Yes it has been too long. Starting your career from scratch really takes it outta ya.
But we have been working on the house, I promise! Any guesses as to what messy project we’ve tackled this time?
Welcome to Heardmont
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I’ll spare you the suspense and just get right down to business – Stephen picked high gloss, super manly black for the studio trim. (Need to catch up on our project? Click here)
Here’s how it all went down.
After sanding down all the existing old wood trim in the room, we started to paint. Luckily I learned my lesson with windows when we did our living room trim and knew it didn’t matter if I got paint on the glass. A handy-dandy razor blade is all you need to fix that.
Once I had a coat on the window and doorway trim, it was on to the baseboards. We tried to avoid getting paint on our new floors by sneaking brown painter’s paper under the baseboards. Sadly, any paint that we got on the paper acted like an adhesive and stuck it to the trim. :(
Next time, we may try using painter’s tape or pulling the paper up before the paint dries. If there is a next time. haha.
After the paint dried, we put on a second coat and then went back around and edged everything with our wall paint color to get a nice sharp line. I don’t use tape to do this, but I know lots of people swear by it. For me, getting in the painting groove usually makes my lines straighter than if I’d wasted time taping.
After we’d finished our glossy black trim, it was time to switch out our outlets and light switch to coordinate.
Now don’t let this picture fool you… at this point it was about 9 pm on a Sunday night after having starting painting that trim Saturday morning. The real life version of this picture looks like this.
Yep, nighttime electrical work requires a head lamp, people. Be prepared.
After we turned the power back on and we were sure all the outlets worked, I was in charge of putting on the outlet covers.
Besides the 4 outlets and 1 light switch, our 1981 ranch featured a lovely ROUND telephone jack in the studio. Needless to say, not many of our local hardware stores carry ROUND telephone jacks, especially black ones. The solution? Spray paint for the cover and a Sharpie for the part attached to the wall.
We weren’t too upset by our DIY black telephone jack cover, especially since it got covered up by the couch anyway.
So do you want to see the room to date? Here it is!
Admittedly not the best photo I’ve ever taken, but it was nighttime and we were just too excited to share the result of a weekend of painting trim! Still on the to-do list are baseboards in the closet on the other side of the room, installing threshold pieces at the entrance to the room and the entrance to the closet, and (oh yeah) decorating!
So what do you think of Stephen’s color choices? Modern? Manly? Meh?
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If you like funny things, you’ve got to check out the new blog Catalog Living. It’s the perfect sarcastic response to the over-styled photos you see in home decor magazines.
Found and immensely enjoyed via Young House Love. Go check Catalog Living out!
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Hi everybody! I’m doing my best to get back into a schedule and some good habits, now that I’m into the swing of my new job. Setting up my email, getting business cards, taking classes, and starting up a facebook page and website for my new career as a Realtor has taken away some blogging time as of late.
I did manage to stop by one of my favorite local thrift stores the other day though, and check out what I found!
I actually picked up two of these lampshade frames for $2.50 each for a little project I’m working on in our master bedroom. I just need to order a few more supplies and hopefully I’ll have a fun DIY project to share soon!
(Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten our promise to reveal the studio trim color. It’s coming soon!)
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In case you didn’t notice when we painted the studio, we snuck some baseboards in on ya between the “during painting” and “after painting” photos. Well, here’s a run-down of how we pulled that off.
When we first bought Heardmont, Stephen and I decided we’d replace and paint the baseboards as we changed out the flooring and that we’d paint the original wood trim around all the windows and doors to match. Needless to say, we had never installed any kind of trim before this project, but it was pretty painless. Because we knew we’d be using any extra trim on other rooms in the house eventually, we decided buying in bulk was the way to go.
We picked up 8 – 16 foot long pieces of standard 3.5″ baseboards, some caulk, a miter box and saw, a coping saw, and some nails for our nail gun and then loaded up the Subaru.
First step was to measure the first wall we were trimming and then cut the trim to that same length.
Here’s the miter box in action. We decided a $10-15 miter box and saw was more cost effective than a $80+ miter saw for our one-room-at-a-time approach to trimming.
Each piece after the first one also had to be coped – that is, cut to fit up against the piece before it with the coping saw.
We installed all of the baseboards by nailing them in place with our pneumatic air gun (on permanent loan from a friend). We marked the studs ahead of time with blue painters tape so we knew we were nailing into the strongest parts of the wall.
As you can see we were no experts when it came to fitting those corners together, but that’s where caulk came in to save the day!
Now we promise there’s a reason we chose gray caulk over the typical white variety. It’s because Stephen picked a slightly unconventional color for the trim in this room. What color did he choose? Stick around for the answer and more progress pics!
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Howdy everybody! We’re back for an update on progress in the man room studio. (It got re-named in the process of getting re-done. Such a shame, I really got a kick out of calling it the man room…)
Last we left off, we’d finished laying the laminate flooring we purchased with our yard sale proceeds.
Next, it was time to choose a paint color. Stephen got total creative control over this makeover, so after deciding he wanted a very modern masculine space, he chose Valspar’s Mountain Smoke as the wall color.
This is what the room looked like during the painting process. Stephen left on a business trip and came home to a gray room. I think it looked pretty close to what he was going for.
Of course “the band” couldn’t stay out of the studio for long, so we moved some of their gear back in for one of their Monday night rehearsals.
After painting the walls, there was still lots to do – namely craziness with the window trim and baseboards. Stephen thought outside the box on that one, but it really paid off. Stay tuned for more man room (ehem) studio fun!
(In more personal news, I listed my first house this weekend! Please keep us in your thoughts and let’s hope I can keep this up!)
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How many of you have seen the new Sex and the City movie? My gals and I finally got to see it Monday night, and I have to say I was disappointed. Anything but stellar acting, a very shallow story line, and puns worse than Pam from The Office’s original hair style left me feeling like I’d wasted my money.
However, the one redeeming factor of the film (aside from the fact that it only cost $4 on weeknights – woot!) was the fashion – both the clothing and the interior decorating. Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte wore some pretty wild outfits and got to chill in some FABULOUS spaces, but my absolute favorite room in the whole movie was Carrie and Big’s entry at their new apartment. Can you guess why?
(Carrie stands in her entryway)
(A photo of our master bedroom)
Yup, you guessed it! I have the same mirror hanging above my bed that Carrie and Big had in their over the top, lavishly decorated NYC pad. I guess you could say, I’m on the cutting edge of interior decorating. Just call me trend-settah! 
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We’re going to have to do this post in list format because there’s been just too much going on around Heardmont for everything to get its own post!
Big Project #1: Having a Yard Sale
We had our yard sale on Saturday and it was a huge success! My mom was in town and she, my brother, Stephen, and I had fun hanging out and makin’ money. We sold stuff from 7 – 2, but of course we had people waiting for us to open at 6:30. Crazy old people! 
We made signs and advertized on Craigslist, and had a steady stream of people all day. The best part? On top of bringin’ in the dough, anything that didn’t sell got immediately loaded into our Forester and dropped off at the local Goodwill donation center. What a weight off! Our garage has never looked better
(You may have noticed we removed our Craigslist Challenge list on the left sidebar. Not much of a point in keeping that around when we don’t have anything left to sell, right?!)
Big Project #2: Grouting our Closet Tile
In my last post, I mentioned we had been doing some work in our walk-in closet. Several months ago we started laying tile in our closet to match the tile in our bathroom, and last week we finally cleaned up the mess we made (we were super amateurs) and grouted that darn tile!
I’m planning on doing a post on the dos and don’ts of laying tile soon. We definitely learned some lessons with this project, which we applied to…
Big Project #3: Laying New Flooring in the Man Room
On Sunday, Stephen and I had a talk about how he really wanted to use the yard sale money to make his ”Man Room” a clean, calm, and organized space to write music and get away. It wasn’t very inspiring in its current state, cluttered with bare concete floors, so after lunch we ran up to Lowe’s with our friend Casey and picked up some nice laminate flooring and moisture barrier and tile and mortar for the closet.
Here are 2 views of the room before with everything removed but the couch.
And here’s how the flooring looked as of last night, after tiling the closet and laying the laminate.
We chose to tile the closet rather than continue the laminate because our kitty litter box resides in this closet and we wanted to keep it as sanitary and stain-resistant as possible in there. The plan is to do one project a night in the man room until we’ve got it completely trimmed, painted, and reassembled.
And last but not least…
The Big Announcement: A New Career
One week from Friday will be my last day at my current job because I am leaving to be a real estate agent! I am beyond excited to start this phase in my life. Being a real estate agent has always been something I’ve wanted to do, and the time is right. I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive husband, family, and group of friends as I told them my plans, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to do something I truly love for a living.
I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing about my new career on the blog (could be very little, could also be a whole bunch!), but if you’re in the market to buy or sell a house in Northwest Arkansas please give me a call. Thanks so much for your support and stay tuned for more tile and Man Room updates! :)
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In my head, I’m singing the title of this post to the tune of ”The Heat is On” by Glenn Frey because I’m so PUMPED about all we accomplished this weekend! (Side note: apparently that song was written the year I was born… oh the 80s
Number 1 accomplishment on the list? Finishing the beam in the dining room. The process was easy enough, just time consuming.
Here’s what we started with – raw wood, lots of gaps, lots of rough wood filler.
First thing Saturday morning, I started sanding down the beam for a nice smooth finish. We ran to Lowe’s and picked up some quick-dry, white silicone caulk. We chose the GE brand. It said it was paintable in 30 minutes, and the stuff lived up to its word. No complaints here!
Stephen got to work caulking the edges of the beam while I pulled out a can of the best primer ever, KILZ!
Here’s a close up of the beam, post caulk and primer.
We went ahead and caulked the trim around our dining room and kitchen windows while we were at it.
After we caulked and primed on Saturday, Stephen moved on to his garage project…
Turns out there was.
… while I tackled another trouble area in our house – our walk-in closet. More on this project to come!
We woke up bright and early Sunday morning ready to start back on the beam, and I prepared myself for the day of painting ahead of me. First I painted a nice thick coat of Valspar’s Betsy’s Linen white in a semi-gloss over the beam (and on the pre-primed window trim while I was at it).
I really can’t say enough about how much I love KILZ primer. That stuff covers so well, I only needed to do ONE coat of trim paint and we were done! (And no, I’m not being paid to say that.. although I wouldn’t mind being paid! Are you listening KILZ?
Next, it was time for edging on one side of the beam with our kitchen wall color – Valspar’s Cincinnatian Hotel Carl Tan (weird name, huh?). I also touched up around the kitchen window at this point.
Third paint color for the day? The dining room side of the beam – Valspar’s Mocha Syrup. Why, oh why did we decide different paint colors in these two rooms was a good idea??? This was the darkest paint of the day by far, so it required 2 coats over the white primer and caulk that had made it onto our walls.
Here I am touching up the dining room trim.
Finally it was time to touch up the ceiling. When we scraped the popcorn off our ceilings in the dining room and kitchen, we primed and then painted them with this ceiling paint. I love that it goes on purple and dries white! It makes it so much easier to see where you’ve already painted and any spots you might have missed.
Can you see the purple?
At the end of the day Sunday, after 5 different cans of paint and 2 tubes of caulk, here is the finished beam!
And with our new curtains.
What do you think? I really want to share full pictures of the dining room and kitchen with you soon. We’ll see if I get a day where both rooms are clean at the same time!
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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.
Here.
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?
The result of steps 3-7. Nice.
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!
Temporary anchor and permanent anchor.
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.
Heck yes it's level.
Now a quick montage of me organizing my tools:
Oh look some hooks.
I put the hooks on the pegboard.
Oh no that's a lot of tools I hope there is enough hooks.
Turns out there was.
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.
Tina, Circa 2005
Awwwww.
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