Labor Day Bookcase

I spent the better part of my Labor Day laboring over a bookcase for my wife. I took a woodworking class when I was in 8^th grade, where I made a napkin holder, a birdhouse, and as a final project, a wall shelf with drawer that hangs today in our kitchen, looking every bit as skilled as one made by a freshman in high school. Since then about the only woodworking I’ve done has been sawing 1x4 boards to support the box springs for our bed. Fortunately, one doesn’t need to have acumen in woodworking to build a bookshelf (or desk, chair, dresser, end table, or pretty much any piece of furniture) these days. Now furniture comes in boxes, with all of the parts pre-cut and pre-drilled and all of the hardware included. All you have to do is follow the instructions for assembling, and after only a brief time, voilà, you have a professional looking cheap piece of furniture.

Or that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Theory always hovers tranquilly in the shadow of reality. The bookshelf instructions said that the project should take about 60 minutes. After the first hour of my labor I was disassembling what I’d spent the first hour assembling. I looked at the instructions, at what I’d done, and at the photo on the box, and there wasn’t much of a correlation. I determined that there had been an error in labeling a major part, either in the instructions or on the part itself. So I took apart what I’d done and started over. It’s easier going the second time around, if only because I’d gotten all the parts out of their various packages, gathered the tools, and gained some experience with which bolts and screws and washers go in which pre-drilled holes. 

So after only about 30 minutes I had re-assembled the bookcase and turned it upright. But it still didn’t look right. The shelves seemed wrong-side up. I looked at the photo on the box and it conformed to my construction. But the drawings in the instructions were at odds with the box photo and my effort. Then I realized that the box was upside down and the photo was taken from a low angle, showing the bottom of the shelves as if they were the top, the result something of an M.C. Escher effect. So I again disassembled and reassembled my construction. And when I turned it upright again, despite a couple of inconsequential parts that got left out, it actually looked OK. But by then it was going to be finished, whatever. And only in 150 minutes. I wonder if 8^th grade woodworking these days focuses on assembling boxed furniture?