Bad packaging, hard to assemble, good when youre done
To be perfectly fair, Ive assembled worse products than this. No wait.I havent. This was the most annoying DIY furniture item Ive ever built.
The items are packaged flat, surrounded by thin styrofoam, and in a thin box. The box will be largely destroyed, the foam ends up disintegrated, but at least the parts seem to have made it without bending or denting. I did some of that with a hammer in frustration later though.
There was a great effort to break this up into as many little parts as possible to make the box small. That means youll be doing a lot of fine assembly. The instructions are terrible. I ended up looking at the part numbers (each piece has a number sticker on it) for general reference, then laid everything out until I could figure out by eye which pieces were oriented in which manner.
Once I had figured out the two main end assemblies, the rest starts to go together and you feel like youre making good progress. Then you get to the mattress support rails. There are around 30 or so of them, they slip into a groove on either end into the sides of the frame, and then you have to drive a little plastic piece into the slot over the rail and that locks it in place. Except some of the rails are a little out of round at the end and some of the plugs are too big to fit. I ended up using a pair of offset pliers to force the tabs in after having several shoot across the room and one slip inside the rail. By the way, you cannot get the tabs out of the side rail if you drop one in. So ours will have a little rattle but there were a few extras. Which is good, because youll need them! I broke at least 5/6. Between the pliers and a very small hammer, I was eventually able to install all of the support rails. This portion took me longer than the rest of the assembly.
Once put together, the item has a little end to end jiggle, but its pretty strong. The ladder steps are going to need some foam noodles slipped over them as theyre thin and really hard on the feet.
Only other observations I can make are that in a standard ceilinged room youre going to have just a couple of feet between the top of the mattress and the ceiling. Okay for now with my 7 year old but when hes 12 or 13 I might have to put a pad on the ceiling over his head! Its also completely unlikely that youll be able to remove this bed from the room you build it in without some disassembly. Sadly, to do any kind of significant breakdown, youll have to remove all of those plastic lock tabs and all of the rails and then put them back in. Im pretty sure that would not be possible since youd break most or all of the tabs and there arent enough spares to do a rebuild.
Nice to have more space in his room now though. I bought an intex inflatable sofa that fits right underneath and can be tossed on top to make more room. The bedframe doesnt give a ton of headroom underneath.fine for kids but at close to 6 tall the bottom of the frame is about at chest height for me. You might sneak a small desk under or you could fill it with a big dresser.
Bad packaging, hard to assemble, good when youre done
To be perfectly fair, Ive assembled worse products than this. No wait.I havent. This was the most annoying DIY furniture item Ive ever built. The items are packaged flat, surrounded by thin styrofoam, and in a thin box. The box will be largely destroyed, the foam ends up disintegrated, but at least the parts seem to have made it without bending or denting. I did some of that with a hammer in frustration later though. There was a great effort to break this up into as many little parts as possible to make the box small. That means youll be doing a lot of fine assembly. The instructions are terrible. I ended up looking at the part numbers (each piece has a number sticker on it) for general reference, then laid everything out until I could figure out by eye which pieces were oriented in which manner. Once I had figured out the two main end assemblies, the rest starts to go together and you feel like youre making good progress. Then you get to the mattress support rails. There are around 30 or so of them, they slip into a groove on either end into the sides of the frame, and then you have to drive a little plastic piece into the slot over the rail and that locks it in place. Except some of the rails are a little out of round at the end and some of the plugs are too big to fit. I ended up using a pair of offset pliers to force the tabs in after having several shoot across the room and one slip inside the rail. By the way, you cannot get the tabs out of the side rail if you drop one in. So ours will have a little rattle but there were a few extras. Which is good, because youll need them! I broke at least 5/6. Between the pliers and a very small hammer, I was eventually able to install all of the support rails. This portion took me longer than the rest of the assembly. Once put together, the item has a little end to end jiggle, but its pretty strong. The ladder steps are going to need some foam noodles slipped over them as theyre thin and really hard on the feet. Only other observations I can make are that in a standard ceilinged room youre going to have just a couple of feet between the top of the mattress and the ceiling. Okay for now with my 7 year old but when hes 12 or 13 I might have to put a pad on the ceiling over his head! Its also completely unlikely that youll be able to remove this bed from the room you build it in without some disassembly. Sadly, to do any kind of significant breakdown, youll have to remove all of those plastic lock tabs and all of the rails and then put them back in. Im pretty sure that would not be possible since youd break most or all of the tabs and there arent enough spares to do a rebuild. Nice to have more space in his room now though. I bought an intex inflatable sofa that fits right underneath and can be tossed on top to make more room. The bedframe doesnt give a ton of headroom underneath.fine for kids but at close to 6 tall the bottom of the frame is about at chest height for me. You might sneak a small desk under or you could fill it with a big dresser.