MISSION NOT QUITE IMPOSSIBLE

I bought a rowing machine yesterday from Rebel Sport. It's a York turbine  and looks like this:

 

Of course, when purchased it came in a flat pack box like this:

Out of the box it looked like this after I'd put the more obvious major pieces together.:

But fortunately it came with a 'helpful' assembly diagram Here:

Bugger me. I'm hopeless at assembling Ikea-type furniture and hate having to put together virtually anything you buy nowadays. I battled away for a couple of hours, having to install industrial-like lighting so as to see the tiny bolt and screw holes and to find the bolts, screws and washers that I invariably dropped on to the floor.

I only had one panic situation though as about a third of the way in I discovered that I was missing an axle, some vital bolts and washers and some foot-pads. Bummer. I searched through everything that I'd unpacked including going through the mountain of cardboard, plastic and styrofoam and couldn't find them. I laid out everything I had, photographed them and was about to ring Rebel Sport when I had one last look in the outer cardboard box. The missing items were shrink-wrapped onto a piece of flat cardboard that had been put into the carton upside down so all you could see was a bit of flat cardboard that merged with the bottom of the carton. Whew!

I eventually got it assembled and working.

The next step will be to get rid of a bed in one of the guest rooms (we don't get many guests nowadays), and set it up as a mini-gym.