Whenever reading furniture reviews, I personally would disregard any review that isn't at least 3 months old. Would I buy this bed again? No. Reason being, the slat system is truly crap. You may be saying, "I'll just buy a new and different slat system," and that's okay, but what you should be asking yourself is, "how come it doesn't already come with a slat system that works?" The bed gets passing marks for looks, easy set up, cost, and design. The instructions are easy to read and pictures are clear, which always helps. In regard to the slats, well, they must've been designed by a talking monkey. I don't see how anyone would be supported on the mid-beam. The mid beam screws into the footboard only, and is supported with four cylindrical legs about 1" in diameter, and 8" in height. There is no attachment at the headboard which in my opinion is the primary flaw with the slat system. I am not an engineer but it seems this lack of headboard attachment is what allows the unsteadiness of the slats. The double-side anchoring design would fix this problem. I read some customers used a box spring, then complained that it didn't fit snug. Well, the Product Q & A states it is a platform bed and does not need a box spring. I purchased a memory foam mattress and it fits, and looks perfect. The problem began with the slats would fall individually out of their plastic brackets. I tried switching the positions of the slats, thinking maybe there were stronger plastic brackets in other sleep pressure points of the bed, but that didn't work. I then tried Gorilla Glue and that worked for a while, but eventually the slats fell again. Usually when the slats fell, the support legs for the beam would break a little. Ultimately, the legs broke and the screws were completely bent. This happened over a period of 3 weeks. After waking up in the middle of the night trying to fix the slats, and laying stiff in bed in order to prevent the slats from falling, I reached the breaking point, and came up with a solution that has worked ever since. I simply cut a 4x4 into four 9" pieces, and screwed them into the place of the original legs. Problem solved.
Original unboxing. The frame is already assembled, and pictured above is the pieces from the slat system. There are 13 beams on each side, with the metal mid support beam. The slats are secured to the both the frame, and the mid beam via plastic brackets. In the picture below, you will see the wooden beams do not fit snugly into their brackets.
View of the assembled bed frame with the first few sets of slats in place. The slats are bowed correctly, with the crown facing upward.
Picture of the plastic brackets. The two pointed nodes are fitted into the bed frame.
Here is a shot of the slats inside of the plastic brackets. There is some space that allows for some movement, and subsequent instability of the slats.
In this picture, the slats fit much more snugly. Some of the plastic brackets were like this one, while others were like the one above.
This shot is to show the adjustment of the legs.
Here is one of the support legs not doing what they were designed to do - support. The one is bent and the screw is bent even more by about 10 degrees.
These two pictures were taken about 2 weeks before the legs just completely collapsed.
And finally, this is the solution I came up with. I am not the most mechanically inclined person, but I do have some creativity and some tools. I actually came up with three ideas to fix the slats, and this just happened to be the quickest. Turns out, it works like a charm! Simply, I just took a 4x4 and cut them into 9" piece blocks. Then they were screwed into the mid beam with the a set of stronger screws. All in all, this updated modification cost $6.43. Since I don't own a circular saw, I had the guys at Bayside Lumber Yard in San Mateo cut them, and then bought the screws from Hassett Ace Hardware. Problem solved.
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