Winsome Wood Mission Style Bookshelf - Natural Wood Floating Shelves for Living Room, Bedroom & Office Storage | Rustic Home Decor & Organizer

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 3x2 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).Based on similar bookcases I bought in the past, and the photos in this one, I thought this came preassembled ready to unfold. Now that I assembled it, it is foldable, but it took almost an hour to get it together. Also it required using a stronger Allen wrench than was included. Now that it is together -the wood is pretty, it's stable, it's going to be great.The screws are too big for the holes. I’d fix it if I were you. They are too fat causing the supports to split.Other than that, the wood looks good, and it appears to be sturdy. I’m off to the hardware store tomorrow to get new screws, ?I bought the same item (same item number and same picture) a couple of years ago. The first one I bought was definitely a 5, and it was a pleasure to receive an item that lived up to its advertising. I decided to buy another one recently, and I'm sad to say the quality is noticeably lower. Either the same vendor decided to "streamline" the item to save costs, or the Amazon buyer found another vendor whose product looks the same but cut some corners, again to lower cost and give Amazon more margin. The vendor also needs to assure better quality control in its manufacturing. The first item I bought went together like a charm. I've assembled "tons" of furniture items for myself and others over the years, and I've found the items made in China to be consistently poor quality, misaligned, missing parts, poor quality materials. Items from Thailand, Vietnam are generally much higher quality. I don't know where the recent item I got comes from, but it was clearly more nuisance to assemble. There is another review here accompanied with about 6 photos that gives an excellent description of the problems and how he fixed them with different hardware. There are other subtle differences also. For example, the first one I bought had small plastic "buttons" on each foot, the, kind you see on items to make it easier to slide the item and protect the floor. The recent one does not; it just comes down with the feet flat to the floor, which could lead to scratches if you moved it. The first one was very solid and stable. The recent one is somewhat wobbly. The screws were hard to drive completely, sothe guide holes were a smidge too small. I ended up tightening the screws in four rounds--meaning I tightened all the screws as tight as I could without risking splitting the wood. Then I left the item alone for an hour more, which gives the wood fibers a chance to "relax" and "get used to the stress. I would then tighten all the screws again and got a bit further without risking splitting. After four rounds of this, the screws weren't as flush as I'd like, but adequate. In sum, when I put the recent one next to the first one, the recent one looks identical and made out of the same wood routed generally the same way. While the feet are slightly different, the two units stand at the same height. When books are placed on the recent one, their weight keeps recent one from being so wobbly. So I think the recent one is adequate, and its solid wood looks much nicer than the usual laminates that others use. I may be a little hard on the recent one because the earlier one I bought was a real gem in quality and ease of assembly. The recent one has solid, quality wood, and after assembly generally matches and looks good next to the older one. The recent one is probably better quality than many items from other manufacturers. Find the review from the guy who got other hardware. The folding aspect is immaterial to me, because I bought and assembled the shelves to hold books, not to lie flat under a bed or to be periodically moved around. So his approach looks good.As usual the product came damaged. This is not the first time I’ve received items damaged but this one was too difficult to return. The other problem is that nowhere in the description did it mention having to assemble this product. I’ve bought items like this that were already preassembled out of the box. It is very difficult to assemble for a single person which is why the sturdiness and stability are marked low.I will not buy anymore furniture type products from Amazon…best to shop local for things like this.Put together in less than an hour. Looks really good in my roomI own already a few of this style of bookshelf that I purchased from other places. The great thing about them is that they fold up. This makes moving easy, and it means you can buy them already assembled in the box. Alert! This one is not assembled. Joke was on me that I paid for the convenience of folding shelving.I had been searching for a folding bookshelf (the kind I used to have in university that cost about $30-40 back then), and I found this one, which looked a bit nicer, more Mission style. For the price I expected a quality product that was sturdy. What I got within the first 5 minutes of attaching the first piece, the wood edge split off--and it was an area where there was just a peg, I didn't use any force. I am experienced when it comes to putting bookshelves, or furniture together so this was shocking. The remainder of the pieces didn't break so I just put the shelf together and tried to glue the piece back on (it's not a weight-bearing piece). Overall the bookshelf is less sturdy than I hoped. I would return it, but the shelf is too large/heavy to return, and I feel a bit stuck with a faulty piece. Trying to reach Amazon to get a replacement part.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.I have a number of pine folding shelves so I was looking for something that would match. This unit came pretty close. I was apprehensive after reading the reviews but the assembly is not difficult. The hinges are all ready, you don't have to assemble the hinges. It took 2 of us about 1 hour from start to finish, if you're alone you could do it with a number of large, weighted boxes to hold the shelves up while you use the allen key. I'm happy I bought it.This looked like such a lovely shelf, but the box came with mold/mildew all over. I decided to not unpack it to avoid bringing any more mold spores into my place. Very disappointed with this experience and the trouble of having to clean the things that this box had touched, and had to get rid of this very heavy item. Amazon refunded, but they should not be shipping out boxes that are in so visibly poor condition. Now I have to look for another shelf, I won't take the chance of re-ordering the same item in case other ones from this model have the same inadequate warehousing conditions.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!!