How a Dummy Builds a Batten Door - The Freelance Files MMCLXXXI

Batten door

If it were not so annoying, reading how-to instructions reworded by ignorant freelancers would be hilarious. Trust us: we see a lot of examples... Whatever the case, some of the more annoying-slash-amusing instruction sets are those written by people who have not only never performed the task, they've never even done anything in the same field of endeavor. Someone, say one of our staffers, who's a competent DIY carpenter could reword a set of instructions for "How to Build a Batten Door" and make sense of them for HomeSteady.com. But an ESL teacher and sometime author with a BA in English? Not unless Karren Doll Tolliver moonlights as a carpenter...

We'd run across Tolliver's work once before in a hack job on some homeowners Christmas decoration blog that was so bad even eHow deleted it. This time out, Tolliver found herself some fairly good instructions and then proceeded to hack them up as well. A competent DIYer could (probably) make sense out of her post, but the wise wannabe door builder will move along – perhaps to the instructions she bastardized for DMS.

Once you get past the obvious evidence of ignorance, most of what Karren had to say is useful. It's the dumbassery on display, however, that caught the eye of our surfing staffer. Check out these logical fallacies:

• For the crossbraces (ledges), "Buy regular boarding that is about the same width as the tongue and groove boards but thicker, say 2 by 8 inches." Really? a 2-by-8? Maybe for a rolling barn door that's 10 feet by 15... And who calls lumber "boarding,"¹ anyway?
• How about, "cut the tongue in groove [sic] boards"? She even said "tongue and groove" a paragraph earlier!
• "Subtract the depth of the beading on both sides of the doorway..."? We have no idea; perhaps it's a Britishism for molding?
• Tolliver says to, "Screw the ledge to the batten" in her step 7, but in step 8 says to, "Turn the assembly over so that the ledges are on the workbench... Screw the rest of the battens onto the ledges..." It's gonna be hard to screw into the back of the battens from underneath...

Although both of her references say to use clamps to assemble the battens, Karren just says to, "Push them tightly together." Wonder how you do that for a barn door six feet wide... And last but not least, Tolliver says of any diagonal braces used that, "The braces should angle from the outer edge of the door toward the hinged side." Uh, yeah, that's what "diagonal" means. What's important is the direction that they "angle": What she should have said is, "The braces should slant downward toward the hinges." Otherwise, they're just decorative. Through her ignorance and omissions our Dumbass of the Day managed to turn useful instructions into something that would confuse any beginning carpenter and more than a few intermediate ones. Small wonder she's getting this (non-) prestigious award!

¹ We suspect, based on her use of "boarding" and "beading," that Tolliver cribbed her instructions from a BritEng book and didn't know enough to translate them to "lumber" and "molding" for an USOnian audience 

DDIY - DOORS