Thursday 25 August 2011

Today's Review: Assembling Bunk Beds

Today was a busy day. Our flat is currently in a complete mess because we ordered a crapload of furniture and there's stuff everywhere waiting to take its rightful place on the stuff that hasn't arrived yet. But today we took a plunge and started painting and laying laminate flooring in the kids' bedroom. As if that wasn't draining enough, when it got to 7pm, the kids' bedtime, we decided it would probably be a good thing if they had a bed to sleep on tonight, they've been sleeping on just mattresses for the past two nights. So we cracked open the bunk beds we received yesterday and got to making.

We finished at half past 10. It was an awful experience. Putting one bed together is bad enough, but putting two together? Then attaching them to one another? Awful. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was one of those lovely flat packed  ones. Sure, it was a flat pack, it came with all the fittings and stuff, but most of the screws didn't have holes to screw into, attaching 28 slats with my bare hands has made my body hate me. The instructions even explicitly tell you not to use an electric screwdriver, so I can only assume they expect you to develop superhuman screwing powers. I ended up wearing marigolds just to get the grip I needed to grind those screws into the solid wood they're meant to connect to.

Still, I suppose the instructions were clear enough, and we had all the parts. Both kids are now asleep in their beds and they haven't collapsed yet, so that's a pretty good thing. But why no holes, you awful people that made these beds? You could have at least punctured the pieces in the right places so I don't have to guess as to how far apart to put the slats.

While it was a quite horrifying experience, perhaps an earlier start would have made it more bearable. But as it stands it was just awkward and annoying. Also my hands still hurt.

My rating: 2/5

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