Winsome Mission Beech Wood 4-Tier Shelf, Natural

Very nice product…difficult and tedious assembly
I am no pro, but I would say that I have better than average skills at this sort of thing. Still, I did not laugh off the possible difficulty or the fact that it is recommended to have a helper. However, being alone and wanting to begin, I put the first of four together alone. As my title says, it was difficult and tedious. This is not to say that the way they are not designed you are not almost guaranteed to get a good job…once you get it done. It took me about an hour and a half although the first is always slower. I have some general ideas on how to do better, but I don’t expect to fly through the others. In fact, I dread three more repetitions. There really is no great way around the tediousness of this assembly unless you have elaborate factory jigs. A second person would be a big help in some places and very little help in other places. And you might have a fight in your frustration!I took a star away from this nice, quality product, because I feel that it should be shipped fully assembled. These things fold quite flat even with the top shelf design which is a little unusual for this sort of folding bookcase. I cannot imagine that shipping a container full of them from Asia would cost any more if they were assembled. OTOH, the larger, flatter package would be a bit more difficult to handle one-at-a-time in a fulfillment center and might cost a bit more to ship to the consumer. I’d consider it a bargain to pay ten or fifteen bucks more and have it pre-assembled although that is with hindsight. If I were in shopping mode, I might not see that an assembled one was worth much more than one I would assemble. If it had come in pre-assembled, I’d be trying to give it six stars!Update: Well, I have them all assembled and am so pleased and proud of myself that I have ordered two more to do a 3×2 double-stack. Obviously I have tested stacking them, and it looks real solid. I am also upgrading my star rating from 4 to 5 stars. I still think it would be nicer if the factory did this work for us, but once you have two or three of them under your belt, it is no problem. In fact, it becomes a pleasurable task really requiring only 30 to 45 minutes. IMO, a helper is entirely superfluous.I want to offer a couple of tips learned the hard way.#1 – Ignore the instruction not to tighten the screws until after you have the shelves in place. This instruction is exactly half wrong and the half is important, at least the way I did it. Working on a table or on the floor, mount the three back rails into one of the preassembled sides and fully tighten the screws. Insert the dowels into the other side piece, stick your new bookcase together, and STAND IT UP on the floor. (Best on carpet where things don’t slide around.) At this point, the side with the fully tightened screws is stable, and you are holding the other side which is just resting on its loose dowels. Now put the screws into the second side just far enough to bite into the ends of the three rails. Now it is stable, although flimsy, which is necessary to allow you to fit the top into place with its protruding dowels. With the top in place, you can tightened all the loose screws a couple of turns to improve stability. Then insert the shelves starting with the bottom shelf to keep each shelf out of your way as you install the next one. Now you can tighten all the screws, but don’t over tighten…just get them snug.#2 – You’ll need to contrive some way to hold the washers in place, which can be a nasty problem. I worked this out with a product called Scotch Mounting Puddy, which is available here at Amazon. But since you only need a bit of it, you might want to pick up the smallest and cheapest pack locally at a hardware store or (like me) at an office supply superstore. Right at the beginning (before my step #1 really), I take each of the three rails in hand and stick the washers in place using tiny bits of the putty. Two possible approaches: either put a film of putty larger than the holes over them, or, alternatively, just put three or four bits of putty around the hole and stick the the washers in place. If you cover the hole, you should take a screw and punch through from the washer side cleaning out the putty directly over the hole. If you don’t do this, when you insert the screw from the other side, it will tend to push the putty along with the washer out of position. No big deal, really. We’re just trying to keep the washers in place for final assembly, something that is nearly impossible without some adhesive. Double-sided tape might work well. Or chewing gum! Maybe super glue…not sure, but if you have some around, might as well give it a try. If you feel the need to clean up any visible putty after assembly, you need nothing more than a pen knife or your fingernail.# 3 – This was supposed to be the assembly phase, but I see that I already covered that at #1. I suggest that before you start, you take the parts in your hands where you expect to work and do a kind of dry run. (It is not the same as a mental dry run sitting in your chair!)I hope this is helpful. Since it is really only the first one that is kind of difficult, I have tried to share what I learned doing four of them (with two more shipping today).

The shelf is the third item in this line I’ve bought (desk and printer stand are the other two). It’s really nice to have matching work/study furniture and I like the ease of folding these up for transport or storage.I found this easier to put together than the others. The desk was especially trying. The bookshelf took a calm understanding of how to work with gravity and a bit of candle wax on the screws to help them go in easier. The hex-key comes included and the other tools needed are a hammer or mallet and an optional bit of candlewax. Got it together by myself in under half an hour. The instructions were mostly drawings with very few words. I’m going to use some Sugru to make a holder for the hex key under the bottom shelf so I don’t lose it.Put it near the finished place before adding shelves as those beasts are heavy! But easily manoeuvred by one moderately-strong person even fully assembled.It’s very stable while empty and comes with some stuff to attach it to the wall if you have kids, people who stagger and grab hold of the furniture to steady themselves, or live in an earthquake zone.The shelf looks good, feels good, and the finish is nice and even. The box came badly damaged, but the packaging was adequate to protect the contents.I didn’t like the stupid bossy sticker on the underside of the top shelf. It said not to remove the sticker and told me some guff about not opening the drawers all at once. um… no drawers on this unit. But I don’t like being bossed around by stickers. An idea for the future to reword the warning to be kinder and relevant to the item, but it’s probably a government thing they have to put it on, so no loss of stars for a bossy sticker.Yes, I think I’m going to be very happy with this shelf unit.

Gotta say I was skeptical, but this book shelf has held up well. I have a craftsman style bedroom suite, and this fit in perfectly. Assembly was easy, and the design is clever.

My five year old grandson helped me put the shelf together. It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes. I was grateful he was here because it really is a two-person job.I got rid of my office last year, but still needed a convenient desktop computer setup in my art studio. This shelf was a great solution. Now I can work standing up, or sitting in my drafting chair, which serves both work stations. Perfect!!