Review on Simpli Home Shaker Solid Distressed by Adrian Hayes

I'm not the most practical person but over the years I've managed to collect a lot of things I've received from Revain. I got this in the LAST STEP. No, I won't ask for a refund and I don't want a replacement - I don't want to go through the assembly again and I'm not even sure I'll have better luck next time. This is a beautiful table and very durable, but assembly is not for everyone in my opinion. It wasn't easy to open the tightly wrapped package, and then you were faced with 9 pieces of wood, 14 hex screws, 8 cam locks and pins, and 8 dowels to assemble. If you're unfamiliar with cam locks, I highly recommend doing some research before you start building. It took me hours to put everything together and just as I was congratulating myself I groped for the final step (Step 7) where the top was to be secured to the bottom with 4 cam locks. It wasn't easy to align everything - the table is bulky and the cam lock pins need to be screwed in properly. Unfortunately, I couldn't tighten the two cam locks. And unfortunately I screwed in two more eccentric locks, so now there was no way to take those two apart and try again. So now my table top is not connected to the rest of the table. I suspect I'm not the only one having trouble with this step. The manufacturer (Simpli Home) posted a webpage entitled 'My cam locks won't close - what should I do?' And I suspect that maybe that's why there are 4 dowels with pre-drilled holes in each corner under the tabletop, so that even an unsecured tabletop at least doesn't slip off. I learned an expensive lesson.