More often than not if you decide to buy new furniture, a huge percentage of furniture sold today will be of the flat packed variety which means someone will have to spend the weekend putting it together which can be at very least a very time consuming and frustrating task especially if you don’t own the right tools. We at The Flat Pack Construction Company have assembled a majority of furniture supplied today in Britain’s high streets and online and would agree that whether the furniture has been designed and manufactured in Eastern Europe, Vietnam, China and not forgetting India a fair amount of it is manufactured with economy of pocket in mind for both the retailer’s profits and attractiveness in price for the end user!.
Some say the furniture is only as good as the person that assembles it, true? Well not necessarily. Poor quality components, i.e. Cams and Cam dowels, drawer runners, drawer bottoms and wardrobe back boards can make your new furniture susceptible to failure as soon as you start to put it into daily use! Fill a drawer up with socks and within a couple of months the drawers bottoms are gradually starting to sag through causing you to curse every morning when hurrying to find what you’re looking for.. What can possibly be done to rectify poor manufacturing, anything?
When assembling any item of furniture, it’s always a good thing to consider gluing areas that are going to be used on a regular and daily basis, i.e. the routed groove which the drawer bottoms sit in and wooden dowels that hold the drawer front in place, could be optionally glued with PVA wood glue (polyvinyl acetate) to ensure that the drawers are going to stand the test of time! Likewise if you’re a flat pack furniture retailer and possibly need to keep relocating your display wardrobe around the store, it’s only a matter of time before the wardrobe starts to warp and the backboard tears away from the nails that pin the backboard to the carcass, the answer? Again a bead of glue carefully run around the routed slot before slotting in the backboard and pinning it evenly with panel pins (supplied with product) will ensure that your flat pack wardrobe will not only be rigid, square but will last far longer than if you didn’t bother!
Not many manufacturers of flat pack furniture supply specialist adhesive nowadays and rely on the fact that their fitting components are up to the job to stand the test of time, so make sure if you’re considering buying flat packed furniture, factor in the thought that the gluing process is a must if you want your self assembly furniture to last. Alternatively you can always call in a company that specialise in furniture assembly and request that they do it for you instead. It will only add a small amount of time onto the job but will be substantially worth it with the reward of solid furniture that will stand the test of time!
I have provided a youtube video to better understand the process that this blog is based upon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwnICDeEe7s