Wine Cabinet Assembly: What Arrives and How It Goes Together

What is actually on the pallet

A finished run does not fit through a standard doorway, and it does not turn on a stair. So it arrives as parts: welded frames and cradles, panels, glass in its own crate, the cooling unit boxed separately, the plinth grille, a box of fixings, and the drawing with the module numbers on it.

The glass travelling separately is deliberate. It is the most fragile item and the one that cannot be repaired on site, so it stays packed until the frames are fixed and the room is closed.

Why every module carries a number

The numbers are not inventory tags. They are position and sequence, and they match the drawing that was approved.

Modules are not interchangeable, for two reasons. Cradles are cut to a pitch, so a module built at 95 mm will not take a 100 mm row. And a run drawn to a real wall is not symmetrical — the two end modules are cut to close against their own side, so the left end will not fit the right.

Which means the first job on site is not lifting. It is laying the modules out in order and checking them against the drawing.

What can be adjusted on site, and what cannot

The division is worth knowing before anyone reaches for a tool.

• Can: joining modules, fixing to the wall, levelling, fitting the plinth grille, hanging doors, connecting the controller and the lighting.
• Cannot: changing a cradle pitch, re-welding a frame, re-cutting glass, or reversing the hinge on a sealed cooled unit.
• Should not: trimming a module to fit a wall that was measured wrong. That is a new module, not an adjustment, and a trimmed module loses the fold that gives it its stiffness.

The order that avoids doing work twice

Set the floor line first, then the end module, then work along the run, then the plinth grille, then the doors.

Doors go last for a specific reason. A door hung on a run that is still moving has to come off again, and a glass door that has been hung and removed once rarely closes as well the second time, because the gasket has already taken a set.

The plinth grille goes in before the doors because its opening has to be continuous under the whole run, and it has to stay reachable once everything is closed.

Modules, knock-down, or built in place

Three arrangements exist and they are not equivalent.

Fully welded modules are the stiffest and the fastest to assemble, and they are limited only by what fits through the access. Knock-down modules travel better, take longer, and are only as stiff as their joints. Built in place is what happens when neither works: it moves the factory into your room, with the quality control that implies.

What decides it is the access route — door widths, stair turns, lift dimensions, and whether there is anywhere at the right level to set a crate down.

Where it goes wrong

Almost every assembly problem we hear about is one of four things, and three of them were knowable before the crate was opened.

• A wall further out of square than the filler allowance can absorb.
• A floor that is not level over the length of the run, so the doors line up at one end and not the other.
• Glass arriving after the frames are fixed and the room is closed, which means opening the room again.
• A cooling unit specified for a different voltage from the site.