This book case….from Sauder, Model Number 410890, looked pretty good, all packed up in a nice box with a beautiful pictuer of assembled picture of the said bookcase, complete with books, vase and picture frame on the shelves. I needed a book case for my office. So, I bought this one and moved the box in my office.
Of course it needed to be assembled. The big box stayed tucked in one corner of my office, over time, it kind of tilted on one side and then one day I found it on its side. I completely ignored it. I was going to assemble it one of these days.
After few months, that day came up. I was determined to do it. It can’t be that difficult. Lots of people do it everyday. It even says on the front of the box: “Easy to Assemble”. They can’t be lying. I trust them. It is made in USA. It says so.
So, I ripped open the box and whole bunch of things fell out of it. There were more parts out of this box than I thought. And there was a booklet titled as Assembly Instruction.
The booklet even have a Cetificate of Conformity. It complies with “CPSC Ban on Lead-containing Paint (16 CFR 1303), and it has a Date of Manufacture….oh..no date…just the month and year…April 2014. That is okay. This baby is going to be born a month less than its inception of 2 years. It also list the Lot number 345108. Very official and impressive.
I needed only two tools…..#2 Phillips Screwdriver and a hammer. Lone behold, I have both of them in my office. I made sure that the tip of the screwdriver matched the picture exactly.
I was ready. I got all the pices of the book case…..Top, Bottom (I paused at reading this), Upper and Lower Ends, Large Back, Small Back and they were supposed to be all labled from A to P.
Then there was Hardware Identification. Hidden Cam, Angle Bracket, Cam Dowel, Cam Cover, Metal Pins, Rubber Sleeve. Rubber Sleeve? ….. I looked for rubber sleeve but it was not what I thought it was. Oh well.
Then there were pictures of actual sizes of screws too. I organized everything. The floor of back room of my office was covered with all this stuff. I looked at all this and was having second and third and fourth thoughts about the whole idea of assembling.
First instruction: Push 15 Hidden Cams (Q2) into Ends (A,B,C and D), Bottom F and Shelf G. Hmmmmm……where the hell is A…aha. found it. ok..where is C…couldn’t find damn C. This instructional manual is fucking with me. There is no C. Phone rang. I answered. And got back to my work desk. However mystery of part C never left. After the phone call….and I have no idea what I said or heard…I was back to work. It took another ten minutes to find that C was inked on the SIDE of the shelf. I think that damn shelf was laughing at me. Bastards.
I lined all the parts as shown on the picture. Hidden Cams stayed hidden for another ten minutes until I realized that they were right there in front of me. Damn! “Then insert the metal end of a Cam Dowel (R2) into each HIDDEN CAM”…sounds simple enough. Inserting parts can’t be very complicated. It was not so.
If all inserting was this way, I would have given up on inserting a long time ago.
Finally I found the hole in the hidden cam thing for the dowel to be inserted. The hole needed to be lined up. I found that by total accident while poking the screw driver here and there and hitting the hidden cam this way and that way and all of a sudden the hole lined up for insertion. Reminded me of my wedding night.
Next instruction asked to fasten 18 brackets to different part of the bookcase by using black 9/16” LARGE HEAD SCREWS. hmmmmm…I am short of 5 brackets. Oh…they slid under one of the part….part C.
Finally I was able to do all what the booklet said. It was not easy. I injured my knuckles, screwdriver slid into my palm few times and left scratche. I even bled from one of them. It was painful. I was hurting at this time. I was seriously thinking about hauling everything to the dumpster and wash (literally) my hands from the whole idea.
I really needed a slave or submissive to do this. He or she would have already completed it by now. I was more than an hour into this thing. And this looked nothing like the picture on the damn box. There was no slave or submissive around. Only bottoms were the shelves listed as bottoms. They were laughing at me now. Bastards. I think the factory workers back in Archbold, OH were laughing at me. Bastards.
“Fasten the UPPER ENDS (A and C) to the TOP (E). Tighten 4 HIDDEN CAM”….I knew which was C, but there was no E. I turned all the ends, shelves, molding, every which way, including some flat things on the table. No E. I wanted to use the hammer and break everything to small pieces. It would be easy to dump them this way. Then I saw something….I swear it was not there before. The ‘E’ was stamped on the very corner of one of the part. This whole thing was playing games with me. It was bad magic.
Finally I was able to do what the instructions were telling me to do. Then came the next part. This was to screw part D to G and something else. I had to do it 2-3 times because unfinished surface was supposed to be a certain way. It was getting dark outside. I was in this damn thing for more than 2 hours now.
Eventully I pushed the P into D and B, and K into A and C. yes..C again. Then came N which screwed into F which was attached to D and B. Then came H and I.
I used whole bunch of nails to fasten them to the bookcase which was actually start looking like book case now. Finally I stood the thing up. It wobbled this way and I thought it was going to fall apart. But it didn’t. It should have but didn’t. I left the thing standing for a bit. I needed to use bath room, found that door was blocked because this thing was standing against it. Well…. time to improvise. Those 16 oz water bottles come handy from time to time.
All in all, after 3 solid hours of very hard work, perseverence, will power, domly dom traits and complete focus this bookcase was finally in one piece and actually looked like the one in the picture minus whatever was on the shelves.
Very carefully I moved it to the place of its standing, put couple of things on the shelves including the Assembly Instruction and tipped toed back.
My back was aching, palms were hurting, the left hand thumb which was hit with the hammer was throbbing, eyes were watering. I have scratches all over and my legs were cramped. I finally bottomed to a damn Bookcase.
