Our baby’s room now has a fully assembled cot – but it cost us half a Sunday and a whole lot of frustration.
I’m not sure how I can write about the assembly experience without expletives, but here goes.
The day started well.
Everything we ordered – car seat, bassinette, cot and mattress – fit in the car for a start.
It took the lady at the shop ages to find our bassinette, but that didn’t worry us because we were ‘testing’ two ridiculously expensive, yet equally comfortable recliner rocking chairs.
When we got home I set up the bassinette on my own in about 15 minutes.
Elated by my early success I started on the cot.
I opened it all up, with the bits placed along the wall in the order that I needed them, but when I went to line the first two pieces up I realised I couldn’t hold the thing together plus screw in the bolts on my own, especially with a 6.5 month belly in the way.
I set it aside until the next day when hubby and I could work on it together.
The next morning we entered the baby’s room with me explaining how I would need to hold it and he would need to do up the bolts.
I explained how turning it upside down wouldn’t work because of the shape of the top.
“Here’s something I bet you didn’t think of,” he said.
I started to protest, but then he flipped it onto its side.
“Ok so I didn’t think of that,” I mumbled.
It was a promising start and I naively thought hubby’s engineering background would carry us through this without any hassles.
But then it was time to put the base on.
The holes lined up, but the planks of wood didn’t, so it took us a little while to figure out how it went without scratching the varnish.
It then took us ages to screw in the bolts into the wood with the supplied allen keys.
Even hubby struggled and I didn’t have a chance with my clumsy fat pregnant hands.
Now the killer.
The adjustable rail.
We got all the bits and pieces and fit them together and low and behold, it wouldn’t go on.
We scanned the instructions for clues, but found none.
Eventually we worked out that we should have left the base bolts loose until we put the side rail on.
Would have been nice to have been told.
At this point the dog (a 40kg Labrador) came to ‘help’.
“You’re not holding the rail where I told you.”
“I can’t, the dog is on my foot.”
“Rowdy get out. No more kisses.”
We managed to attach the rail, but then we couldn’t make it go up and down.
Here is where I can’t quote adjectives.
“This is a _ _ _ design,” hubby said.
“I need to leave this _ _ _ now before I throw it out the _ _ _ window.”
After a couple of rattles, I came to the same conclusion.
I put all the extra bolts in a tin (disturbingly there were a lot of them) and shut the door behind me.
The rail can stay up.