I live in an apartment and have a home business so I needed a lot more office space put into an already cramped area. I originally had a student type corner desk in the same spot with two end tables on either side holding my pc, printer and stacks of paperwork. After 2+ weeks of traveling to stores to physically see and measure the desks I could find I decided to go with the Bush Cabot L-shape desk along with the matching hutch from Amazon. I have owned it for a little over a month as of the writing of this review and have used it every day. I’m going to try and address the issues/questions I’ve read in other reviews.
This is a mass-produced particle/press board furniture product, not solid wood and not hand crafted. If you have never owned or assembled this type of furniture take notes, the following goes for any furniture of this type.
1. Read the instructions from cover to cover before doing anything, then read them again and make sure all the parts/hardware are included.
2. It WILL scratch easily. The wood finish is more or less wall paper glued to the particle board. I even scratched mine due to impatience while hooking up my monitor (which is rather large and barely fit in the hutch opening-see pic). But since finishing the assembly I have had no scratches, I even use one of my mouses on the desk without a pad. I used a sharpie to cover it nicely.
3. Mass produced by machinery, not hand. This means that some of the holes may be slightly off, or not completely pre-drilled. It is a relatively soft wood product so lining up and “persuading” a screw to go where it is needed is easy. DO NOT use power tools to assemble, it is not necessary and any slips or over torquing WILL damage your furniture possibly to the point of no repair.
4. Buy a small bottle of wood glue to use everywhere a dowel is needed to add some stability. Most of this “assembly needed” furniture includes a small bottle in the packaging but this desk/hutch did not. You can find it at just about any store for less than $5 and it is worth it.
5. The wire management consists of a hook inside the pc cabinet and the USB port, not much else. There is a gap between the hutch backing and the desk that allows wires to be fed through, not very pretty but easy enough to manage with some wire ties, time and patience. (I plan on doing that one day…)
6. The phone charging tray/cubby is close to useless as most phones will only fit laying on their side and the “shelf” used to hold the charging tray is only 4.5” deep leaving it useless as anything else. (see pic) Also, the “tray” is felt covered and slides around, some two-sided tape or Velcro helps. It does work nicely on the desktop or on another table though.
These things said, this is a beautiful desk/hutch combo for the price and it has plenty of storage and workspace. I have a printer, laptop, speakers, 27” monitor and pc tower all on the desktop with plenty of room to use each. (Yes, there is a space for the tower behind a beautiful glass inlaid door but I have a gaming pc that needs to be seen and not tucked away) My dog even has a bed underneath and I still fit fine. The construction is sturdy (especially after using the wood glue) and I am very happy with my decision to buy this combo. I ordered both the desk and hutch together and got a small discount from Amazon for doing so. Hope this helps.
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