Balancelle Mahowny

Color was perfect & predrilled holes made assembly with less hassle.

PROS: The design of the swing is sturdy and the wood is solid. With some upgrades it turned out nice but not everyone is going to be able to do upgrades. The chains are good quality. CONS: The swing came in a box that was damaged with no packing materials at all. The swing itself had been damaged in shipping and some screws had been stripped out. The screws were cheap construction screws and were not counter sunk and some were installed crookedly so the head protruded with a sharp edge. I would have returned it but my daughter is getting married in my backyard in a few weeks and I wanted to have a swing to replace one that has been hanging for 32 years. (It was made the year she was born!) Her wedding was postponed due to COVID and now all the venues are booked up for years. So my garden and yard are the only place to hold it and I am on a mission to make it as beautiful as we can for her. The swing has always been the centerpiece of my yard. I decided to rebuild the Michaelis Porch swing and repair the damage as best I could. I took the whole thing apart and stained it with Behr Barn Red Waterproofer/Stain. I countersunk the screws and replaced them with decking screws that had a better grip. Finally I puttied or wood glued any cracks or pits, put wood plugs over the screw heads to hide them and gave it a finishing sand to smooth out any potential splinters. The result of my hard work turned out beautiful and is very comfortable to sit in. (Good thing I am a very handy Grandma!) The company might want to consider shipping the swing as a kit that the buyer can put together if they are not going to ship it properly or utilize craftsmanship. If you are just looking for a roughly built swing for something like a cabin then this would suffice. If you are looking for a "front porch" quality swing then this is NOT it in my opinion. Being willing to put in a little elbow grease and give it some upgrades will get you a lovely well built swing but you probably paid too much for just the "bones". I will get back to you in 32 years and let you know if it lasted as long as my first swing.

Damage during shipping, not correct measurements, a month late equaling 3 months then arrived, customer service was briefly understanding what I purchased and gave me a smidge of a discount. Still a nice swing take a look!

We ordered this in white. After getting two different delivery dates, both of which came and went due to back order status, we finally received it last week. It is most certainly NOT white. It’s clearly just the natural with a pretty shoddy see-through paint job. I’m pretty upset that we waited a very long time for this, paid extra for the white, and now we will have to paint it ourselves in order to actually get what we wanted. Extremely disappointed in this purchase and the lack of quality control exerted by Wayfair.

We love it and spend so much time on it as a family.