apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I kept reading the title as Fargo Instructions, and kept thinking to myself: What does Fargo have to do with Tool Time?

I have a tendeny to re read it several times, and keep refering to it during the whole stages of construction... I do the same for recipes in a very exagerrated way, but I'm always afraid of doing something wrong.

I'm a woman. I'm mechanically-inclined. I have absolutely nothing to prove. If there are more than five or six pieces, I read the instructions. After one particularly bad experience, I now count all the pieces, including screws, to make sure everything is there *before* I start putting it together.

It depends but it never hurts to read them before you proceed for many situations there is a particular order in which you need to proceed or the pieces won't fit together right.

Had an experience where I had to help a happless guy who Parently didn't read the instructions or read them right but in any rate, put together some bookcases and failed to put the back on and loaded them up with books after getting it into place and it crashed to the floor.

Needless to say, the repair was slapdash at best but at least this time the back went on and it was still standing when I left.

He kept putting the blame on the piece rather than his poor assembly attempts.

And I should say, I do read the instructions to be aware of anything not so obvious and do refer to it during the assembly process to ensure I'm doing it right.

As for recipes, I tend to follow them when doing them for the first time and one I've done it a few times, it's more to recall the ingredients than to actually follow the recipe to the letter and if I'm in the experimenting mode, it's no recipe at all. :-)

I look up all the instructions I can find and then do it my way anyway.

Instructions are a good idea. Most stuff that has to be assembled is in parts that look the same but are of different widths or lengths. It would probably be an easy mistake to attach the wrong pieces. Also if it's possible to do something stupid, perhaps attach the back of something somehow and not be able to attach the shelves afterward, putting things together in the order they are meant to be put together is the quickest way from parts to complete thing. The less going backward in order to move forward, the better. I look at the diagram, lay out the parts, start with one, and it's fairly simple after that.

For recipes, it depends on what it is. To me, baking is not really something I feel comfortable messing up. Adding too much sugar, misremembering if I already adding the vanilla extract. I can leave nothing to chance. In something more like a dinner entree or side dish, of course something like too much salt can ruin it, but making substitutions, and having more of something or less of something is going to be ok, usually. At least the kinds of things I cook.

The way I look at it is - furniture: you want it to be steady and securely built. If you have advanced skills, feel free to modify.
- baked goods: have to come out in the shape of a cake and the taste of a cake (if you're making a cake). It's all mixed together. If you make a mistake in the recipe, it will probably be a disaster (or a scone) and a giant waste of time. If you have advanced skills, feel free to modify your ingredients.
- other cooking: aside from burning or undercooking or an obvious overage or lack in seasonings, it will still be food. If you used something yucky in it like kale, it will taste yucky. If you know any tricks or tips to make kale not taste yucky, you will probably succeed. A meatloaf that doesn't bind will still taste like hamburger something or other, unless you decided to use kale in it instead of onions. If you have advanced skills, feel free to modify, with the idea there are some foods people just don't like, for example, kale.

i don't think so, tim.

I rarely read manuals. I typically only reference them if I'm completely stuck or if I'm setting up some electronic device- like programming a HD set top box.

My husband is an avid instruction manual man. I never read the instructions - who are they to tell me what to do!!!

I always get started without reading the instructions, but if I get stuck or wonder what a piece is for, then I go back to the instructions. Just like with technology - when in doubt - RTFM!