Hello readers of welcometoheardmont.com!  I have a story to tell!  And also access to this very soapbox on to which to tell it!  For this is not the singsong of the sweet innocent muse of whom you are accustomed, no!, herein lies a tale quite different, not but because of the content, or the format, and let me lay aside any whispers of a lack of cuteness, because (scroll down!) IT IS THERE.  Nay, Today, the silent voice of the Other is freed, the background is becoming the focus, the slave the master, the last the first!

Because I, Stephen, Today, have been pushed out of the womb of silence, been slapped by the doctor of home improvement, and am for the first time filing my lungs with the sweet air of the Blogosphere!  Yes, it is time for my debut!

IT ALL STARTED as an seemingly uneventful second-trip-of-the-day to Lowe’s (which is not uncommon) for a second tube of white, quick-dry, silicone, completely unrelated to this story caulk.  But while M was occupied in the returns line (again unrelated), I got to my wanders, and came across 2 things: 1) my own brilliant idea, and 2) PEGBOARD!

Ah yes, how satisfying is it to enable an object to fulfill its own exact purpose.  (To analogize the late Mitch Hedburg: “I’d like to see a forklift lift a crate of forks. It would be so… literal.”)

Anyway, the day’s immediate task immediately turned from whatever the heck we were there for the caulk for, to hanging pegboard in the garage!  And since I happen to be a Heardmontee by nature, it is my duty, nay!, Calling!, to document and report.  So we have now arrived at the post of the hour, ah, yes, let’s call it:

“A Modest Pegboard-Posal”

(a.k.a. wordily elaborating on using common and pre-made goods to organize some tools)

After a little procurement and intra-city travel I found myself standing in our newly clean garage with a 48″x48″ sheet of 3/16″ thick pegboard ($7), a “Real Organized 43 Piece Pegboard Organizer” kit ($13), and I gotta tell you, up to this point I had absolutely no idea how I was going to go about this.  The whole point of the pegboard is that it has a 1″x1″ spaced grid of holes that you can hang little hooks from, and in turn hang your tools from the hooks.  This is a great system but it requires the pegboard to float off of the wall at a distance at least big enough so that you can insert the hooks.

So I started to look around the garage and found an old board (it actually was cross beam from our old bed that we didn’t use because they gave us like 20 of them).  I immediately thought “That’ll do.”  The board was hardwood, 2.5″ by 1″ by just over 74″ long, and had some little rivets that I had to remove, but that’s not important.  Then I decided where I wanted to locate the pegboard.  Right, just above the work bench, that makes sense.  Now that I had all the materials and the location, I went about persuading the pegboard onto to the wall as so conveniently outlined in the following 10.5 steps:

1)  I decided the minimum I could get away supporting the pegboard with was 2 horizontal boards at the top and the bottom of the pegboard, so I cut the board in half.  This made two nice boards almost exactly 37″ wide.  Since the pegboard was 48″ wide, I used MATH to figure out that I would need 5.5″ overhang on each side to center the horizontal boards.

2)  I eyeballed the location where I wanted the board to be and marked the bottom right hand corner on the wall.  Don’t over-think this, just figure out a good location and go.

2.5)  So let me note that the bottom of the bottom board should match the bottom of the pegboard, and the top of the top board should match the top of the pegboard.  Just in case.

3)  I then got out the stud finder and located the studs in the walls, marking them with pencil near the bottom and the top of the pegboard’s future location.  Measure the distance between the studs, it normally should be around 16″.  It’s important to screw your horizontal support boards into the studs in the walls.  Don’t try to use drywall anchors, they don’t agree with pegboards on a lot of issues and that’s last thing you want to have to deal with while you’re building your birdhouse or whatever.

4)  I held the bottom board horizontally with the bottom right corner of the board 5.5″ to the left of where I marked the bottom right corner of the pegboard (MATH, remember?).  I used a level to make sure the board was… level… and then transferred the stud locations from the wall onto the board, and marked the location of the board on the wall.  When you do this be sure to mark which side is up and forward on the board so you don’t install it incorrectly later.

5)  I then held the top board to the bottom board and marked the stud locations on the top board.  This will put the top board approximately directly above the bottom board.  Remember:  don’t over-think this stuff.

6)  Next I drilled holes through the middle of the boards where the studs are to be.  I had found some 3″ drywall screws to use to attach the board to the wall, so I drilled the holds the same diameter as the screws.

7)  I finally attached the bottom board to the wall.  My board ended up having 3 screws in it, so I screwed the right screw into the wall at the location I had marked, leveled the board, and screwed the left and center screws in.  Easy right?

 Then I figured out the vertical location of the top board.  I already had the studs marked on the wall and on the top board from steps 3 and 5, so I only needed to mark the height.  At each stud I measured 48″ from the bottom of the bottom board.  This height should be the top of the top board.  I marked the height and repeated step 7 for the top board.

9)  Now we have the pegboard support up!  Celebrate, the difficult part is over!  All that is left is to hang the pegboard!  I dry-fit the pegboard onto the supports by hanging it on some finishing nails, just to get it into the correct position (remember: top and bottom of pegboard are to be flush with the top and bottom of the supports, and in my case I had a 5.5″ overlap of the pegboard on the supports).  The final step is to screw the pegboard onto the supports.  I used 1-5/8″ deck screws (because I had some laying around), 5 of them each on the top and bottom, spaced approximately equally over the support boards (again, don’t over-think it).  Be sure to screw through the pegboard material, and not through the holes in the pegboard!

10)  Congratulations, everybody!  Our pegboard is complete!  Now comes the fruit of our labor – ORGANIZING!  Oh man, there’s nothing like getting to sort through all that crap you’ve been throwing in your tired old toolbox for the last 5 years.  But since that doesn’t technically pertain to hanging pegboard, I will now retire the use of numbered steps.

Now a quick montage of me organizing my tools:

The pegboard is done, the tools are up, so now the party can begin.  And don’t worry my edge-of-the-seat sitting reader, I won’t shy from my promise of cuteness.  For your cute-tainment, I present one Miss Tina B. Heard, circa 2005.

Awwwww.