Chalk Paint!

Here is my latest project, Chalk Paint! This is an amazing product made my Annie Sloan, what is so great about this product is that you have zero prep work and you can paint anything! Yes no prep work that means no sanding, no stripping just find what you want to paint and go to town. What I have found is that there is no one perfect way to use chalk paint you just "throw" it on. 

We have wanted to paint our headboard for years and we just could never find the motivation to do it. Once we found this product from Annie Sloan we knew we had to do it. We went with the "English Yellow" color; I used clear wax and dark wax to give it a great antiqued look. It took me a good 2 hours total to go from something we just had to something that we now love. 

Before

After

Update!

It has been a while sense I have done anything DIY so here is an update of what the Harward's have been up too. I just finished another semester at SLCC, I have been working hard at inContact and I just got a pretty big promotion/new position in the company that we are very excited about.

Oh I almost forgot the thing to where most of my time has been allocated. Little Damon Ryan was born on Nov 8, he weighed in at a whopping 6.1 Lbs and was 19.5 inches long! His best feature is his long full head of hair, I can't express how thankful I am that he and Anna were healthy... and that he didn't come out a ginger! I love him so much and love spending time with my little guy. I will never forget holding him for the first time and just thinking about the miracle that I held in my arms, it really put gods plan in perspective for me. Here are a couple pictures of the little superstar.

2 Days Old

He is getting so strong so fast! Almost from the beginning he could support his head and move around, he has great coordination with his hands and loves to grab things. Damon also loves to stand nice and tall, with a little help on balancing he is already standing with those strong chunky legs, he has started smiling and doing little laughs to Mom and Dad. He has been pure joy and we love him so much.

5 Weeks Old

Board and Batten!

         After completing my first board and batten job early in the month I was able to take my new found skill and expertise to our master bedroom! I wanted to make it the focus of the room and we wanted it to be very bold and set the master bedroom apart from the rest of the home. So with much debate we decided that on our largest wall I would install board and batten from the floor to the ceiling and paint the wall black! (It was my idea to go black but, it was the wife that kept reassuring me that it would look great in the end) And just to make sure the room wasn't going to shrink by going to dark we went with an off white color for the other walls.

          All in all it was a smoothly executed project. I used the same techniques as I did in the baby's room but it went a lot faster from start to finish. I would say it took me a good 15 hours or so with all of the prep work for painting, prepping the boards, and the finishing touches. It's funny to note that I can never just do a simple project I always see something else wrong or have a great idea to enhance another portion of the surrounding project but I will always end up changing more than what we originally planned for. My brother in-law brought over some of his extra tall base boards that he had lying around from his projects and I ended up changed all of the base boards. I also ended up changing all of the electrical sockets with new face plates while doing my main project. From the pictures I hope you can see how beautiful it ended up being!

Baby's Room Done!

The journey for this room has been a long one. From where it started and to where it sits now is like night and day. I started this project with high hopes in making it a beautiful room for my soon to be new baby boy to grow up in. From the beginning I knew I wanted board and batten to be the main focus in the room. I searched blog after blog to find the best practice to make this happen. Along the way I took information from every credible source that I found. first thing lets take a look at how the room started out.

For the first year we lived in this house this little 10 x 10 room was just used as our storage unit. It definitely had the most color in the home with this "beautiful" wall paper. Can I just ask what in the hell possessed people to hang nasty wall paper!?!?!?! I cant tell you how many times I cursed the person who put this crap up, but after 2 days of scoring, scraping and washing the walls I finally got down to the original painted walls. I used DIF as my product of choice which I do recommend my only advice is get the big jug of concentrate that you mix with warm water and put that stuff on liberally! FYI If you are shy with the product the wall paper will kick your butt!

After filling all of the pin holes from the teenage girl who lived in the home prior to us moving in I was able to start cutting in and rolling the walls. I previously measured how high I wanted my board and batten to go up the wall and only painted the Gray (Granite Gray by Glidden) to that point It was a total of 2 coats for the gray and also 2 for the white. I ended up throwing a fresh coat of paint in the closet and ceiling (only the best for my boy).

Once painting was completed I could install the board and batten. I took a lot of time on the prep work which translated into a great finishing product. I went to Home Depot and bought two 8 x 4 sheets of 1/2" MDF which was around 30 bucks each. I took advantage of their free cutting station and had the gentleman cut those two sheets into 22 - 4" strips (FYI something I found out is that because of the thickness in the blade you end up losing about a half inch on the last board. So if you are planning on getting just enough out of your sheet take that into calculation) so in the end I had 2 strips that were 3 1/2" wide. Also I did 2 sheets of MDF because we are doing more board and batten in the master bedroom which I will post when that project is completed.

First thing I did was sand the MDF to get it nice and smooth on the edges from the cuts. Fallowing the sanding I primed each strip with Gripper (from Glidden) this ensured that the MDF would not soak up all of my paint. I painted my boards with the white before putting them on the wall (this may have been unnecessary because I ended up painting them again while on the wall and it was a lot easier to paint) Once the prep was done the boards went up rather quickly I used liquid nails to glue the MDF to the wall and finished them off with 2 inch nails from my compressor nail gun.

Filling the nail holes and mending the joints I used DryDex spackling that goes on pink and when it drys turns white. I also used a paint-able caulk from DAP to make everything look seamless. I finished it all off with another coat of paint and did some touch up work on the gray from spots that I was heavy handed with the white paint.

All in all the project went really well and we love this room makeover. Now we just need to find the important things to fill the space.

My Life

I have accomplished quite a bit in 24 years of life I think.... to recap let me give you some insight, here are a few things I have done:

Graduated High School

Served an honorable two year LDS mission

Married my High School sweetheart and love of my life

Maintained my full time job while going to school

.

Bought our first home/Remodeled the basement

Having a Baby in November 

I can truly say I'm proud of the life I have lived thus far, I'm grateful for all of those who have lifted and supported me along the way.

Thank You!

Images taken from Google search

Sports All Year Round

I love being active and this past year has been really good for me in sports. Each fall I play with a few buddies of mine in the UFL which is the Utah Flag League. Last year we competed in the B league and we lost in the championship, but this last fall we redeemed ourselves and took the 5 on 5 B division championship! Here is a picture of our team. This is where I get the name Honey Badger or HB because I take what I want.

Here is a link to the UFL 

http://www.utahflagleague.com/

I'm looking forward to golf season which is coming up fast as basketball is winding down. I will be able to get out with my family and friends more often. Last season was the first year I actually stayed with it and golfed regularly at least once a week. In the past I would go maybe once or twice during the entire season. I made great strides with my golf game! My lowest round on 9 holes was a two over par 38. Not bad for my first real full season golfing.

Honey cub on its way!

I'm super stoked to announce that I Ryan Harward will become a DAD! I can't even believe it to be honest! It really is weird to think about, but I know that Anna and I are ready for this next step in our lives. We didn't have to try long and after a few weeks we were able to use a pregnancy test to confirm that we were going to have a little one in a few short months! We hadn't told a soul which was mainly Anna's idea (if it were up to me I would have told every one that crossed my path.)  We decided to wait until we had at least our first doctors appointment to confirm and hear that fast little heartbeat from the ultrasound. On Monday which was 4/22/13 we found out she was 11 1/2 weeks along and the baby was 4.41 cm long! It was great to watch him/her move all around trying to kick and roll, it was like watching a miracle.  My favorite part of the appointment was when the doctor was ready to take a picture the little one spreading both arms and legs. It made for an awesome first picture.

Madden and Me

I have always been big into video gaming. I believe it can be a good stress relief if it is managed properly. My cup of tea is sport games and first person shooters. I have always loved competing with my friends in a number of sporting games. My favorite all time game is Madden produced by EA Sports, they put out a decent game each and every year. I have owned Madden every year that I have had an XBox starting with:


 

Here is a link to the new Madden cover that was just reviled this last week. I'm super stoked to get my hands on it!

http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/feature/madden25cover?ex_cid=google

Madden 13 was one of my best years as far as climbing the leader boards! I almost reached the top 100 in the world! This is fairly impressive because A: Most of the people in the top 100 use modifications on their Xbox so they will always get the win and B: there are thousands of people who play this each day! I guess it just shows what a big nerd I am with my video games. I think the reason I love this type of game is because its competitive. I know the person that I'm playing the game with is trying their hardest to beat me as well. It's all about competition and if there wasn't an online service I guarantee that I wouldn't be playing any video games.

 Here is a video of me playing and instructing the basics of Madden.

New Job!

This past January I started a new job at a place called inContact. It has been an amazing transition, I feel very blessed to be here and like our CEO says "We are lucky to have you, but you are very lucky to be here." They are a great organization that truly care about you as a person and your goals and aspirations. As far as what inContact does as a company: They are the industry leader in SAAS technology for cloud based call center solutions.

This week just to demonstrate how awesome inContact is to work for, every year they have a company pinewood derby race! It was a ton of fun. Below is a picture of my car and a short video of one of the races. They also brought in Letherby's ice cream for all to enjoy as everyone cheered on their co-workers and work friends. I had a blast! I was really impressed on how serious some of the people took this race and how well their cars performed. There were two divisions; one for racing and the other for design. Prizes went for the best design, best in show, best paint job, and of course 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the racing portion. I had a great time and it just goes to show that there are great companies to work for that make work fun.

Ice Cream! Mine didn't look this good, but it was delicious.

My Car