AUNT Laurie and family gave
this dresser as a gift to the Twins.
You might recall the
post.
It is from Ikea, a retailer that does well in selling inexpensive, assemble it yourself, furniture made of pine and paperboard. That is fine for what it is, but he thinks that with a little effort, these normally disposable furniture pieces can have their lives extended far beyond what most people experience with them.
Hey, Grandma Hanasik always said, take care of your stuff. The difference between high class people and low class people isn't how much stuff they have, it is how well they take care what they do have.
Dad has had a number of products from them over the years and has had the same observation about them. They tend to fall apart because they lack a good backbone. If you place your hand on the top of the top shelf and push, it will readily move a 1/8th of an inch. Pulling it back doubles that sway movement to an 1/4". That amount of play tends to increase over time leading to a point where the whole thing becomes so far out of square that the drawers will not open or if they will, they will not close. Then it becomes less and less useful. Perhaps one day one of the Twins decides to use one of the non-closing drawers to climb up. But the drawer bottom cannot support his weight, he breaks through, there is a big hole, Mom is angry that her little boy is injured, and decides that that piece of excrement has to go.
Before that hypothetical comes to pass, Dad decides to modify the dresser a bit to make it sturdier.
The basic problem is that the dresser is not boxed, it lacks structure to prevent it from moving left and right. Dad can't do anything to add structure to the front of the it, the side in the back ground above, because that is the drawer front side. But the rear is completely open, and when placed against a wall, it doesn't have to be finished and pretty. So he will cut and install something on the rear that will box it in, or add a spine, or add a keel, or provide rigidity - choose your idiom. This will cover the rectangular space in the foreground in the picture above.