Argos Extra Tall Storage Tower > Reviews (1)

How I came to buy the Extra tall storage tower

During the autumn semester of my first year of university, when the nights were long and dark and I needed a distraction from the miserable winter weather and ever growing workload from my lecturers, I got myself into a routine where I would go to Asda or Tesco or HMV every other day and buy myself a new DVD to watch. Unbeknownst to me, this was the beginning of my DVD addiction. The three years that followed saw my DVD collection grow and grow and I soon started to run out of places to put them. One night I went to a friend's house and noticed she had four sets of two very tall storage towers that stored her own DVD collection. She had them positioned in various areas of her lounge in a way that made them seem very stylish. Needless to say I asked her where she got them and she told me Argos.

As soon as I got home I went online to search for the DVD tower on Argos' website and soon found what I was looking for.

The storage towers

The storage towers are available in four different colours:

Oak effect
Pine effect
Beech effect
Black

They come flat packed with instructions and all the equipment needed to put it together. They have 10 adjustable shelves, 1 fixed shelf and are suitable for wall mounting and freestanding.

The specification states that the towers can hold 40 VHS videos or 160 CDs
or 60 DVDs, however I have found that the towers can actually hold 88 standard DVDs.

Back to my story

I reserved two of the storage towers online and collected them the next day. Thankfully I happended to have my boyfriend with me at the time as the storage towers turned out to be a lot heavier that I expected (although I will admit I am only 5ft 2" and have absolutely no upper body strength, so to anyone who has more muscle than me - which would be most people- they may not seem quite so heavy). My (thankfully muscular) boyfriend carried the units to the car and we went home to put them together. Now, I have to admit that I did not assemble the storage towers myself as I have been know in the past to put things together upside down, back to front and generally just wrong, so I am now no longer allowed to do DIY/furniture assembly myself. However, I did helpfully watch my boyfriend put it together and was even trusted to pass him some of the pieces. I looked at the instructions and it was very well explained with illustrations demonstrating how to put the storage tower together, I think, given the chance I would have been able to do it myself. It took my boyfriend only 30-40 minutes to put it together and he did it without any real help. The item appeared to come with everything you need to assemble it effectively, although I would advise that you have a hammer on standby as the tower is firstly built as two seperate pieces that are then joined together and my boyfriend had to use the hammer to finish securing the two sides together as the dowel pegs (as I am told they are called aka little wooded peg things on one half of the tower that fit into the little holes on the other half of the tower) wouldn't fit fully in the holes provided using just brute force alone.

The adjustable shelves are really useful as you can position them where you want depending on what you intend to store on your tower; for example you can create smaller shelving spaces if you want to store CDs and larger ones for DVDs. I would suggest that the towers are assembled in the room you intend to have them in as once complete they are very tall (which I suppose is obvious from the name 'extra tall storage tower') and are quite difficult to maneuver through doorways and around corners.

Once the towers were complete I instantly started to fill them with my DVDs and was suprised to see that they actually hold more than the specification stated, I can get around 88 DVDs onto one tower instead of the specified 60, depending on the size of each individual DVD, obviously you won't be able to fit as many on if some of your DVDs are TV boxsets. I have to admit I was very impressed with the finished product and thought that the colour (I chose oak effect) complemented the rest of my furnature and general decor well. I happened to have a free wall and so put the two towers next to each other, they looked good, but somewhat loney at the edge of a wall all on their own. So I decided that since I was so impressed with them, I would buy some more; in fact I went back to Argos the next day and bought three more (needless to say I'm sure my boyfriend could probably now assemble one in his sleep). I now have what I like to think of as a DVD wall, I have 5 of the storage towers lined up next to each other and I have to say it makes my DVD collection look very impressive. The towers stand nicely up against the wall with no problems - the specification states that they can be wall mounted but I don't really see why you would want or need to do this as they stand well on their own.

I have had my storage towers for almost a year now and they seem to be lasting well, although I will admit that they have not been moved since they were originally assembled. The wood effect still seems to be in good condition and does not appear to have faded in the sunlight, which is something I have noticed with some products from Argos. The condition of my storage towers is the same as it was when purchased, no chips or scrates or signs of wear and tear so in my opinion it seems that they will last a long time before needing to be replaced. A good sturdy product from Argos!

The price

When searching the Argos website for the towers initially I was very plasantly suprised to see that the towers are only £19.99 each, which I thought was a bargin! In my opinion the towers look like they would cost more than this as they do not look 'cheap' like some Argos furniture can. An added bonus is that they are currently on offer at Argos for only £14.99 until July (2011)

Would I recommend it?

I would certainly recommend this product to a friend as I think you get a great product for a very reasonable price which is available in colour to suit any room and decor. My DVD collection continues to grow and I shall be purchasing another tower myself very soon :)