Same here. Been running Android since 2010 on 3rd party ROMs. Thought I'd bricked on more than one occasion but somehow got away with it. Guides purporting to provide the "definitive" or "foolproof" rooting / flashing method rarely do, leaving out crucial steps and not considering the full combination of starting points that might / will occur and the effect of tinkering.

I concur with justin66. The necessary skills to deal with something going awry would seem to be good criteria for searching out Cyanogenmod for themselves and making the jump rather than casually clicking on "install" in the play store.