| | Furniture has largely been crafted by hand for many hundreds of years. It still is, and Mirador furniture is no exception. Despite great advances in automation and technology, a replacement of hands-on craftsmanship is yet to be discovered for the manufacture of Mirador quality furniture. For example, to create a carving, a person using a mallet and various shaped chisels may work a day on just one pattern. As many as 50 persons may be required to hand sand an assembled item of furniture before it is ready to finish, and during finishing as many as 18 individual hand operations may be required to bring out the full beauty of the fine hardwoods. Each item in the Mirador line has undergone a lengthy process of concept, design, and engineering, model making, finish selection and finish application to create it. During these processes, a number of quality features denoting cabinetry craftsmanship have been identified for the construction. There is less cost methods of constructing furniture, but quality would be compromised. Some of the key features include: |  | | | Dovetail drawer construction. Long recognized as a quality feature in fine furniture, drawers are dovetailed front and back, locking the drawer components together for a lifetime of trouble free service. | Wood-on-wood drawer guides. Found on better furniture, the Mirador guide system uses a dovetail design running full depth of the drawer to provide positive drawer alignment and to prevent drawer tipping. The back of the guide is enclosed in a metal clip to provide additional strength to the guiding system. | |  | | | Inset cabinet backs. The flush fitting back panel fits inside a ?frame? provided by the cabinet top and sides to assure rigidity of the cabinet. As an additional strength enhancement, the backs are screwed on providing a better fastener than staples or nails. | Dust panels. Dust panels are installed between all drawers to keep contents cleaner and to provide extra rigidity to the cabinet. | |  | | | Mortise and tenon joinery. Provides strength and resistance to racking of the furniture, far greater than plain butt joints. Also provides positive alignment of the case components. | Cabinet levelers. Installed on all door cabinets, these allow leveling of the units to provide perfect door operation even on floors that are not level. | |  | | | Corner blocks. Hardwood corner blocks are installed at key structural joints such as in drawer bottoms, in legs and in tabletop to apron joints for added strength. | Bed slats: Mirador utilizes 3 bed slats and 3 slat center supports in all beds. This assures positive support of all bedding used with the bed. Many in the furniture industry use 3 slats with only one center support or some use only two slats. | | | | |