St. Charles Church Book Nook Kit

The assembly of this was very reasonable. It was my first time putting one of these together. They really are durable and the instructions were quite clear. I think it's my new hobby and I'm going to order a few more. The price was very reasonable because I got two in this package. The lighting on it was really beautiful. My grandkids helped me do this, but it was definitely, at least for me an adult project. It is very fair priced I highly recommend and I loved this.

The Nookfan - St. Charles Church is 1 of 4 in their Architectural series. This series are all Mini Nooks so they are approximately 2/3 the size of a regular Book Nook. This kit is made from printed MDF, printed plexiglass and printed acrylic and stickers. The instruction manual is in full color and a QR code is provided if you would like to download a digital copy.

All of the pieces from the varied media types were easy to remove from their respective boards. The plexiglass for the dust cover has a protective film on the both sides that you will need to remove prior to installation. The acrylic pieces in this kit do not have the protective film on the unprinted side so you can just remove the piece and install it. The print work on all components were clear, clean with no bleed over and legible where needed.

The fit for the majority of the pieces were within the expected Nookfan tolerances. I did use glue with most of the acrylic tabs just as a safety measure to ensure they stayed in their slots. The sides of this kit are mirror images of each other so once you finish the left side, the next part of the build is the opposite wall and you will go quicker with it knowing what you did on the previous wall.

The light kit for this build is two LED bulbs and two LED light strips. The light strips barely had enough wire to reach their installation points. This normally wouldn’t be an issue but the path for the wires goes behind the corner sections in the back of the build and those pieces did not attach firmly to the outer walls once they were in place. Unfortunately, the way the wires are run in this build, portions will remain visible after the kit is complete. This may have been avoidable with only a couple of centimeters more of wiring for the strip lights. The rear wall decoration does hide most of the wiring but there are gaps on either side where the wires remain visible.

The arched ceiling uses printed acrylic panels that are sturdy enough that when you get them installed, they will force the outer walls outward. This does somewhat correct once the wooden supports are installed and connected to the outer walls but I still ended up needing to glue the front frame in place to assist the side walls from pushing outward.

This kit uses magnets again for the dust cover so there are magnets in the front frame, side wall and the dust cover. Since the magnets are separated by the plexiglass panel of the dust cover, it is easy to remove when desired. When not on the front, it can be attached to the side wall.

This completed kit is a nice homage to a portion of the St. Charles Church in Vienna. Another lovely addition for those looking for architectural or travel displays.

The Nookfan - Duomo Di Milano is 1 of 4 in their Architectural Series. This series are all Mini Nooks so they are approximately 2/3 the size of a regular Book Nook. This kit is made from printed MDF, printed plexiglass and printed acrylic. The instruction manual is in full color and a QR code is provided if you would like to download a digital copy.

All of the pieces from the varied media types were easy to remove from their respective boards. The plexiglass and acrylic pieces have a protective film on the unprinted side that you will need to remove prior to installation. the print work on all components were clear, clean with no bleed over and legible where needed.

The tolerances of the pieces in this build was spot on overall with only a few exceptions. There are a few pieces in this build that are glued in place requiring you to be careful while working around them unless you allow drying time. Most of the plexiglass statues do need glue as well to ensure they remain in place.

One thing that did catch me by surprise is that the base and two tires above are glued in place without any structural pieces connecting them. I decided for that joining to utilize double sided adhesive strips in addition to glue to keep them from sliding around. Ultimately, the side walls will connect and secure them, but it was still an unusual method. The interior structure was otherwise straight forward and doesn’t throw you any real curveballs.

The dome ceiling is another story altogether. The ceiling begins with the wooden arches which have two flat panels and each flat panel receives a pliable bending piece. Be especially careful with the flat pieces as the slot for the bending piece by the point is only 1mm thick and snaps if you look at it wrong. From there you flip the page in the manual and suddenly think you are in origami class! The ceiling panels are pliable acrylic and believe me when I say you will not think this will work when you start bending the pieces and attaching them to each other. All I can tell you is “Trust the process!”. More than likely, you will begin by not bending the pieces enough out of sheer fear of breaking them, but you won’t break them. Once you get the three ceiling panels connected to each other, you connect them to the...