3D Modeling Assignment #3 part 1

So here we are again.  I've got a project in 3D Studio Max to put textures, materials, and maps onto a pre-made scene.  This one is an "ammo room".  It's a simple room with bars on the windows.  There is a camera set to provide a wide shot of the room and one for a closeup of the table in the far right corner.  Thusly.

  

All I have to do is put textures and images on these surfaces to make them look real.  Should be easy.  Select your object, drag and drop the surface you want it to have, and adjust the size and orientation of that surface.  Again, though, it's proving a greater challenge than I would've imagined.  After a day of work I've only gotten as far as the floor, walls, table, chair, and a couple of sticks of dynamite.

 You'll notice that the brick texture on the walls looks weird and stretched in places along the wall with the window.  I have no idea why this happened, so I have no idea how to fix it.  I tried to use the Multi/Sub-Object mode of the Material editor on the triangular bundle of dynamite on the table.  I tried to select the dynamite sticks, the fuses, and the wrapper and make them each a sub-object.  I then tried selecting each one of those sub objects and dragging the color I wanted onto them.  Didn't work.  It ended up changing the whole assembly to the red of the dynamite or the dark gray of the fuses.  When I tried selecting the wrapper and dragging a bitmap image for the wrapping the bitmap wouldn't even drag and drop from the Material Editor's Sample Slot onto my object.  No dice.  Truthfully, though, I had the wrapper bitmap in a separate Sample Slot from the Sub-Object sample slot from where had both the red and gray colors.  I couldn't quite figure out how to make the bitmap show up as my third selection in the "Multi/Sub-Object Basic Parameters" window.  I'd hoped that just dragging it from a Sample Slot would work.  It won't drag and drop to anything  in the scene at all.  Infuriating.

After almost 8 hours of banging my head against the same wall I gave up and went to another part of the house to do something else.  I figured I'd work on a creative project I actually understood and did some very basic woodworking.  I used an oak plank and some screws from the local hardware store to build a little Zen meditation bench.

I sealed the wood with one coat of a gun stock oil and let it dry overnight.   I then used some scrap fabric and the stuffing from an old pillow to make a bench cushion for it.

I figure I could use some serious centering during this very difficult learning process.  We'll see if it helps.

I have asked for some outside help with this project.  I'll now wait for responses and try again.