Cabinets
Buy and sell cabinets in Panama.
In most Panamanian apartments the closet is built into the bedroom wall and stays behind when you move, so the storage you actually own is the kind that stands on its own feet: a wardrobe with doors, a waist-high chest of drawers, a glass display cabinet for the living room or a steel filing cabinet for papers. They turn up new from furniture makers and carpenters, and pre-owned from people reorganising a room or an office. Before you arrange a pickup, ask for the height, width and depth and a photo with every door open, because the inside of a closed cabinet is where its condition shows.
Wardrobes, chests of drawers, display cabinets and filing cabinets:
the wardrobe proper is a tall box with a hanging rail, shelves and two or more doors. A chest of drawers takes the folded clothes instead and usually stands opposite one of the beds. Glass-fronted display cabinets belong in the living room or the dining room and hold the good plates rather than shirts. The filing cabinet is the office cousin, a steel unit that sits beside one of the desks and office chairs of a home office. At the cheap end, zip-up fabric wardrobes on a steel frame and stacks of plastic drawers fill the same gap for a renter who expects to move again.
A wardrobe beside a built-in closet, or instead of one:
next to a fitted closet, a chest of drawers or a narrow open wardrobe is often all the extra space you need. In a room without one, measure the wall, the ceiling height and the gap to the bed. Hinged doors need their full width clear in front of them, so where the bed sits close, sliding doors are the only kind you will open every day.
Board, solid wood, steel and fabric wardrobes:
most new wardrobes and chests of drawers are MDP or MDF board with a melamine face, delivered flat and built at home. They are light and cheap, but the hinges are screwed straight into the board, and each time the piece is taken down and rebuilt the holes loosen and the doors begin to drop. Solid wood from a carpenter outlasts several moves and can be refinished, but it is far heavier. Steel wardrobes and filing cabinets avoid both problems and rust instead, from any chip in the paint and at the feet. On a filing cabinet, look for drawers that take legal-size hanging folders if your paperwork is legal, and for an anti-tilt lock that lets only one drawer open at a time, so a full cabinet cannot tip forward.
What a melamine wardrobe is worth against a steel filing cabinet:
a four-door board wardrobe runs from about $150 to $350 new. A locking four-drawer steel filing cabinet is around $200 new. Used, the two go opposite ways. A melamine wardrobe has to be emptied, dismantled, carried and rebuilt by whoever buys it, and the buyer takes that afternoon of work off the price. A steel filing cabinet survives the trip intact and keeps far more of its price, as long as the keys go with it.
Mould behind the back panel of a used wardrobe:
open the doors and smell before you look at the finish. A closed box of clothes in Panamanian humidity is where mould takes hold, and a musty smell in an empty wardrobe means it has reached the back panel and will move into whatever you hang there next. Run a phone torch across the thin hardboard back for black specks or rippling. Swing each door: one that drops or rubs at the corner has a hinge working loose. Pull every drawer of a chest out to its stop and press its bottom, because a sagging one will not straighten. On a filing cabinet, open one drawer and try another to test the lock, and ask for the keys; without them the lock has to be replaced.
Photos, measurements and keys for a cabinet listing:
give the height, width and depth, the material and how many doors and drawers it has, and say whether it is still standing or already in pieces. Photograph it closed, then open, then the back panel and the base, because that is where a buyer looks for damp. If a board wardrobe is still assembled and the buyer is coming with a van, offer to hand it over whole, since skipping the rebuild spares the hinges. For a filing cabinet, say how many keys go with it and whether it takes letter or legal folders. A filing cabinet listed without mentioning its keys, or a wardrobe whose depth was guessed, is the listing that brings a buyer across the city for nothing.