Don’t Believe The Manuals With Self-Assembly Furniture
Everyone knows that putting together flatpack furniture can be aggravating, but assembling the Sturt desk from Officeworks presented me with a challenge I’ve not faced before: a printed guide that wasn’t just filled with poor, tiny, diagrams and incomprehensible product abbreviations, but actually skipped several crucial steps and also put others in an order that would render the desk impossible to complete. (When I posted on Twitter that I was assembling a desk, one friend replied “hope it’s not from IKEA”, but their manuals are in fact models of clarity compared to this one.) I got the job done eventually, and I was happy with the end result, but the experience emphasised the importance of not just sorting through the parts and reading through the instructions, but also thinking about whether they make sense, and modifying or ignoring them if they don’t. Have you faced similar challenges with built-it-yourself furniture? Share (and vent) in the comments.
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Comments
Is that a snap of it assembled. Are you sure you did, in fact, get it right? Coz to me there’s something oh so wrong! for starters are you sure it isn’t old stock rescued from the tip marked “1978 no good then, no good now”. And is’nt that fake veneer look meant to be the other way around so you can’t actually SEE it? And are you sure that shelf is meant to be on top – coz isnt it a health hazard for not only collecting all the dust your home has to offer but also all the folders, magazines, nick-nacks DVDs that should actually be in the tip. In that position you will surely experience an unwanted surprise while browsing Lifehacker one night when the narrow shelf dumps all its contents on your head. And didn’t you forget the back board coz I can see your wall ready to get crayoned and markered and highlighted.
(Oh and so far so good with pretty damn good instructions from Ikea – neither of my two orders from Officeworks ever arrived – thank God).
a friend of mine said he was thinking about geting a new computer and im sure he might one day need a small desk for the computer or other house hold items. i will recomend this website to him before he makes a purchase, i’m sure the information here will help him with the desk he might eventialy purchase and he can avoid the sticky situation the writer had experienced.
I will no longer buy flat pack furniture from either bunnings or officeworks. Both companies production standards, instructions and general design principals have proven sorely lacking for me more than once.
IKEA on the other hand, good design, straight forward instructions, i can but heartily recommend every assembly experiance thus far.
I am on my way to return my sturt desk to officeworks. Half the pieces were missing and most of the locking nuts made of some type of plastic smashed when tightened. Terrible quality and difficult instructions. I congratulate you on completing the job Angus but I’m buying a desk for my daughter and this one is likely to fall down on her. I think I will have to spend at least twice as much to get the quality.
I bought one of these for my room. Did you notice how they don’t tell you how to use certain important parts of the design, and miss out large chunks altogether? I almost felt like crying when I finally finished.
mate help me put the same desk together