Anyone Good at Assembling Furniture?

I'm trying to put together a pair of nightstands I ordered. I've done this sort of thing before, but this time, the very first step has me stumped. It's for attaching the rails to the inside of the nightstand, to support the drawer. There's no written directions, just diagrams.

There's this small plastic piece that's crenelated, with little teeth running down one side. The picture (see here) shows you hammering the end of this piece into the middle of the rail, and there are arrows pointing in all directions, as if maybe you're supposed to slide the piece back and forth. Why, I can't figure out. The rail has little dividers every inch or two, so you can't really slide the thing very far. The weird thing is, there's only one of these toothed pieces and two rails, so it's not a permanent fixture. The next diagram shows the rail without this piece attached, so I'm guessing it's something you do to both rails, before screwing them to the inside of the nightstand. (See the actual pieces here.)

I am really stumped. If I didn't know better, I would say it's a lucky charm you're supposed to rub the rails with, so they won't fall apart. Since that makes NO SENSE, I haven't a clue! I could skip this step and proceed with the assembly, but I hate to, in case hammering this toothed bar of plastic into the rail and then removing it does something important. I'm not even sure what good hammering it will do, since there's no specific spot for it to be inserted into.

Any ideas? (And mods, if there's a better place for this kind of question, please feel free to move the thread!)

robjvargas said:

This looks like... something. Whatever it is, the two arrows that point up and down the length of the longer piece suggest that you can change it's location. It's adjustable.

That, in turn, makes me think it's not for a drawer, but a static shelf.

Does that bigger rail install vertically, or horizontally, on the surface to which it attaches?

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There is a shelf above the drawer, but I'm pretty sure this is for the drawer's railings. The railings go horizontally on either side of the nightstand. I don't think it's meant to support anything, because for one, it doesn't fit firmly into any of the holes. It would fall out the moment I tilted the nightstand upright.

Brightdreamer said:

(Are you sure you aren't supposed to have two of those wiggly bits? Did you get a parts list? If not, it may be there to space something or stablize something later on. Also, when I last assembled an item, I had weird plastic things that went on one side of the drawer, but not the other; they were to prevent more than one drawer being opened at once, which would pose a safety hazard. Maybe it's one of those? I'd have to see an image of the finished product to have an idea...)

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According to the parts list, there's only one of these things. I checked later on in the directions and you're supposed to do the same thing with the second railing. The following step shows the railing without the crenelated piece, so apparently you insert it, slide it back and forth, then remove it? It doesn't make any sense.

The finished nightstand is pretty much a cube, with a shelf halfway up and a drawer below that. Let me see . . . here it is.

Now that actually makes sense! Why doesn't the diagram show that you're hammering the railing into the side board? If the sketch hadn't been floating in mid-air, I would have understood what to do. THANK YOU for saving my sanity!

Video? Is that what the link was supposed to be? It just took me to the company's customer service page. I figured out the solution by your comment about using the piece to hammer in the railing. The picture doesn't show the side panel of the nightstand, so I didn't realize that's what you were supposed to do. But as soon as you mentioned it, a light bulb went off!

I'm glad you said it, too.

There is no mention of any videos on the webpage. It's just a generic customer service page, inviting me to email them or chat online if I'm having trouble. Of course, that would have been helpful, too, if I hadn't solved the problem.

When my husband got home last night, I showed him the instruction booklet and asked if he could figure out the first step. He could not! So I feel justified in having to come online and ask for help.

I wanted to assemble the nightstands and have them done before my husband got home last night, but that ended up not happening. I couldn't finish assembling them because I needed help tightening the screws, since I don't have the strength in my hands. Unfortunately, when my husband looked at the screws this morning, he informed me that most of them were in crooked and at least two were stripped. Not sure how that happened, since I barely screwed them in halfway! Hopefully, he can fix the screws after work tonight.

AndreF said:

And whatever you do with your finely manufactured saw dust (its what I call assembled furniture because they have that particle stuff..moving on) DO NOT USE PLEDGE!!!! USE WINDEX!!! Pledge over time tends to soak in and get into refined particle dust stuff and warp things and crumble things .... if you must use pledge or something to that effect apply light applications.

They'll never tell you that in your manual but when you spend years around the stuff you'll learn about things like that.

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Actually, this one specifically said not to get it wet at all. Don't clean it with soapy water and don't place wet objects on it, because the "wood" surface is laminated paper, essentially, so if it gets wet, it's ruined. If you have to clean it, it said to use a slightly damp rag and immediately dry it with a soft cloth. Do you think Windex would work okay with something like this? Or should I stick with a slightly damp rag and nothing else?

Oh, the screws my husband said were stripped? Turns out they're fine. They just have square heads, which meant the screwdriver turned and turned, as if it had been stripped. The booklet said you can use a square-head screwdriver OR a Phillips, but apparently it's very hard to do with a Phillips. Not my fault, after all!

Barbara R. said:

I found an online service called "Task Rabbit" that lets you list any work you need done--anything at all, from "pick up Mom at airport" to "sing at my wedding" to picking up and putting together furniture. They have long lists of people willing to take on these sort of jobs, and those people bid on your job. You can choose to accept the lowest bid or you can choose by qualifications. I've used them a few times and had a great experience each time. But they're not everywhere, so unless you're in a large metropolitan area, this may not help.

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Great idea, but I just checked and they aren't in our city. We're a large, well-known city, but we're kind of a black hole when it comes to anything useful or exciting. All the Broadway tours skip over us, all the concert tours skip us---anything cultural or fun, we don't get. It's annoying, having to drive three hours, or five hours, just to attend a show, when we have perfectly good facilities right here.

jjdebenedictis said:

Square head? Those are Robertson head screws, and I was under the impression they're mostly unheard of outside of Canada.

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The nightstands were shipped from Canada, I guess that's where the furniture company is located. So that makes sense.