Great design, but I expected a better fit & finish
"I have a large family and purchased this table/chairs for our back deck. A near perfect match to Trex Clamshell decking. Overall, I am pleased with the purchase. For a $6k patio set, I had high expectations for quality and craftsmanship. Unfortunately, those expectations fell short. 1) pallet shipping: pallet was 2 feet shorter than tabletop. The carton was shredded. Had to lend a furniture dolly, a hand truck and some muscle to driver. With such a short pallet, it would make it up my driveway skirt. To my surprise, the tabletop was not damaged. 2) fit & finish of chairs was sub-par. chair rungs wouldn't fit in routed pockets. Nearly every rung along with the bottom of each leg needed to be sanded, filed or trimmed (slightly) to get them to fit. 3) No extra hardware. Even cheap RTA furniture usually includes an extra screw or nut. At $500 a chair, you might think that would be a no brainer. Nope. Stainless screws are such softer than standard steel/zinc counterparts. On these chairs, the upper screw on each side of the chairback is in a very difficult position. You really cannot be at 90 degrees. The hex head on no less than 3 screws got stripped. I am a furniture woodworker. These stripped because of material & location. Normally, not a big deal, except. . . no spare hardware of any kind. I ended up order 'similar' screws and installing them in the least obvious positions under the seats, 4) less than ideal quality control, the underside of the table has aluminum support beams with tons of composite cross members and hundreds of screws connecting the substructure to the underside of the tabletop. A couple of those screws missed their mark and the tip of the crews were visible in the gaps of the top boards. I had to remove them. There was no way I could re-sink them properly 5) umbrella hole size too small, this is likely a 200lb, counter height, 8ft long table. The umbrella hole is 1 5/8in. Think of a beach sand umbrella pole. A large enough umbrella is 1. 9". Do you know how difficult it is to make an existing hole slightly bigger? I have a couple of cheap patio tables. They are pre-drilled at 1. 9 and come with an insert to downsize for smaller posts. I wish they had thought about that. Remember those aluminum beams under the table. One runs less than 1/8" from the existing hole. The larger hole will not have to be slightly off center. All this being said, I like the furniture. I just expected the product of journeymen/craftsmen, not apprentices with poor quality assurance oversight. I may have been mistaken that you get what you pay for. In this case, I got less than expected."
