I've been working diligently to prepare for publication my first tutorial, on applying acoustic panels to a door. Two days ago, I noticed the bottom row of acoustic panels on my office door had dropped a bit, leaving a gap between it and the row above it. The row above it was loose as well. I pulled the bottom row off and reseated it on the existing tape. The next morning I was greeted by the bottom row on the floor, perfectly aligned with the door making it difficult to open. Clearly once this tape comes loose, it is no longer viable. The bottom row has been removed, and I have been pressing on the row above it every time I leave the office in hopes of keeping it in place well enough to avoid the row above it coming loose as well, between now and the time I sort out another adhesive solution.
The rest of the rows above all still appear to be solidly attached. Based on how the adhesive failed on the first try (this was the second), the doorknob panel is doing some of the heavy lifting, keeping everything around it in place as it is being held in place no only by adhesive but by the knob as well. This does not necessarily apply to the couple of rows below the knob, so I'm doing my best to keep those in place for now.
I was left facing a dilemma: post the tutorial with the caveat that it doesn't work as-is, or hold off, and write up one of the other projects on my list. I know from experience that such caveats are often glossed over or missed,. However, perhaps more importantly, I didn't feel comfortable putting out a deeply documented project that would likely fail within a relatively short period of time. After much thought, I made the choice to hold off on posting this project until I can say for certain there is a successful conclusion.
I guess the timing is serendipitous; I would have felt worse if I had posted the entire tutorial only to have it fail on me at that point. But, if I'm being honest, that's not making me feel any better at the moment.
I have another type of adhesive on the way. It should arrive tomorrow. I have no idea how well it will work, but it appears to be working on my wife's door. However, she's using different panels than I am, so it's distinctly possible that it won't work on mine. I will document application, and then give it enough time to prove a success or a failure.
Whatever comes of it, I will share the project. The issue isn't that I will only share successful projects. The issue is that I wouldn't feel right sharing a tutorial that would likely lead to failure and disappointment. I had already intended on writing a post about the failed first attempt to apply the panels. If this turns out to be a failure overall, I will share it as a story from which to learn. I can still cover the materials and process as I would in a tutorial, however, it will be abundantly clear that the result was unsuccessful. All tutorial posts will be projects at which you can succeed. I will share my failures in a different format to ensure there is no confusion between the two.
I chose another project, and I'm working hard to get it well documented for you. I will be covering organising all of my electronics and project parts. It was a huge undertaking, and I'm hoping my process will help others manage to tame their collections as well.
Thank you again for your patience with me. I can't express how much I appreciate it. I had obviously planned to be publishing content by now, and as it seems to be with everything, none of this is working out as I intended. So, I'm doing my best to roll with the punches, something I am often forced to do, but only very slowly become any better at doing.