So, a few weeks ago, I wrote about our decision to buy a Lifetime Portable Basketball Hoop - Model 90228. Well, it's assembled, up, and the kids are loving it.
When the box arrived, the kids couldn't wait for us to put it together. The cool thing about Lifetime basketball hoops is even though it's a pretty large product, it's actually packaged all in one box. Granted, it's a big box (size varies slightly depending on the size of backboard you buy). But, it easily fits in an SUV and probably in the trunk of most mid-sized cars. By the way, did you know Lifetime actually invented packaging basketball hoops in one box? Really, they did! Back in 1992. It may seem like a novel idea now, but that invention made it so basketball hoops could be sold in mass retail markets like Walmart and chain sporting goods stores. Before that, you could really only buy them in specialty sporting goods stores because they were so difficult for stores to stock and customers to get home. So how did we do it? Well, a Lifetime portable base has lots of unique indentations… which all serve a purpose to provide protection for all the metal poles and rim in the package during shipping. Cool, huh?
Anyway, I digress. So, we opened the box, inventoried all of our pieces, and we started assembling. The first hour of our assembly process went pretty well. (At least that's what we were thinking at the time.) Along the way, we did encounter a few obstacles and there were definitely times when I felt like we were completing one of the Road Blocks on the Amazing Race. But, nonetheless, four hours later we had a Lifetime Basketball Hoop in our driveway ready for action.
In my next post, I'll share with you some of the specific areas that truly tested our assembling skills. In the meantime, here are my top three pieces of advice before you even start assembling your Lifetime Basketball Hoop:
1. Assemble it either outside or in a garage with at least an 11' ceiling so you can set the system completely upright when needed.
2. Make sure you have at least 2 adults assembling... having a third would come in handy sometimes. I'm not exactly Miss Muscular and there is a point where I had to hold the almost completely assembled basketball system for a lengthy period of time and because of its awkward size and shape, it got pretty heavy.
3. Read the instructions VERY carefully for each step. Make sure you understand the step completely, know exactly what pieces you need, and know how you are going to tackle it before you start the step. Trust me. We learned this the VERY, very hard way. Don't just assume you know what the instructions mean when referring to a certain part, or the way to orient the part.
In my next post, I'll share with you how our assumption - or misassumption rather - added an extra hour of undoing our work, fixing it, then redoing it the right way. One word…ugghh.
