Great Fun for the Entire Family

The Divine Owner's Manual

Separating the hardware into bags.

The Warning Page!

Extra parts after we had finished.

This little nightmare started on Tuesday afternoon after Robert arrived home with our little surprise gift for the younger kids. It's a wooden swingset and we got it on clearance for an awesome price. I was fully prepared for a 6-8 hour, no breaks, hard working assembly time. The children were all gathered around as Daddy opened the boxes. We weren't surprised to see a box full of wood and parts. I quickly located the "Owner's Manual" and began to study and prepare for the impending nightmare that was about to start. The directions seemed easy to follow (take board K-1 & F-4 and bolt ? nuts ???) and so on... It soon became clear that we were in serious trouble when we noticed that NONE of the wood was labeled. We had the kids lay all of the wood on the lawn and then Robert & I walked around measuring each piece and taking note of where each pre-drilled hole was located. Five hours later we had finally located and labeled the wood. Hudson continuously asked, "Are you done yet, Dad?" His poor little world came crashing down when we told him that we couldn't finish the swingset that night. Hudson quickly responded by grabbing a few boards and crying while yelling, "Dad you just put them together like this. Now you do it Dad." This was followed by a self destructing meltdown (Hudson, not Robert!) and soon after, Mommy was near a self destructing breakdown. It was dark outside by now, so we were forced to call it a night and drag the screaming child inside.

The next morning the girls and I decided to separate all of the nuts, bolts, screws, and a zillion other little parts into groups as they would be needed for each step. The Manual stated that there was 22 "Easy to follow steps" to finish the swingset. So we began to locate each piece of hardware, but soon realized that they too were NOT labeled. The Manual called for two 3/4 lag bolts and I am looking down at a zillion little parts. What is a lag bolt? And a Hex Bolt, Lag Screw, Carriage Bolt, Deck Screw, Fender Washer, Flat Washer, etc... All in several different sizes. The directions in the Manual were very clear and stated that you should be VERY CAREFUL not to lose any parts because there were ZERO extra pieces of hardware. So we did the best we could and managed to carefully separate the groups and place them in numbered bags. It took us 4 hours of none-stop work to finish the job.

Again, we see a WARNING page about missing parts and so on (Note that it says nothing about having too many or left over pieces.) The girls and I were feeling pretty great. We had conquered the impossible. We were on top of the world. We had found a way to make Daddy's job a little easier. We laughed and reminisced about our 4 hours of hard work and how we had located all of the correct pieces and had done a great job. BUT... Savannah noticed that we had a huge pile of leftover hardware. How could that be? The Divine Manual specifically stated that there would be NO left over parts. Had we made a mistake? The realization that we may have to dump out all of the bags and START OVER hit us all hard. Addy blurted out the first thing that came to her mind, "Let's hide the extra pieces and maybe Daddy won't know." I've decided not to make any rushed decisions. I shoved all of the bags into a basket and placed it under the bed. I'll deal with it tomorrow.