We have all seen a friend, family member or colleague who has experienced some DIY disaster. The internet is filled with articles about why assembling your own furniture is probably not the right thing for you. It’s true that, done right, assembling your own furniture can lead to huge savings. In some cases, it can lead to thousands of dollars in savings per room in your home! Assembling your own furniture gives you the power to create the home of your dreams without having to break your budget. You can embrace a polished, elegant look without having to pay the sums you would have to pay at a store. Assembling your own furniture gives you freedom. If, for instance, you love a bench but hate its legs, well, you can do something about it! If you like a dresser but hate its color, you can do something about that! Assembling your own furniture gives you the freedom to realize your vision. You don’t have to accept what’s in the store. Yet, despite all these stated benefits, there is a reason why the internet is filled with DIY fails. As we shall discuss in this article, though there are certainly myths about assembling your own furniture, one thing that rings true is that it  is hard. The freedom you get comes at a price not counted in dollars. 

You’re probably not a handyman. Indeed, you probably figure that you don’t need to be one to assemble your own furniture. Say, you decide you want to assemble some patio furniture. The box arrives with all the components. You’re the only one home. You figure you’ll be done by the time everyone gets home. When they arrive, you’ll surprise them with all the furniture you’ve assembled. Best of all, they won’t see all the chaos that usually accompanies your attempts at DIY activities. How hard will it be? 

The truth is, in many instances, it’s harder than it appears. The DIY community loves to parade assembling furniture as the way of furniture, the stuff enlightened people do. Yet, for many people, even opening the box can prove troublesome. 

Instructions booklets are notoriously badly written. On the face of it, they look pretty clear. You open it and there you see all the parts in the box and the tools you will need. You’re given a drawing of what you will be building. What could go wrong?

Time and again, seemingly intelligent people get tripped up by instruction booklets. They are a kind of IQ test that goes well beyond any other IQ test. AN IQ test so difficult it renders nearly everyone an idiot. Not just an idiot, a seething, angry, frustrated idiot. 

In many cases, although marketed as DIY projects that you can do alone, it often takes 2 or more people to do an assembly project. Even then it seems a stretch that two people could assemble the patio furniture you’ve set your heart on assembling. At the end of it all, you may have assembled something, with a few pieces left over -you don’t quite know why-, and wonder why you just didn’t go out and buy Bradington Young leather recliners.