Puzzle Wrapped In An Enigma
Over the weekend, the bookshelf that Bunky ordered arrived. It was assembly furniture, but since it came from Crate and Barrel, it was nice/sturdy assembly furniture; the whole thing was much better than the IKEA bookshelf I had assembled while at the cottage. I figured the job wouldn’t take too long, since I am now a grizzled veteran when it comes to putting these things together.
Unfortunately, it was not enough for Bunky to order a normal bookshelf. No, instead she opted for the aptly named Puzzle Bookshelf. While I saved time by not making any mistakes, the process took up an entire afternoon and left my hands in pain. Luckily we had recently gotten a power drill, because otherwise the project likely would have taken a lot longer.
The main problem was that the back of both the left and right pieces required a billion screws in the back. Even worse, the screws were not normal screws, but rather the kind with hexagon slots that require the tiny L-shaped Allen Wrench. Normally these wrench-bolt combinations are not a problem, but the screws actually required a considerable amount of effort to screw in. The drill did not have a large enough Allen Wrench bit, and so I had to do every single one by hand. Trying to twist the tiny little metal bastard drove me completely nuts. The finished product did come out looking great, but I was more relieved than proud. After that I had to anchor the shelves to the wall, and that was even more frustrating as the stupid wall anchors would often bend when being hammered in.
By Velius, 2/27/2007 @ 10:18 am
Glad to hear it’s up and operational at least. Hope your hands recover.
By Catnipped, 2/27/2007 @ 2:16 pm
That is pretty fancy. Did you guys do it the way it looked on the website or did you guys figure out another combination?