Seanette
11-13-2006, 04:03 AM
I'd love to know what drugs the "engineers" at Sauder are on lately.
I'm pretty good at assembling flat-pack DIY furniture (as one entertainment center, one free-standing cabinet, one dresser, and multiple bookcases attest), and rather enjoy it (3-D jigsaw puzzle and a nice useful item at the end? Great!). It has been probably a couple of years since the last time I did one, but needed more bookshelf space, so picked up a suitable bookcase at WallyWorld. Minor annoyance when I discovered it was slightly too big for where I wanted to put it, but I can juggle with other furniture to get stuff stored more or less where I want it, so NBD.
Assembling these things is normally quick and easy. This one was apparently "engineered" by someone who thinks the purchaser is MacGyver with six hands. The worst offense against sane assembly design was the connectors that hold the side walls onto the top and bottom horizontals. Put screw in connector, thump connector into shelf with screw facing out from end of shelf. Then, line up screws with holes in side walls, *insert Phillips screwdriver into connector, in slot running the same direction as the screw and about an inch long, on angle and tighten*. My husband is pretty good with tools and such, and when he took a look at what the directions were asking me to do, his exact words were "no way in hell".
Being me, I took that as a personal challenge to make the [bleep] thing work :devil: .
Did it, too. :angel:
The trick was to have the screw at full extension from its connector (giving maximum screwdriver space) and let the screws pull the boards together when tightening.
Memo to Sauder: Can we please go back to those cute little easy-to-install-and-operate cam bolt dealies you used to use? They were just as solid and a lot easier to deal with in assembly. Alternately, can we please either cut the drug intake for the "engineers" or at least make sure everyone's on the same drug?
I'm pretty good at assembling flat-pack DIY furniture (as one entertainment center, one free-standing cabinet, one dresser, and multiple bookcases attest), and rather enjoy it (3-D jigsaw puzzle and a nice useful item at the end? Great!). It has been probably a couple of years since the last time I did one, but needed more bookshelf space, so picked up a suitable bookcase at WallyWorld. Minor annoyance when I discovered it was slightly too big for where I wanted to put it, but I can juggle with other furniture to get stuff stored more or less where I want it, so NBD.
Assembling these things is normally quick and easy. This one was apparently "engineered" by someone who thinks the purchaser is MacGyver with six hands. The worst offense against sane assembly design was the connectors that hold the side walls onto the top and bottom horizontals. Put screw in connector, thump connector into shelf with screw facing out from end of shelf. Then, line up screws with holes in side walls, *insert Phillips screwdriver into connector, in slot running the same direction as the screw and about an inch long, on angle and tighten*. My husband is pretty good with tools and such, and when he took a look at what the directions were asking me to do, his exact words were "no way in hell".
Being me, I took that as a personal challenge to make the [bleep] thing work :devil: .
Did it, too. :angel:
The trick was to have the screw at full extension from its connector (giving maximum screwdriver space) and let the screws pull the boards together when tightening.
Memo to Sauder: Can we please go back to those cute little easy-to-install-and-operate cam bolt dealies you used to use? They were just as solid and a lot easier to deal with in assembly. Alternately, can we please either cut the drug intake for the "engineers" or at least make sure everyone's on the same drug?