****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
C'mon, people, this is a simple breadbox with a top, bottom, two side pieces, and a sliding door that fits into grooves on the sides. Eight screws, four on each side. There is a labelled picture of each part and picture assembly instructions. My seven-year-old grandson puts together LEGO gadgets much more complicated than this. Check out the parts before you start. If something is broken, you probably need to return it and get a replacement unless a little glue will put it right. UPS folks are stretched pretty thin nowadays and stuff does get broken in shipping in the best of times. I don't think that's worth a meltdown and a scathing review. If you find yourself heading in that direction, maybe try breathing into a bag. Or maybe offer your UPS delivery person a tip once in a while.In the interest of fewer bad reviews, I will try to give some tips on how you can avoid common problems in this and, perhaps, future assemblies. First off, there is a mistake in the drawing for step 2: part B shouldn't be as shown and the slots won't line up for the bottom piece if you put it in that way. Take it out, turn it around, and all will be well. Takes about 10 minutes to put it together after you have found your philips screwdriver, maybe less if you don't have arthritic fingers.Remember to stick each screw most of the way through the predrilled hole in each side so you can see to get the screw started straight into the predrilled hole in the top and the two bottom rails. then line up the pieces correctly (top might need a little adjusting to fit it up - LOOK at alignment before tightening the screws! Remember that bamboo is a fairly hard wood that doesn't take well to bending or forcing. If the screw doesn't turn with moderate force, look to see if it's crooked in the hole, back it out and get it in straight. Then don't tighten the screws all the way until all eight are semi-tight and you have checked alignment of parts. The bottom and back are thin pieces that may be warped, not unusual in my experience. In my case, the bottom was slightly warped. I put it in with the crown facing up and the edges firmly in the slots, and it fit fine when I tightened all the screws.Once together, it felt solid and the sliding door slid just fine. I thought the door might give some trouble, so I checked its motion at each step after putting in, which turned out not to be necessary. The breadbox looks good and it holds a round boule out of my oven, about 9" in diameter, plus something as big as a loaf of store bread. (You can imagine bagels and crackers if you find store bread offensive.) I don't think you could get two 9" boules in at the same time, but I haven't tried that. All in all, it does what a breadbox is supposed to do: keeps the bread relatively moist (might need a bag on it after a couple of days) and you can put things like your breadboard and knife on the top. And it looks good, especially for a breadbox that's half to two thirds the cost of preassembled bamboo breadboxes.So don't be put off by the negative reviews unless you're one of those people whose home toolkit consists of a broken jack knife and a bent fork you found on the street. Even if you're in that category, go out and buy a medium size philips screwdriver and a flat blade one as well. You're gonna need those sooner or later in life anyhow.
