Product Description

The Deluxe closet system brings you closet organization that is built for durability and visual appeal. This closet system features closet shelves made from beautiful 100% wood. Available in maple and mahogany finishes, the closet organization system is elegant and refined while providing you with durable closet organization. All shelves measure 16" deep and the system includes multiple components to organize your bedroom closet. HANGERS NOT INCLUDED.  #106577 & #106578 Closet Shelf System: Three 16" x 24" shelves One 16" x 48" shelf Two 16" x 72" shelves 72" Vertical Tower Six Angle Brackets Three Metal Wardrobe Bars Six Metal J-Hooks #107677 & #107678 Additional Shelves Kit includes two additional adjustable shelves for use with tower portion of the Closet Shelf System. Eight shelf pins included. #107679 & #107680 Door Kit Door kit includes two doors to be used on the tower portion of the Closet Shelf System. The doors have glass doors and decorative beveled edging. Four hinges and all fasteners included. #107681 & #107682 6"H Drawer Kit 6"H Drawer kit includes one short drawer to be used on the tower. All hardware and fasteners included. #107683 & #107684 8"H Drawer Kit 8"H Drawer kit includes one short drawer to be used on the tower. All hardware and fasteners included. #137141 & #137142 10"H Drawer Kit 10"H Drawer kit includes one drawer to be used"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34350 in Home Improvement
• Size: Deluxe
• Color: Red Mahogany
• Brand: John Louis Home
• Model: JLH-526
• Dimensions: .0" h x 16.00" w x .0" l,

Features

• 100% solid wood
• Fits up to a 10-foot closet
• Ventilated for air flow
• Everything you need in one box
• Multiple configuration options to customize to meet your needs with step-by-step instructions

From the Manufacturer
John Louis Home introduces the next generation of Solid Wood Closets. Designed with versatility in mind, John Louis has created a line of products that take the best in features and functionality and fused them together into what we like to call affordable elegance. We use 100 percent solid metal hardware with a satin nickel finish thus making a decorative element out of a functional part. Whether in a bedroom, pantry, linen, laundry room or foyer closet, it's this quality and attention to detail that makes John Louis Home the finishing touch to any room. Designing a John Louis closet is simple. No matter your skill level, from novice to expert, you can do it. All you need is a pencil, level, screwdriver and saw. The possibilities are endless. The 16-Inch shelf depth Deluxe Organizer is designed for large reach-in and walk-in closets. Features include: Pass through garment bar capability; 6-foot adjustable shelf and accessory tower; Drawer and Door add-ons. Simply cut to fit. The Deluxe Organizer fits closets up to 10 feet in length and provides everything you need in one box. Up to 22 inches of shelf space and up to 16 feet of hanging space and multiple configuration options. You can add-on 6, 8 and 10-inch interior depth drawers, tower doors and 16-inch adjustable shelves.

Customer Reviews

Very mixed opinions
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.

Made In China . . . Now you've been forewarned
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.

Overall a pretty good system
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.