Feandrea Litter Box Enclosure Honest Review: Assembly, Odor and Size

Here is the short version before the long one. I bought the Feandrea cat litter box enclosure about a year ago to get the litter box out of sight in my laundry room, and I would buy it again. It hides the box behind two doors, it gives me a flat top for a lamp and a basket of supplies, and it cut what I sweep up in a week by more than half. It is also heavier than the photos suggest, the assembly took me closer to an hour than the twenty minutes the listing claims, and it does not remove the smell so much as keep it in one place until I open the doors. If you want furniture that does one job and hides a chore, this does that. If you want a box that cleans itself, this is not it, and nothing about it pretends to be.

Two cats use it. Pepper is nine, a gray tabby, about eleven pounds, and her hips have stiffened up this past year, so she avoids anything she has to jump onto. Moose is four, orange, sixteen pounds, and he is the reason nothing flimsy survives in this house. The box had sat out in the open in the laundry room, off the kitchen, for six years before I bought this. I am sixty six, I do my own light assembly with a screwdriver and an Allen key, and I have remodeled most of this 1970s ranch house one room at a time, so I notice how a piece is built and how it sits in a room. That is the angle I am writing from, and it is why this review spends more time on the awkward parts than the pretty ones.

How I've Used It

The enclosure has stood in the same corner of the laundry room for about a year. Both cats use it. Moose is in and out of it two or three times a night, which I know because the laundry room shares a wall with my bedroom and I hear him land on the laminate. Pepper uses it through the day, more often since her hips got stiff, because the box is in the same place it always was and she never had to learn anything new. I scoop in the morning before coffee and again before bed, and I pull the box out and wash it on Sundays.

The top has held a small lamp, a woven basket with the scoop and a box of bags, and a spare cardboard scratch pad since the first week. The listing rates the top at 66 pounds. A lamp and a basket are nowhere near that. What I would not do is treat it as a bench. It is built from particleboard and MDF, and 66 pounds is a limit, not a suggestion. A grown adult sitting on it to tie a shoe is asking for trouble.

The routine matters more than I expected. The whole unit weighs 35 pounds empty, so I do not drag it around to clean behind it. I pull the box, not the furniture. The doors open wide enough that I can reach the back corners with a cloth without moving anything, and the top gives me somewhere to set the scoop down instead of balancing it on the washer. Small thing. It changed how often I actually wipe the inside down, which turns out to matter more than anything else in this review.

The Assembly Takes Longer Than the Listing Says

The Feandrea listing says twenty minutes, with labeled parts and step by step instructions. I believe that for two people who assemble furniture for a living. Working alone, on a laminate floor, with a screwdriver and the Allen key from the accessory kit, it took me fifty five minutes. Not hard. Just longer. The parts are labeled, the hardware comes bagged by step, and the instructions are clearer than most of what I have dealt with from online furniture. I have put together worse with less to go on.

One thing that will save you an argument with yourself: do not tighten every screw as you go. Snug them, get the frame square, check that the opposite corners measure the same, then go back and tighten. I did it the impatient way on the first two panels and had to back everything off, because the panels pulled out of line and the doors would not sit even afterward. The back panel is thin, and it is the piece that makes the whole thing feel rigid once it is on. Do not skip the last four screws on it because your back hurts and you want to be done.

What nobody mentions in the reviews I read before buying: assemble it where it is going to live, or have someone help you carry it. Thirty five pounds is not heavy, but it is awkward, and a particleboard box that gets twisted in a doorway is never quite square again. I built mine in the laundry room with about four feet of clear floor and it was tight but fine. If your laundry room is the size of a closet, build it in the hall and walk it in with a second pair of hands.

The Size Question, Answered Straight

The outside of the enclosure is 31.5 inches long, 20.9 inches wide, and 19.7 inches tall. The outside is not the number that matters. The inside compartment is 19.8 by 19.8 by 18.3 inches, and that is what your litter box has to live in. Measure your box before you order, in all three directions, and be honest about it. I measured mine twice because I have ordered furniture on a guess before and regretted it.

My standard box fits with an inch or two to spare on each side, which is enough for a cat to step in and turn around. A jumbo box will not fit. A box with a hood will not fit, and you would not want one in here anyway, because you would be putting a cover inside a cover. If your box is over 19 inches in any direction, this is not the enclosure for you, no matter how nice the top looks in the photos. That is the single most useful thing I can tell you, and it is buried in a bullet point on the listing. It is also the question I would ask before buying any Feandrea litter furniture, not just this one.

Height is the number people skip. Eighteen and a third inches of interior height is fine for a cat that squats. It is not generous for a cat that stands up, and it is tight for a big male who likes to rearrange the litter before he goes. Moose is sixteen pounds and he manages, but he cannot stand fully upright in there and he comes out with litter on his shoulders more often than he did with the open box. Pepper has room to spare, which tells you the size question is really about the cat, not the furniture.

It did not get rid of the smell. It put the smell in one place, behind two doors, where I can deal with it twice a day instead of smelling it from the kitchen.

Odor: What an Enclosed Box Really Does

I want to be plain about this, because the listing photos make it look like the problem disappears. It does not disappear. The first week I thought it had. Then I opened the doors on a warm afternoon in July and got the full smell right in the face. An enclosed cabinet concentrates odor. It holds it inside until you open the doors, and then it lets it out all at once. That is what an enclosure is, and no finish or design detail changes it.

That is still an improvement, in the same way a cupboard door is an improvement over a dirty dish on the counter. The smell is contained instead of living in the room. But it means scooping twice a day is no longer optional. When the box sat out in the open, I could get away with once. In here, once means the whole laundry room smells like a litter box every time someone opens the doors to get a towel out of the cupboard above it. Twice a day and a wipe down on Sundays with diluted vinegar keeps it to nothing.

The material matters here. Particleboard and MDF will take a stain and hold onto it. If a cat misses and it sits, the smell gets into the seams and no amount of wiping gets it out. I put a cheap boot tray under the box inside the compartment for that reason, and it has caught two accidents in a year. The two year warranty is not going to cover a cat urinating inside the cabinet, and it should not. If you have a cat who misses regularly, this piece is not the one for you.

Where It Fits, and the Clearance Nobody Mentions

The unit is 31.5 inches long and 20.9 inches wide, and it needs room in front for the doors to open. In my laundry room that meant pulling it out from the wall about four inches more than I had planned, because the doors need room to open past the frame before I can reach the box. Measure the clearance, not just the footprint. A hallway that looks wide enough on paper can turn out to be a squeeze once the thing is standing there full of litter.

Mine sits against the wall between the washer and the door to the garage, with the top holding the lamp that used to live on the dryer. The lamp is part of why I chose this over a plain covered box. It reads as a small end table, and in a laundry room that is the difference between a piece of furniture and a plastic tub on the floor. Guests walk through that room to get to the bathroom. Nobody has asked what is inside it.

If you have carpet, put it down before you load the top. Particleboard corners and carpet do not slide, and once it is full of litter and a lamp you are not going to want to move it to vacuum underneath. I set mine on the laminate and it has not shifted since. In a carpeted room I would put a thin rubber pad under it and accept that it lives there until I sell the house.

Litter Scatter and the Daily Routine

This is the part I did not expect to care about. The scatter did not stop, but it dropped by more than half. Moose is a digger, and he used to throw litter three feet out of an open box. Now most of it stays inside the compartment, and what comes out on his paws lands within a foot of the doors. I keep a small mat in front of it and shake it out every few days. Before, I was sweeping that corner every single morning.

The bigger change is that the laundry room stopped looking like a place where an animal lives. My grandkids come through that room when they visit, and nobody has to be told not to touch anything. That sounds small until you have spent years apologizing for a room. I am not a person who needs a magazine house, but I did get tired of the box being the first thing I saw when I came in from the garage with groceries.

One honest note on the routine: the doors are the part you will handle most, twice a day, every day. They have held up fine for a year, but they are the moving parts on a piece of particleboard furniture and they deserve a glance now and then. I check the screws on them the same day I change the furnace filter. It takes two minutes and keeps everything sitting flush.

Build Quality After a Year

Nothing has split. The doors still close and sit even, the top has not bowed under the lamp and the loaded basket, and the surfaces wipe clean with a damp cloth. For particleboard and MDF at this size, that is what I wanted. I have had flat pack pieces where the cam locks let go in six months and the whole thing turned into a wobbly shelf. This one has not done that, and it has taken more use than most furniture in this house.

What has aged is inside, where you would expect. The floor of the compartment has a faint ring where the box sits and a scratch where I slide it out on Sundays. The screws on the doors loosened a touch around month eight, and I snugged them with a screwdriver in about two minutes. If you buy this, put a reminder in your phone to check the door hardware at six months. It is a small habit that keeps the doors sitting flush and keeps the whole piece feeling tighter than it is.

Who This Is For

If you have one or two cats, a standard size litter box, and a spot in a laundry room, bathroom, or hallway where a small end table would fit, the Feandrea enclosure does exactly what it says. It suits a house where the box is currently the first thing a guest sees, or the first thing you smell walking in from the garage. It suits someone willing to scoop twice a day, because the furniture makes that a requirement rather than a preference. It also suits an older cat within reason, since Pepper at nine with stiff hips never had to learn a new routine. The box is in the same place it always was, just behind a door now.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your box is a jumbo, if it has a hood, or if your cat stands to urinate, because 18.3 inches of interior height will not be enough and you will end up cleaning the cabinet instead of the box. Skip it if you want the smell gone rather than contained, because this will not do that for you. Skip it if you cannot spare the floor space for doors that need room to open, or if lifting 35 pounds into place is not something you want to do alone. And skip it if you have a cat who misses the box often. Particleboard is unforgiving, and this is furniture, not a utility tub.