Furniture Purchase and Assembly

Furniture you buy online or in a store and you have to put it together yourself

Assembly Tips and Reviews

October 2018

Basic Tools -- Before you buy your first piece of unassembled furniture make sure you have some basic tools.  When purchasing a piece of furniture I often read the online reviews to see if there are any issues with the furniture.  I am always amazed at the people who whine about having to buy a drill to drill a hole.  Or the complaints about having to use a tool at all!!!!

Every household should have some basic tools.  These basic tools are:

- Hammer
- Rubber Mallet
- Straight Head Screwdriver
- Phillips (cross) Head Screwdriver
- A drill with an assortment of drill bits

There are other basic tools every household should have, which I will not cover here. For this type of furniture, the above tools are all that you will probably need.  If the furniture requires an Allen wrench (hex key) which is the metal L shaped tool used for hex screws, most furniture companies will include it with the hardware kit in the box.

Important -- What you do not need is a power screwdriver. Unless you are an absolute expert with this type of tool.....DON'T USE IT.  You will end up over-screwing or stripping a screw.  This type of furniture and hardware will become damaged, because it is usually not made with real wood or quality hardware.  Power tool fanatics suck-it-up and just use the manual tools.

Where to Buy Your Furniture For the Cheapest Price

Twenty plus years ago, the unassembled furniture I purchased was bought at a furniture or hardware store in-person.  Online options were limited and consumers were hit with a freight bill for shipping.  UPS or FedEx did not deliver these heavy items.  If they did, it was at a stiff price.

Fast forward to 2018.  Why on Earth would anyone physically go to a store and purchase a large, bulky, heavy, piece of furniture, load it in their vehicle (if it fits), and then unload it at home???  A 70" high shelf unit will weigh close to a 100 lb. Have the furniture shipped to you.
 

If you see a piece of furniture in a store.....  resist the temptation to buy it then, if you want to save money and labor.  Write down the information on the item and take a picture of the furniture.  Then go home and spend some time online doing your homework on an item.  If you are still tempted while at the store, do a quick search on your phone to check on prices.  If the in-store version is dirt cheap... .yeah...go for it. When ordering online, you have it delivered straight to your home.  Shipping now is usually free.  Try to be at home when the delivery is done for these big bulky items.  I have the UPS or FedEx person put it directly in my garage where I will unpack it.  Hell, I avoid any 100lb lifting when I can, because of my back.  Ugh, homework you said?  Hours online, yuck.  Really?  Yes, really!  If you don't want to save money, then skip this section.  If you do, read on. Example of savings: This past week (Oct 8, 2018), I wanted a cabinet on Wayfair that would not be in-stock until November.  I set-up an alert 2 weeks ago. Got an e-mail telling me the item was now back in-stock (before Nov, yay!).  Selling price on Wayfair? $169.00.  Before this, I had done my homework.  I found that Walmart also sells this same exact cabinet under a different name.  On Oct 8, 2018, Walmart now had the item in stock for $98.19 for the 31 inch wide cabinet.  The same price as the 18 inch cabinet.  Mistake???  Probably.  I was not going to wait around until they figured it out and raised the price.  I ordered two of these cabinets at $98.19 for a total of $196.38.  If I had purchased the cabinets at Wayfair I would have spent $338.00.  A savings of $141.62. This is a more extreme example.  Most of the time, I have saved around $20 by shopping around.  What I have discovered, in the past few months, is that the prices for this type of furniture fluctuates, sometimes almost daily.  Before ordering the first item you see, watch it for a week or so to see if there are any changes.  The shelf unit on Wayfair and Walmart??  Stayed at $169.00 on Wayfair. On Walmart, Oct 8, 2018 - $98.19, Oct 10, 2018 - $108.00, Oct 12, 2018 - $118.00. Finding the same furniture on a different website is tricky.  This is where those websites that try to give you the cheapest online price for an item fail miserably. Also, they may be listing items for companies that paid for this service.  They fail because the same piece of furniture is called different names made by different manufacturers.  Or are they?  Is one item the original and the other a Chinese knock-off?  The websites that I have found, that have a lot of duplication of the same item, are Wayfair, Walmart, Overstock, Home Depot, Office Depot, Hay & Needle, Amazon, etc.  On both Amazon and Walmart you have to watch out for the drop shippers. (see side bar at right)  Look for furniture shipped directly by Walmart or Amazon, not a third party.

What the hell is a drop shipper? Why should I care? Drop shipping is not a new concept and has been around for years.  For large national manufacturing companies this is a cost and time saver for getting merchandise where it needs to be. What it has morphed into, is a regular person with no physical place of business, other than their couch at home.  They set-up an online account with Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, etc.  Then list items sold by Home Depot, Wayfair, Overstock, etc, in their online store at a higher price. You find a rug you like, on say Amazon, and you order it.  The drop shipper goes to their account at the Home Depot and orders the rug giving your home address as the shipping address. Huh??  Yes, you just actually bought a rug from the Home Depot.  Chances are... you bought the rug on Amazon at a much higher price than the same rug on the Home Depot website.  This is how the drop shippers make their money. Yes, I was the sucker who bought this rug.  I had no idea this was going on.  I thought I was ordering from a company that shipped the rug from their warehouse. The packing slip I received with the rug should have been from the Amazon online company. However, the packing slip I received, was from the Home Depot.  Ooops the drop shipper screwed up. I did complain to Amazon.  They don't care.  They get their percentage of a sale, no matter who makes the sale.  Home Depot does not care because they made a sale. Drop shipping has exploded on the internet in the past 5 years.  There are now more drop shippers than there are legitimate companies. It is now considered a "work at home scheme". Why should you care?  1) Drop shippers charge you more for an item. 2) If there is a problem with the item and you need parts or a replacement, you now have to deal with the drop shipper who is acting as the middleman.  Meaning, your problem may never be resolved.

Here is an example of the cabinet mentioned above that I purchased from Walmart at a huge savings over Wayfair.

Many folks attempt to avoid Sauder furniture.  However, Sauder uses many other names.  You do not know you are getting Sauder until the furniture arrives and it is on the manual.  One of the cabinets I bought ended up being Sauder.  I ordered two of the same cabinets.  One unit had a damaged shelf.  The other unit was missing some hardware.  I called Sauder directly twice, via their 800 number for the replacement parts.  Each customer service rep was pleasant to speak with.  I received my replacement parts in two different shipments the following week.  Easy no hassle phone calls.  I am happy with the furniture, even though there were a few glitches.

So how do you find the different furniture names???  You just have to do your search in a search engine.  Look at a lot of pictures of the furniture you want, compared to all of the others.  If the same item is out there, it will pop-up.  With the Buckhead / Farmington cabinet above, it had an unusual color called "smokehouse" (now changed to grey).  I searched using the terms "smokehouse cabinet".  I also searched using "greyleigh cabinet", "farmington cabinet".

Expectations For This Type of Furniture

This is cheap particle board furniture, most likely made in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, or any other number of countries where labor is cheaper.  It is not solid wood, hand made by a craftsman in America. (see my rolling cabinet here for a custom made piece...)  You have to think realistically. Therefore, you really cannot expect it to be solid and sturdy to be handed down for generations.  This is not heirloom furniture people!!! 

It is hilarious reading the reviews for this type of furniture.  Where the one or two star reviews complain about an item being flimsy in contrast to a majority that says an item is not flimsy.  Which is it??? 

For the one and two star-ers, expectations were probably for a solid wood item and then they realize that it is just particle board.  You need to fully read the description of the furniture.  If it is solid wood, it will say it is, along with the wood species.  The price will also reflect this.  If the item is inexpensive compared to others, then it is most likely just particle board, manufactured wood, or press board.  If there is absolutely no description of the furniture......look for something else.

Read the reviews -- Always keep in mind that some of the people who write the reviews may not be very mechanically inclined or just plain idiots.  I look for items that have at least 4 stars.  I then read the good and the bad reviews.  For the cabinet mentioned above, it got good reviews.  A major reoccurring problem reviewers mentioned, were that the holes for the screws, needed to be drilled.  To me, this was not a problem.  When the items came in, I had my drill ready.  The reviewers were correct.  The wood was just marked with dimples where the screws should go. A small drill bit on my drill was all that was needed to make the screw hole larger and screwing easier.

If reviewers all say the furniture is flimsy and it only has two stars out of 100 reviews, then most likely the furniture is super flimsy.  Stay away from it.

Keep The Furniture Stationary -- Once you put this furniture together, put it in one spot and leave it alone.  If you plan on moving it around your home a lot,  add plywood on the bottom and attach casters. I did this for my new heavy solid rubber wood TV cabinet.  I don't plan to move it, but if I need to to clean behind it, I can move it.

If you only spent a couple hundred bucks or less on an item, it will not be able to handle being dragged or pushed around, particularly on carpeting.  If you must move it, get help and lift it up and place it down.  Dragging it around will loosen the screws and cam locks.  It will not handle being moved from one house to the next every few years.  If you do a lot of moving, invest in more expensive furniture.

Cam Locks -- You will either love them or hate them. Most folks hate them.  If you think they are cheap and break easily now-a-days, you are correct.  What used to be made out of steel is now made out of aluminum.  When assembling my bedroom set, some of the cam locks basically disintegrated when I tried to screw them in with cam bolt.  Fortunately I saved the cam locks from the old TV stand that did not make the move from El Paso to Oklahoma and I used them.  These older cam locks were from 10 years ago and were made from stronger metal.

One thing is clear.  Line them correctly.  Twist them only until tight.  Do not over tighten them or they will break. During the assembly process try to avoid any stress on areas where you just tightened the cam locks.  Try to keep the furniture as square and level as possible until all of the parts are put together.

Complexity and Time to Assemble Furniture -- If you are new to assembling your own furniture, you will probably find the amount of pieces and the instructions daunting.  This is normal.  You are not alone. You will get through it.  Take it one step at a time.  Oh..... and READ the bloody instructions!!!!

Having assembled furniture for over 40 years, I can tell you the instructions have gotten better over the years.  It is obvious that many companies are now using native English speakers to write their instructions. Yay!  We spoke and some have listened.  However,  there are some manufacturers that don't use native English speakers, which makes for hilarious reading and a lot of head scratching.

If you are new to this, just know it will probably take you longer than you think to assemble it.  If you know this going in, you will not be so frustrated that it took you 4 hours instead of 2.

Lay out all the pieces and make sure you have everything.  Then READ the instructions starting with Step One.  Sometimes I download the instructions from the website ahead of time and read through it before the furniture arrives to make sure it makes sense.

I started with the easiest piece of furniture, the nightstands.  This way I could get used to the directions before I got to the most difficult piece, the armoire. This furniture has an overwhelming amount of pieces and hardware.  18 pieces and 11 different types of hardware (screws, cam locks, cam bolts, drawer slides, drawer pulls, for each nightstand.

I unpacked the pieces in the garage to keep any styrofoam packing trash in the garage. I first laid out all of the pieces to make sure I had everything and nothing was damaged.  If you are doing this on a tile or wood floor, put an old blanket down to protect the furniture pieces.

For this nightstands, most of the pieces were for the drawers. For furniture with drawers, I skip around with the assembly steps.  I do the drawers first.  Why??  Since most of the pieces are for the drawers, I assemble them first and then move them out of the way in another room.  Now I am looking at less pieces to assemble for the frame.  For the nightstand, 10 of the 18 pieces were for the drawers.  With the drawers out of the way, I now had only 8 pieces to work with.  Now I went back to Step 1.

For furniture with drawer glides, you have one shot to get it right.  The flat head screws need to go in absolutely straight and need to be screwed in until they are flush with the glide.  If just a small edge of the screw sticks up, the drawer will hit the screw and make a noise and prevent the glide from operating smoothly.  If you mess up, you can usually put the screw in through another hole on the glide.  However you will need to have a drill to drill a small starter hole for the screw.

Completed 2 cabinets.  Door on left cabinet was modified by changing handle
 from the left to right side of door.  Decorative diagonal wood was flipped.
Cabinets were then placed next to each other to mirror the look of the
more expensive World Market cabinet.