Yes siree, I’ve spent all weekend in flat pack furniture hell. Seriously, who designs this stuff? And worse still, who designs the damn instructions. You know, those stupid little diagrams where pole #2 joins to bendy thing #5 at a 38.777 degree angle, with bolt X attached to screw Y which is threaded crooked for your entertainment.
It started with the hammock, which took 20 minutes to figure out which exactly was the first piece. That one took about an hour but at least I was rewarded with a comfy resting place at the end. Thankfully I put this together first because it’s been my place of rest in-between bouts of flat pack furniture hell. Of course even this had one bolt that would just not affix as directed. One missing bolt shouldn’t matter too much…. should it??
Next was the TV stand, which I thought was an assembled piece of furniture. Apparently not. Nope, this required putting together too. Once again it took about 20 minutes to figure out the right from the left and then another 20 minutes trying to figure out just exactly how did those bendy corner bits attach to the sides. Yep, 40 minutes before I had a piece together. I’d lost count of the number of swear words uttered by this point. It came together pretty quickly after that although I will confess to putting the middle divider in back to front and being too lazy to undo everything and put it right. Who needs the cable tidy anyway (that was a sacrifice due to back to front piece). Thank goodness the TV was ready assembled!
Onto the last and worst by far. The John Lewis bedstead (not cheap crappy stuff) actually had very good instructions. Clear and precise and even I figured out early on what the first piece was. But all was not well in flat pack furniture land. Whilst 4 of the 8 bolts seem to fit perfectly, the other 4 were bolts from the devil himself. They were tough to move and the way the furniture was made meant there was this pokey amount of space to try and twist the things on. It was pure hell and took me an hour and a half just to get the front, back and two sides together. It was then that I realised that the two sides were upside down! Yep, the holes for the slats were facing upside down. Seriously, at this point in time if I owned an axe and I would have got it, chopped the bedstead to pieces and shipped it back to John Lewis with a very nasty letter. It was my mistake putting the sides upside down but those bolts that were next to impossible to get on, were even more next to impossible to remove. It really was flat pack furniture hell. Hell on a hot day. Hell to the hellish of hells. So, another hour later and I had the sides up the right way. Two of the bolts just wouldn’t tighten any further and are a bit wonky, but I figured it’ll all be ok once everything else was together. Putting the slats on was easy, thank goodness because by now I was ready to kill anyone and everything that crossed my path. Never again, never, ever, ever again.
Now, onto the packaging. The bedstead alone contained two black bin bags fully of foam and plastic. Then there was the cardboard holding the three bedstead packages together – two trips to the recycling bin to get rid of it all.
Thankfully the hammock is still together and I can relax on the balcony.
Walking around should be much easier this time as my calf muscle is much better, although not quite 100% and I did fall down the stairs on Sunday in my jet-lagged state and hurt my other foot. I am a walking disaster zone.
I had planned to walk from Penn Station up to the Rockefeller building, then along 5th up to Central Park and then back along Broadway to Macy’s
