Having had the recent opportunity to assemble a new grill (our old one has been moved 5 times, to 3 different states in 6 years and was ready for retirement!) I wondered how other people went about the process. Does your language get colorful? (Son of a blue belly biscuit eater!) Or do you start kicking anything close to you? (judo kick!) Click through the jump to tell us your thoughts on DIY assembly projects...aka, reading very small print and finding screws that don't exist while trying not to lose your cool, especially at your beloved partner who is just reading the directions as they were given.
AT On: Reading The Directions
Building things via instructions has always been an amusing sport to me. It's like when you were younger and your Grandma bought you the giant set of Legos that actually made something... a castle, a boat, a plane... that kind of stuff.
You would sit down and lay out all the pieces and slowly, with a furrowed brow trudge through the instructions page by page. In the end you usually left out a window, or only gave the draw bridge one pivot piece, but it was all about the fun of playing right?
Well what happens when you are an adult and you are attempting to assemble a product who's directions (although someone was hired to draw them very clearly) make absolutely no sense. And even though you are following them to the letter of the law, you still end up with something that is in the wrong place, or wasn't discussed as you were reading.
This was the case in "The Great Grill Building of 2008." We ran through the instructions and came up short on materials, patience and worst of all... EXTRA parts. Now my husband and I like to consider ourselves relatively competent when it comes to things like this, however the directions for this particular grill (Amana 3-Burner from Target) didn't supply enough information about the assembly. Or rather the information that was given in the instruction booklet was just plain wrong.
So the time that was spent reading the instructions from cover to cover felt wasted in the long run as we just ended up winging it instead. This worked out for the best for all of us as I couldn't tell him he was doing something wrong, and he couldn't tell me I was reading the instructions incorrectly. It now sits beautifully in our kitchen (as it's raining buckets upon buckets outside) to make it's fully functioning debut tomorrow.
When you have an assembly project at hand, do you take time to follow the instructions? Or do you flip through it once, chuck the booklet back in the box and say, "Forget that, hand me a screwdriver wife!?"
Photo by: Mrlego.com and Craig Jewell via Flickr.
Comments (7)
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I read the instructions for anything I don't already know how to use or that might affect the integrity of my house or self. For example, anything requiring a power drill. I just installed a wall-mounted cantilever flat screen tv arm this past weekend -- it was easy, but I did read all the instructions carefully and didn't take any short cuts. My tv is mounted, there are no extra holes in my walls, and instead of spewing expletives I was giggly with glee over my own handiness.
view kimg924's profile
I read the instructions and have never had any major problems or missing parts - most KD manufacturers will throw in an extra screw from time to time, but never had one too few.
Years ago, I used to work in a store that sold KD furniture (Pre-IKEA) We didn't have problems putting the stuff togetherourselves, but we'd get calls from irate male customers ranting about how it was "impossible" to assemble the same things that we'd assembled ourselves for display - 9 times out of 10, it was an "engineer" or some other college-degreed "professional" who couldn't be bothered with reading the directions.
view bepsf's profile
Actually, I have a bizarre love of DIY assembly kits for furniture and such. (And yes, I always follow the directions.) I really do love putting the stuff together, and it always turns out decent for me.
view Idril's profile
i read instructions when, and only when, i have NO idea what is going on half-way through a project.
view closertotheocean's profile
I always read the instructions before putting anything together, but despite that fact l don't always get it right. IKEA's instructions in particular have reduced me to tears after I've assembled everything backwards or upside down. I dunno; maybe I just don't think like a Swede!
view jowe's profile
I'm more of a look at the pictures gal... I only read narrative instructions when I cannot wrap my mind around what I've observed in the illustrations.
view Alice's profile
Software--I don't read the instructions until I need to. Putting stuff together--I lay out the instructions and go step by step, but I don't pre-read it.
view kuroneko's profile