Life's a beech! (Argos Beech Baby Bookcase)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Argos Beech Baby Bookcase
Date:	30/09/08 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A lovely looking bookcase, very cheaply priced, easy to assemble, moveable shelves

Disadvantages: Heavy and bulky to carry I think!

I have been looking for a small bookcase for my bedroom for a while without success, everything I saw either online or in a shop would be too tall or too deep. Everything that is until I read a review by BOMBA on here on this Beech Baby Bookcase from Argos. It sounded perfect at the time and now a couple of weeks later I have the perfect bookcase next to my bed.

This is a flat pack bookcase and comes in a tall narrow cardboard box, I thought it was quite heavy to carry although my son in law said it wasn't and he was the one carrying it so who am I to contradict him?

It was so easy to put together that I did it alone, and this from the woman who cannot successfully assemble ANYTHING even having to throw away a brand new DVD rack recently because I made such a pigs ear of it! This Baby Bookcase though was extremely simple to put together, I found it a little bit fiddly to get the two sides attached to the base before putting the top on but nothing that propping the bookcase against the wall couldn't fix.

All of the wooden pieces of bookcase were there, which is a surprise in itself when discussing Argos furniture, and I also liked the fact that all the screws, bolts etc. came in little plastic bags so that none can be lost or accidentally thrown away with the box. All of the holes were drilled in the correct places and there was a very well described instruction sheet telling me how to put together the bookcase.

One thing worth mentioning here, if you are buying the bookcase for upstairs then I would suggest you assemble it in the room where it is going to live as although this is a small bookcase it would be quite bulky to carry up the stairs I would imagine. Once assembled it stands a shade under 83cm high, 65cm wide and the depth is 16 1/2cm.

The finished bookcase looks lovely. Despite the small size of it there is plenty of room for my books and I have also used it for ornaments and placed a vase of flowers on the top. The wood, while cheap Beech, looks great and matches my solid beech bedroom furniture perfectly. I think if someone were to go over it with a fine tooth comb then they may see that this isn't the best quality wood in the world, but this only cost me £9.99 and I think for that price the quality is astounding.

One other thing worth mentioning is the fact that I can move the shelves and this is very easy to do. All I have to do is move the small metal shelf supports up or down a notch so that I have a larger shelf for my bigger books and then two smaller shelves for all the paperbacks I keep buying whenever I am in a charity shop. The shelves sit very securely on the shelf supports with no wobble at all, even on the middle shelf where I keep my heavier unstable knitting pattern folders.

There are three shelves in the bookcase, and also the top of it which in effect is a fourth shelf which I think is perfect for a bedroom bookcase. Saying that, this bookcase would look just as good in a living room and I am considering buying another for in the kitchen as I think it would be perfect for storing the 100+ cookery books I own.

Argos is of course the only place you can purchase this bookcase, but it really is worth a trip to your local depressing store as this is a complete bargain.

Summary: A lovely bookcase for under £10!