Pamari Rivara TV Stand with Electric Fireplace for TVs up to 60", Mahogany Cherry

You have been warned. If you like to spend the better part of a day (maybe less if you have your dad helping you like I did), shed some tears, cuss a lot, read, reread, rereread a manual that doesn't use words-- only pictures, then feel "ok" about the finished product, then TOTALLY buy this! I have never experienced the type of frustration when putting something together that I did with this. First of all, there are a couple of places that the directions are flat out WRONG. Then, there are a few pieces that don't fit together quite right. Did we put it together wrong? There's a very good possibility of that, although we tried all the options and picked the ones that worked best. Kudos to Daddy for getting us through it-- I love you man. If I could, I'd send him over to help everyone who will have the misfortune of buying this TV stand and let him help you out for the day. Overall, it looks good, just don't look too close. And that's why I feel only "OK" about the end product. For the time and effort it took to assemble it, I want to see something that I'm really happy with when I look at it, not pissed.

It was packaged well. The directions weren't the greatest. It took two people to assemble and the end product looks great.

The shipping box is very heavy and has many boxes of different sizes inside. I picked up one box at a time and I noticed that the boxes have letters that the instructions use to guide you through the assembly sequence. I opened the boxes one by one when the assembly instructions dictated it needed parts from those boxes. There are numerous connectors parts that are included such as screws, bolts and a paint pen just in case it is needed. I didn’t need it.Not everything in the assembly manual was labeled correctly. For example, I was told to look for parts labeled with the letter B when in fact, part D was the correct letter to use. These were is not the only parts that were labeled incorrectly. I don’t know if the manual is incorrect or the labels on the parts are wrong. Whatever the problem is, the parts need to be labeled to match the instructions.The overall color on the Amazon web page is a lighter color than the actual product is. It is considerably darker in reality. Not saying that’s bad, but just expect a darker color.I was worried that the four angled feet would not look good, but they are not nearly as long as I thought they would be. I’m 73 years old and I was alive when the long angled legs on furniture were the popular style, especially on televisions, but was also used on other furniture. To be completely honest, I hated the angled leg style back in the 1950s or early 1960s. The legs were much longer back then. Like most retro furniture overhauls, modern designers are simply much more skilled than the designers were back then. They toned the legs down enough that it looks rather good now. I’ve already adapted to the updated design. It is not nearly as extreme as I remember it was back in my younger days.The timing of the arrival of this TV stand was nearly perfect for my Samsung 55 inch curved UHD television that arrived a couple of weeks earlier. I had nothing on which to place that wonderful UHD television. I have a Sony AV amplifier that I haven’t installed yet. I need to pull some speakers out of a closet and buy some speaker wire.The two doors use cabinet grade hinges, which was a pleasant surprise. The two doors open and close quite well with a good fit – no gaps worthy of mention.Another unexpected twist on the retro television stand is a very attractive built-in plasma fireplace. And there are two options to use with the fireplace. One is the white crystal stones that you just scatter somewhat at random and the other one is a simulated log. I decided to use the stone crystal because it looks fancier with the plasma illuminated simulated fire. It’s a rather good simulation, too. Other people may prefer the simulated log.I lived in a high rise condo in Shanghai for five years and I renovated the entire 1200 square foot steel reinforced concrete condo. And I had a full marble and expensive simulated plasma fireplace installed that looked like the real thing. This built-in fireplace isn’t so terribly far behind that very expensive one, mostly just smaller. If you live in a condo or apartment, this can look reasonably cozy and if you want some hot air, there’s a second switch to give it to you. The fan is fairly quiet and shouldn’t interfere with your television’s sound. Your central air will be considerably louder.It would never have occurred to me to add a built-in fireplace in a television console. There are two lever looking small metal pieces that appear that they were intended to hold the top of the fireplace more secure, but for the life of me, I don’t know how they can ever be used to even attach to the fireplace. Maybe there’s a disconnect in the instructions or some missing part I didn’t receive. Meanwhile, it’s not going to fall out. The fireplace looks very nice at night. And I believe the simulated plasma fire uses hardly any power at all. But the heat will.The wood in this television stand is made of a chip board and glue that’s better than particle board. I don’t know what the veneer material is, but whatever it is, it’s quite good. The edges are mitered very neatly and professionally.I have one major annoyance and that is two big paper stickers glued on the back side that just cannot be removed without scraping them off. If you tug, it tears. It’s completely unnecessary to be attached with such strong glue. Who wants a big ugly paper label stuck on their otherwise nice looking furniture?I had to spend $15 for double edged plastic safety razor blades and use over an hour of my time to scrape those ugly labels off. I just cannot understand why these companies think they need to use super glue on temporary labels. Even the circular A B C labels are not so easy to remove. There are better razor holders than the second one. You may already have one. But the plastic razors are needed to help prevent cutting into the wood surface when attempting to remove the paper labels. ScrapeRite Plastic Razor Blades (100 pieces w/200 edges) TOOLBASIX M82730L Razor Scraper

The version of this that I received is the one with the fireplace in it. It came in a giant box that had printed on the side "100lbs+ use lift" - it was left about 20 feet outside my front door. I'm 5'5 110lbs, I had to ask a neighbor to help me to get it into the house. The box was also severely damaged in shipping. I was lucky in that the only part of the cabinet that was damaged was one of the back panels that no one would see anyways.So I start assembly - by myself. I highly recommend NOT doing this by yourself, but if you have someone helping you - expect there to be many arguments because the directions lend themselves to that. You assemble based off of a series of pictures. The problem is that not all of these pictures are very clear as to which direction certain things are facing. Also several of my pieces were not labeled and I had three clearly different pieces all labeled "B." Now that's not too big of an issue, I was able to figure out which one I actually needed for each step - but the problem came with the fact that if you follow the instructions step by step - you will have to undo some of the steps in order to do later steps. I was quite frustrated at having to remove something I'd just finally gotten together in order to get the parts from the next step to fit in properly (unless you have a screwdriver that's less than an inch long). So in the end this took me several hours to assemble - primarily from having to undo thing's I'd just done in order to complete the following step. Also be sure to have a Philips head screwdriver - you'll need one of those.Once this was all put together it's a very nice TV stand with a good amount of storage. My BF say's it's the ugliest thing he's ever seen - but his taste is questionable to begin with. If you are a fan of the 1950's style furniture, this will fit right in. It was manufactured in China, but seems to be fairly well made. The fake fireplace lights up (I'm still not sure I have that put together right - there was no real direction on what to do with the little clear rocks) and it works like a little space heater so you can actually have it blow heated air as if it were a real fireplace.So if you decide to order this my suggestions would be:1) be home when it's delivered so they put it in your house for you2) have a friend with some assembly skills there to help3) read all the way through the directions and consider doing some of them out of order for speed/sanity purposes4) assemble it where you plan on leaving it - and have some room because there will be some flipping around of this thing during assembly5) be prepared with a vacuum - my entire house is filled with the Styrofoam bits that came out of the box - they were sticking to everything including the cat which worked as an excellent dispersal mechanism.