Good looking, Easy to assemble, A better grade of Chinesium
Good, cheap, fast. Pick all three. After months of searching for an entry-way bookshelf, and looking at shelves that cost upwards of a couple of thousand dollars, we selected this bookshelf as an interim choice. It is simple, elegant, nice looking, easy to assemble, and made of a higher grade of Chinesium. Make no mistake, this is a cheaply made piece of Chinese furniture, but it's well made for what it is, it looks very nice, seems sturdy, and assembles in half an hour or so. The shelves are paper-board-laminate, so they'll be easy to damage from an impact, but the same is true for nearly all Ikea-like furniture. You need only one assembly tool, a 4mm hex wrench, which is supplied with the hardware. All of the parts were in good shape, completely surrounded by styrofoam in the box so there was no shipping damage despite a gouge in the cardboard shipping box. Each of the three shelves is held to the side frames with eight bolts and all of the holes lined up. You can use the supplied hex wrench but I used a 4mm hex driver fitted to a 1/4-inch ratchet. No matter what tool you use, hand tighten the bolts first and then, when they're all in place, tighten everything up. Do not overtighten the bolts or you might rip out one of the threaded metal inserts in the shelves. In the end, we got exactly what we wanted and expected from the Amazon description. Read more