Terms, privacy & accessibility

This manual is offered free, as general education. In plain language: use it at your own risk, we collect nothing about you, and we try to make it usable by everyone. The details follow. Last updated November 3, 2026.

1. Terms of use and disclaimer

By using this site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

Educational content only

Everything here is general information, written for hobbyists and self-taught beginners. It is not professional, medical, legal, financial, engineering or safety advice, and it is not a substitute for the judgment of a qualified professional for your specific situation. Materials, sites, climates and people vary; results will differ from what is described.

Personalized content

The "Your pictures" boxes, calendar, dates and calculator are generated automatically from what you type into the setup form, using general rules of thumb. They are planning estimates, not guarantees. Check every number against your own tests and your suppliers.

Safety

• Eye protection. Wear eye protection rated for impact, with side shields, when you cut glass or board, drive framing points, or break a sheet down for disposal.
• Broken glazing is a hazard. Gloves, tape across the break before you move the frame, wrap the pieces, and keep children and pets out of the room until the floor has been gone over twice.
• Acrylic rather than glass over a bed, a crib, a child's room, a stair wall, a hallway at head height, or anywhere a fall would reach someone. No published figure or threshold supports this; it is our own practice, and we say so where it appears.
• Two people. Get a second person for anything you cannot hold flat against the wall with one hand on each side, and for anything heavier than you can lift from the floor to above your shoulders without leaning.
• Find out what is behind the wall before you drill. Cable and pipe run inside walls, and a stud finder is a guide, not proof.
• Older walls. Walls and trim in a home built before 1978 may hold lead paint, and older textured or plaster walls may hold asbestos. Check before you sand, scrape or drill.
• Ladders. Use a step stool or a ladder of the right height, not a chair, and keep both feet on it.
• Hardware ratings. A hook or an anchor holds what its maker rates it for, under the conditions the maker names. Read the rating, and do not read a pair of hooks as twice one hook.
• Do not treat anything yourself. Do not clean, flatten, unstick or repair an original. A conservator does that, and the first attempt is usually the one that cannot be undone.
• Where not to hang. Keep framed work out of bathrooms, off walls above a fireplace or a radiator, and off a damp outside wall.
• No professional advice. This manual does not give legal, insurance, medical or financial advice, and it does not value anything. Your records stay in this browser unless you export or share them.

Third-party links and products

The site links to tutorials, suppliers, books and other resources we found useful. We do not control those sites, do not endorse or guarantee anything on them, receive no payment or commission from them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, accuracy or practices. Product and brand names mentioned belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify them.

No warranty; limitation of liability

The site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Field Assembly LLC, Reassembly and the people who made this site are not liable for any loss, injury or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site or reliance on its content. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of this may not apply to you.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from the site or these terms will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Massachusetts, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

Changes and availability

We may change, pause or remove the site or any part of it at any time without notice. We have no obligation to keep it available or up to date.

2. Privacy

Short version: this site does not collect, store or sell any information about you. If you choose to email us, we receive your address and your message.

• No accounts, no sign-up. You never need to give us an email address to use the pages. There is nothing to join.
• No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, no cookies. The site sets no cookies and includes no third-party scripts, pixels or embedded content. Fonts are served from this site, not from a font service.
• Your setup stays on your device. What you type into the setup form, and the progress checkboxes, are saved only in your browser's local storage so the site can show them back to you. They are never transmitted to us. Clearing your browser data, or using the "Clear my setup" button, deletes them.
• Share links contain your setup. The "copy a link" feature encodes your answers into the web address itself so you can open them on another device or send them to a helper. Anyone who has that link can see those answers. Do not put anything in the setup form that you would not want in a link you share.
• If you email us, we use your address only to reply, and we do not add it to any list.
• Hosting logs. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which, like any web host, processes technical request data (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use that data to identify or track visitors.
• Links to other sites take you to services with their own privacy practices.
• Children. The site is not directed at children under 13 and we knowingly collect no information from anyone.

3. Accessibility

We want this manual to be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboards, magnification or high contrast. The site is built to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. Specifically:

• Semantic HTML with headings, landmarks, lists and tables with header rows; a "skip to content" link; visible keyboard focus on every control.
• Every form field has a label; checkboxes and radio buttons are labeled; the menu button reports its state.
• Text and interface colors meet contrast minimums in both light and dark modes; information is never conveyed by color alone.
• Text resizes with browser settings, and the Text size control in the menu makes it larger on every page (saved in this browser only); layouts reflow to narrow screens; no content flashes or moves on its own.
• Buttons, checkboxes, form fields and menu items are at least 44 pixels tall, so they are easy to tap.
• Diagrams have text descriptions; icons in the navigation are decorative and accompanied by text.

Known limitations: wide reference tables scroll horizontally on small screens, and printable pages depend on your browser's print settings. If anything on this site is hard for you to use, please tell us through fieldassembly.net and we will try to fix it.

4. Copyright and sharing

© 2026 Field Assembly LLC. The text, structure and code of this manual are copyrighted. You are welcome to use the manual for your own picture, share the link freely, print pages for personal use, and quote short passages with attribution. Please do not republish the manual or substantial parts of it, sell it, or present it as your own. Linked third-party material belongs to its respective owners. The self-hosted fonts (Cormorant Garamond and Inter) are used under the SIL Open Font License.

Built by Reassembly for Field Assembly LLC.