1 X Unique 72" High LEANING LADDER STYLE MAGAZINE / BOOK SHELF on Black Finish

Came in 2 days as promised with the excellent Amazon Prime to my front door under the eaves so that it wouldn't get soaked in the sudden winter storm - so extra props to the delivery service too - I was worried I would come home to a melted box.The pieces were nice heavy wood. Instructions were not very clear but the pieces were easy to assemble nonetheless. As others have pointed out, the instructions call for two people to put this together. I am not very handy and was able to do it by myself very slowly in under 2 hours in a very small work-space.The included tools - the set has all the required screws, little wood pegs, and some glue. The glue was pretty low/standard quality, if I had to do this again I would definitely purchase some carpenter's glue before tackling the setup. The wood pegs are not very strong and several broke mid construction when I tipped to an angle to lock in the other side. Every shelf is attached to a "leg" by three holes (2 for wood pegs and middle hole for metal screw) on each side so the breaking pegs did not alarm me that much. Make sure you have a mallet/hammer, screwdriver, philips head screwdriver, and wet cloth to wipe everything down.The two "parts" of the bookshelf consist of the top with 2 shelves and the bottom with three shelves - assembled in pretty much the same way. There is small "foot" piece that attaches to largest bottom shelf.My star deduction and biggest concern about the unit is that one of pre-installed pegs on the the leg (there is two on each side) do not fit into the the top portion of the shelf. So here I have one side (left) fitting perfectly and the other side where one peg fits correctly and the other one about 10-15 degrees off to the wrong angle. By then I had reached close to the 2 hour mark and had nearly the whole thing assembled so I decided to saw off the rogue peg. Now my top and bottom pieces are secured with three wood pegs and two horizontal long screws.The shelf is holding so far - I'm using it as a liquor shelf with the upper ones for wine glasses. Weight testing to see if it will hold its shape in 2 weeks before I load it with the glasses. Also note, I don't know if this has to do with my poor skills, the two legs of the shelf were not parallel to the wall until I loaded items onto it.*Did not use the wall brace/brackets since it required both putting holes in my wall and possible drilling holes into the "legs" because otherwise I did not see any pre-drilled holes.Appreciate if anyone has tips for further securing the unit. This is really great looking shelf for the price!

I find it curious that even though I ordered 2 of these from the same place, one came to me from China, well packed and easy to assemble, and the other came to me from Vietnam with shelves coming apart, some hardware pieces missing, and some unnecessary pieces included. It's a good thing I assembled the one from China first because it was so easy, and so simple, I didn't even bother to read the instructions on the one from Vietnam I just repeated the process that I did on the first one. Once I was done with the Vietnamese one there were so many extra screws and parts and widgets left out, but the bookcase was as sturdy as the chinese one. I loaded them both up with books, cd's and dvd's, my printer, my plants, magazines, and all manner of heavy objects and for a month now they have both been going strong. I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 because if I had received only the Vietnamese one my experience receiving and assembling the bookcase would have been totally different. So if you are just ordering one, be aware that your experience could be vastly different from someone else who ordered the same thing from the same place, cuz they make and ship it in two different places, and one knows how to do it better than the other.Update: 2 yrs later one is still holding up beautifully but the other is looking a little sloppy. Shelves tilting a bit, the posts on the side that are supposed to be straight now have a kink where they connect, the third foot underneath the bottom shelf has leaned to the side and I doubt it's actually supporting the structure anymore. I have since forgotten which shelf came from where but I suspect the dying one is the one from Vietnam...

First of all these shelves look great. They arrived quickly, i paid $62 for them, but got free prime shipping. Not sure why they changed the price and took them off of prime, but thats not my problem. :-)Anyway, a few reviewers said it took them an hour to put these together, the instructions say you need 2 people, but i, a not so handy lady, whipped these together (i bought 2), in 25 minutes for hte first one and 20 for the second one. My recommendation is to assemble the bottom 3 shelves first.Note for dummies: make sure you've got your right rails on the right and your left rails on the left, and the back of the shelves are on the side that angles towards the wall. (I had a friend who put them on backwards...truthfully the lip on the front of the shelves doesn't look bad, but these shelves will not be touching the walls when they are standing up, so you NEED the lip on the back so things don't fall behind the shelf.Recommended tools, electric screw gun or drill, the drill will be awkward for the last 2 wood screws, but a phillips screwdriver will work if you don't have power tools. Also you'll need a flat head screwdriver.I started by putting the bottom right rail on the floor holes facing up, and flanking it with the 2 upper rails for support. Dip the dowels in the glue bottle, and put all 6 in place on the bottom right rails, then dip the glue bottle on the dowels that are sticking up out of the holes. Next stand the each shelf up in the proper direction onto the dowels, with the other rails flanking them, there should be more than enough support, they should not wobble. Then put the glued dowels in the proper holes on the shelves that are up in the air and dot the ends of the dowels with glue again. Line the left rail up over the proper dowels and push into place. Then Place Barrel nuts in the bottom each shelf with the hole facing the rail, use your flat head to keep it facing the right direction, place the phillips head screw in teh hole on the rail, screw in partly by hand to make sure it's gripping and finish tightening with screw gun or screwdriver. Once you've got all 3 in, you can carefully turn it over, keeping your dowels lines up and put the barrel nuts and screws in on the other side.Once the bottom is done, u can do top, the same way, and because these shelves are smaller, you really won't need the support of the extra rails to keep it from moving. Then you can easily screw the cam lock screw into the bottom shelf in the predrilled threaded hole, place a glued dowel in the second hole, place the cam lock in the large hole on the support foot line up the holes, and tighten the cam lock. Stand up the bottom, it should stand up on its own, place the top assembly on the dowels on top, screw the 2 wood screws into the back to connect them (this is where the screw gun comes in handy, screwing in by hand would take awhile.Another note, grab a few dryer sheets and a handvac for the styrofoam, wipe all the shelves and rails with the dryer sheets, the styrofoam will be repelled and then use a handvac to clean up the mess. Not a big deal, but probably the most time consuming part of the whole project