Crawl-Space Storm Shelters Designed by Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLXXXI

This is a storm shelter, Jennifer

Over the years of compiling this space, we've seen some pretty cockamamie ideas spring from the minds of greedy freelancers. It's bad enough when someone who doesn't know one end of a screwdriver from the other tries to teach people how to tune up a two-cycle engine or someone who lives in a college dorm "explains" how to build a deck, but when ignorant writers put people in danger? That's crossing a line. The line was crossed back in 2011 when eHow.com's Jennifer Dermody tried to tell the world "How to Build a Storm Shelter in a Crawl Space." That the powers that be at Leaf Group (the erstwhile Demand Media) have left this rubbish visible for over a decade speaks to the reason why eHow is the punchline of a search-engine joke.

Linen Closet Construction for Dodos - The Freelance Files MMCCLXIX

linen closet shelves

Not long ago one of the staffers was wandering the nearly abandoned halls of the original eHow.com (most of the content has been farmed out, uncorrected, to a bunch of incapped niche sites with names like HomeSteady, ItStillRuns, and SportsRec) and she ran across a post with a familiar byline. Well aware that eHow.com contributor Nichole Liandi rarely rose above freelance hack if her topic was any sort of do-it-yourself project, our staffer read through the content and added it to the nomination list. Without further ado, let's see what sort of mess Nichole managed to make of the assignment "How to Build Shelving in a Linen Closet."

Lengthening a Door for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLIII

hollow core door construction

We know how much people like to take polls, so here's a quick, two-choice poll for you, dear reader. If you need someone to tell you "How to Lengthen a Wood Door," whose instructions are you more likely to trust:

1. A carpenter or general handyperson
2. A "professional business copywriter, journalist and photographer"

If your answer is number 2, then the rubbish that returning DotD Jenn Starr pounded out for eHow.com is right up your alley, and all you need do is follow that link. If you aren't sure, read on and we'll tell you why that wouldn't be a good idea.

Recessed Refrigerators for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXLIX

Typical built-in refrigerator

Around Antisocial Network HQ we long ago realized that there are people out there who are perfectly happy to pound out any amount of bullshit necessary to pick up a few pennies. The self-appointed "expert contributors" to eHow.com have always been a prime example. Where else do you find a "state-tested nursing assistant" with a BS in "communications/public relations" pretending to know "How to Recess a Refrigerator"? Trust us: once you start reading the tripe uploaded by eHowian Nicole Brown, you just won't be able to look away...

Wiring Decisions for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXXI

15-amp breaker

The nice people at eHow¹, apparently thinking that they can fool all of the people all of the time, require that their contributors provide a short bio so that readers know their work is... "authoritative." Unfortunately, that's not always true: take the case of the post a staffer recently turned up at the mother site², a post attributed to Mark Dennis entitled "Adding an Electrical Outlet From a Light Switch." Given that Dennis claimed a "two-year electrical engineering degree," one would expect that his facts would be accurate.

A Built-In Cabinet for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXVII

A built-in cabinet

Many's the time that one of the AN amateur woodworkers has come across alleged plans for furniture or cabinetry at the niche sites of eHow.com, plans that were clearly cobbled together by a greedy freelancer. You can recognize them because the so-called plans prove said writers have not only never used them for the project in mind, they clearly have never done any of the work at all. Such is the case of one Katherine Barrington, a repeat offender we caught pretending to know how to construct a "DIY Built-in Linen Cabinet" for the mother site (aka "the mother lode of misinformation"), eHow.

How a Dummy Installs Transition Molding - The Freelance Files MMCXC

laminate to carpet transition

Most of us are familiar with the concept of a "tell," right? You know, the poker player who scratches his nose when she's bluffing, or the baseball pitcher who shrugs his shoulders before throwing a changeup? Well, a lot of freelancers have a tell of sorts, in particular when they're writing about a topic that, to be honest, they shouldn't be writing about. Today's nominee is one such freelancer, another the unending line of J-school grads who've written for eHow.com. Meet Cheryl Munson, whose tell in "How to Lay Laminate Flooring Over Concrete and Transition to Carpet" was pretty obvious to anyone who'd ever done the job.

A Floating Mantel for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXXII

floating mantel

Some of the most bizarre project instructions we've run across in our web searches can be chalked up to "creative writing" graduates who insist on attempting to adapt perfectly good plans for one project to something that is wildly different. It gets even worse when some such freelancer pretends to have gotten instructions from a source that clearly doesn't address the topic in question. We found returning DotD Katherine Barrington committing the sin of woodworking dumbassery when she posted the eHow.com content called, "How to Build a Floating Fireplace Mantel."¹

Garage Door DIY for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXII

homemade garage doors

The fine folks at eHow.com (now a division of Leaf Group) have long been kind enough to include a short bio of their contributors so that readers are aware of their expertise. It's interesting, however, to note that the vast majority of the site's content was written by people who claimed no expertise whatsoever in the topic at hand. Just today, we found an eHowian whose bio said that she had not only a Juris Doctor, but also "degrees in economics and business and teaching." Yeah, well, none of that massive pile of degrees appears to have prepared Samantha Kemp to tell us how to make an "Inexpensive DIY Garage Door"

Building a Roll-top Door with a Dummy - The Freelance Files MMCIV

articulating roll-top door 

Trying to follow instructions written by an expert can be difficult if you have no experience with the task. Trust us on that: you lack the anility to visualize the various techniques and procedures... Difficult as doing so may be, you're far worse off if you try to follow directions reworded by freelancers who had no idea what they were talking about. We found exactly that situation when we read the eHow.com post, "How to Build a Wooden Roll Top Door in a Cabinet," posted by freelancer Jonah Morrissey.

Balcony Construction for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCI

cantilevered balcony joists

It never ceases to amaze us that many of the freelancers at the former eHow.com (now a collection of niche sites under the Leaf Group umbrella) would begin to answer a question by defining even the most basic terms. For instance, we've seen many an eHowian open a post about, say, changing the tires on a 1988 Toyota Tacoma¹ by warbling that "The 1988 Tacoma is a truck built by the Toyota Corporation of Japan in 1988." Duh. And yet some of them were so careless that they never bothered to look up the definition of something they were allegedly explaining. The latter group includes one Will Gish, who failed miserably to explain, "How Is a Balcony Built?" for the mother site.

Cabinet Cost Estimation for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMXCIX

Cabinet estimation

We run across all sorts of strange notions as we patrol the internet looking for people to greedy to bother to think through their content. Most of the time this happens because the freelancer in question knows nothing, or next to nothing, about the topic in question. We think that's what happened with today's nominee, returning awardee Stephanie Mitchell. Mitchell apparently suffered a lapse in logic (that, or a lacuna in knowledge) as she wandered through the topic she'd picked out at eHow.com, "How to Calculate The Cost of Kitchen Cabinets."

Kohler Shower Repair for Dummies

leaky shower head

We suppose that there are definitive statistics somewhere out there, but out staffers are all are pretty sure that one of the most common DIY plumbing repairs is attempting to stop a leaking faucet. Since there are myriad different designs on the market that will start and stop the flow of water to a sink, hose, tub, or shower; it makes perfect sense that someone will eventually google the phrase, "My Kohler Shower Does Not Shut Off." Heaven help the poor seekers of knowledge, however, if they accidentally click on a link to the eHow.com post slapped together by Kevin Ann Reinhart.

Vaulted Ceilings for Dummies

vaulted kitchen ceiling

One question that regularly comes up the meetings where staffers present their "how-to" candidates for the DotD is something along the line of, "Did this person ever wonder why someone googled that question in the first place?" Sometimes it's pretty obvious that the freelancer in question never bothered to think the problem through, either because of ignorance or because of  avarice (probably both). It's hard to tell which is the case in the F. R. R. Mallory eHow.com post, "How to Hang a Pot Rack from a Vaulted Ceiling" – but we rather suspect greed. We'd like to think nobody could be that ignorant, especially someone who claims to have "worked as an architect."

Gable Vents Built by Dummies

Note dadoes and beveled slats

The hallmark of the clueless freelance dreck littered about the eHow.com landscape has always been the writers' failure to understand the problems their ignorance could cause. Let's take an example from the fine folks at the internet's mother lode of misinformation, eHow.com (Leaf Group hasn't figured out where to "niche" this post yet). Please welcome to the podium returning DotD Michael Straessle with his attempt to tell someone "How to Build a Wooden Gable Vent."

Plexiglass Crafts for Dummies

Not made with a band saw

 It's bad enough to find one of those old eHow.com posts where the "contributors" (as the site called it's greed-sucking freelancers) misinterpreted the questions they were allegedly answering, but it's even worse when the "answer" contained misinformation. Unfortunately, that syndrome seemed to happen with startling regularity. One of the staffers turned up a new one not long ago, Esperance Barretto pretending to know "How to Carve Plexiglass" at the mother site.

DIY Glass Wind Chimes for Dummies

glass wind chimes

Sometimes our staffers swear that these posts write themselves. This is especially true when one of the freelancers claims to have gotten DIY plans from a source that, when checked, has abso-friggin'-lutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. One of the kids dug into the files and found this example a staffer had turned up years ago. Its Kelly Sundstrom, leaving her "blueprints" niche for the eHow.com post, "DIY Wind Chimes With Glass Bottles."

Homemade Templates for Dummies

cabinet hardware template

If you read through eHow.com content in its original form, before it was niched, you might notice that the contributors writing about DIY jobs often cited print books as the sources for their "work." If, however, you read through the freelancers' posts, you'll quickly realize that no professional would ever write up the instructions you find there, so you're left with two options: either the freelancers did a really bad job of rewording, or they made everything up and just claimed to have found it in a book. We're inclined to believe the second of John Walker and his eHow post, "How to Make a Template for Cabinet Pulls."

Hardwood Plywood for Dummies

Various plywood thicknesses

The business of "answering" random queries submitted to search engines is fraught indeed. Anyone who asks Alexa, Siri, Google Home, or Cortana is already familiar with the bogosity that infects search results. We see it every day... probably because our search results seem to think that eHow.com is an "authority." Be that as it may, one of the bigger problems with the model of harvesting searches and having freelancers address them (the eHow model) is that more than a few of those queries were submitted by people who had no idea what they were asking. It's even worse when the freelancer also had no idea... which happened when Nida Rasheed pretended to know the difference "Hard Plywood Vs. Soft Plywood" for eHow.com.

Outlets in Cabinets for Dummies

recessed medicine cabinet

A lot of strange things happen when amateurs attempt to remodel their homes. Some of the ideas people come up with are, to be blunt, rather weird (we were going to say "stupid," but stupid is in the eye of the beholder). The weird idea for today is that someone Googled (or Binged, whatever) "How to Install an Outlet Inside a Medicine Cabinet." The concept alone would be bad enough, but then Cameron Easey went out and attempted to answer the poor schmuck for eHow.com.