Access can often be an issue: an awkwardly located residence can cause all kinds of problems.

Shunting items of heavy furniture along a cramped corridor or up a narrow stairwell is no joke.

A few of the early residents in our complex resorted to cajoling the builders, then still on site, into deploying a mini crane to winch the odd settee or armchair up onto their balconies and in through the wide rear doors.

With the emergency option of mechanised assistance from the builders no longer available, I had some concerns last month about how I might manoeuvre the new kitchen dresser I planned to buy, up to my second floor residence.

The solution, when it struck me, was straightforward and simple. Flat pack furniture, something compactly packaged and easily portable would, I decided, suit my purposes.

I found what I was looking for in Habitat: an amply-proportioned, stylish, two-door, twodrawer, solid beech console.

A tag attached to the assembled display model indicated "some selfassembly required."

Three weeks later, two impressively proportioned delivery men casually deposited my cardboardboxed purchase on the living room floor.

A marvel of compact packaging, it was exceptionally heavy, but seemed hardly thicker than a well-stuffed A4 envelope.

How the manufacturers had managed to shoehorn what I recalled as a sizeable cupboard into such a small parcel seemed an exceptional achievement.

The component parts, on inspection, had been stored with such neat precision that just unpacking them seemed an act of destruction . . . like breaking up a complicated jigsaw.

But strewn about the floor, the contents suddenly seemed an odd assemblage of strangely-shaped and oddly-carved wooden pieces. It dawned on me that a degree of manual dexterity far beyond my compass might be called for if these bits and pieces were to be fashioned into anything recognisable as an item of furniture.

The instructions, though, seemed straightforward:

no garbled text, just wellillustrated diagrams. I counted out the nuts and bolts and lined them up in rows. I checked each component against the illustrated list of contents:

all present and correct!

The big problem with self-assembly, I can declare with hindsight, is that when you think you've got the hang of it and the whole process seems, literally, too easy for words, the temptation to ignore the paperwork can prove irresistible. (When this piece obviously fits into that piece, why waste time searching for the diagram instructing you to 'Slot A into B'? ) It was consequently too late for caution when I happened upon an alarmingly large and completely overlooked steel pole hiding under discarded wrapping.

The discovery prompted frantic referral to the relevant diagram, followed by a considerable degree of disassembly, in order to insert what was now apparent as an absolutely essential support bar, without which the weight of a few plates and saucers might have been enough to collapse the assembled structure completely.