 5 minutes to loosen the screws on the brackets on the front of the drawer, slide the drawer into a better place, and tighten the screws. Drawers are perfect now. Overall I love the file cabinet and was able to for the entire contents of a 4 drawer standard cabinet plus have space to spare. I seriously might purchase 1 or 2 more.

Decent quality for not being wood but you basically need an engineering degree to assemble..it took my contractor husband 3 hours to assemble 1 of these . Extreamly heavy too

After reading several reviews I was reluctant to purchase the Sauder Palladia lateral cabinet but am now very glad I did. Primarily reviewer concerns appeared to be centered around poor packaging causing damage in shipping, terrible assembly instructions, and poor quality once assembled. I found none of this to be true with my purchase. While the shipping box was slightly torn by UPS, the contents were adequately packed and protected so that none of the parts experienced any damage during shipping. Admittedly the assembly instructions could have been a bit more detailed, but if you've ever assembled any other modular furniture these instructions are by far Not the worst I've ever seen. Total assembly time took about 2 1/2 hours which I think is typical for an item such as this. And once assembled it's a fine looking piece of Modular furniture for $200 and change. Yes, you'll be disappointed if you're expecting something of the quality from a fine-furniture manufacturer such as Drexel, but you'll never find a Drexel file cabinet for $200. That said, my basis for comparison is with the Saunder Heritage Hill lateral file cabinet, also found on Amazon, and which I purchased 6-7 years ago for about $25 less than the Palladia. The difference between the two is significant with the Palladia being of much, much higher quality. The sides, top, base and drawers of the Palladia are much thicker, sturdier and better finished than those of the Heritage Hill and is well worth the $25 difference in price. As a matter of fact the Heritage Hill became wobbly and flimsy within 3-4 years of use, and the top began to sag after a few years of the Officejet printer sitting on top of it. But because of the sturdiness, better quality of materials and better finish of the Palladia I don't expect the same to happen with it. Bottom line I am very, very pleased with my purchase of the Palladia and definitely recommend it. Based on my experience with similar file cabinets in this price point of $200-$225 you can't beat it.

Can take a bit to assemble but it is sturdy and very pretty. I'm a retired engineer and shop teacher, so I'm comfortable with tools. The instructions are well done with each step clearly labelling what hardware should be used and how many of each. The parts are all clearly labeled, especially the hardware which has separate plastic pockets for each type, clearly labelled. Even so, the first one I did took over three hours, and the second about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Some comments on the instructions: Step 5 & 6 threw me for a loop but they really DO want you to set up everything in those two holes (step 5), add the safety track, and then abandon the holes and put it into the groove (step 6). Keep a careful eye on which way you should attach the slides in Step 7 as it's easy to get confused. A change I would make is I would do steps 10-16 with the unit on its top (as it is in step 9) so you are not fighting gravity, though it should work either way. I put a blanket on the floor to protect the top while I did that. The only reason I took a star away is that I'm not thrilled with how the drawer fronts are attached. Time will tell if it's really a problem. To get the drawers lined up evenly in the space can be a little fussy. You have to slightly loosen the four screws going through the plastic drawer front supports, adjust it up or down and then tighten them up again. I'm very happy with how solid the piece is, and it looks great. I hope my suggestions on the instructions help.