Follow Directions: Part 1

In my latest attempt to be an independent woman, I decided to check another item off the infamous task list: organize my closet. There's one particular corner that's piled with junk so I went off to find something to put my stuff in. I brought home a box that had the words "Floor Cabinet" and "Assembly Required" on it. I've put together several shelves in my day (I won't comment on their quality) so I figured this couldn't be too different...what's a door and a couple more panels?

I opened the box and took out four pages of confusion aka the instructions. One of the first things I noticed:
...maybe for amateurs.

I proceeded to whip out my tools and began construction. I made my way past the first couple of pages which consisted of checking for the right pieces and attaching all of the appropriate screws and dowels to each piece. The first thing that pissed me off was the glue/dowel application. It said, "Apply some glue and lightly tapping the dowel until 5/16" visible." Never mind the bad grammar...what I read was "Apply some glue and lightly tapping the dowel until 5/16 visible." If you missed the difference, I didn't see that it was suppose to be 5/16th of an inch. Instead, I spent 5 minutes pulling my hair out trying to figure out why someone would use that kind of fraction for this tiny piece of wood -- how am I suppose to know what 5/16th of this thing is?! I started pounding in the dowels, stopping just past halfway, thinking it's not really a big deal if I'm a little off. Well, since I misread it, I was off and it was a big deal. This is what happens when you don't pound the dowels in deep enough and you try to connect it with another piece:

Even after this mishap, I didn't realize I misread the instructions. I thought maybe something freaky happened with this dowel or perhaps I left this particular dowel slightly higher than I should have. I did a quick check on the other dowels -- it looks like 5/16 of it is sticking out to me! I moved on.

Next came the Camlock. I had no idea what that was, and all they provided was a diagram and a couple of arrows as it if meant anything to me. However, I did figure out that I was suppose to stick another screw through it, then turn the Camlock to lock it in place. What I failed to deduce was the fact that the Camlock had to be oriented a certain way to get the other screw through. So, I spent 30 minutes trying to get the screw to go in the hole by pounding my little heart out on the poor piece of wood. Obviously, that didn't work and I was left with something crooked that looked like this:

It was 2 AM. I was tired. So, gave up in despair, quite certain this was $30 and 3 hrs down the drain. End of day 1 and this is what I had:

To be continued...