Wood Work Herridge House

Kelly: Basically, how that played out was Clint went over and met with Brad and Mary. They stated they really needed an office space for Brad, but they just didn’t want to dedicate the whole back room as an office.  On the other hand, they didn’t have another space. Brad’s job as a chaplain really needed him to have a space to talk on the phone and have some privacy. When Clint met with them he felt like he could carve out a little space in the room.  Mary was a little nervous about this, and totally understandable the room was not very massive, and she was a little nervous for us to carve out the space directly in the room. She was afraid it would look weird. So, when I went over there Clint and I both thought we could carve out a spot for an office for Brad that really would be his and private. We also wanted the kids to still be able to watch TV and Brad still feel like he was in his own space. Also, we wanted it to feel really true to the foot print of the house and not be some strange alcove of the home.  

Clint: The Herridges love to hang out as a family and I love that!! That’s one of the Harp’s favorite family past times as well so it was important that we got that right. Mary was understandably concerned that putting a wall in that room would make it feel smaller and less conducive to hang time. We worked really hard to make sure that wasn’t the case and with it all redone the Herridges were over the moon with their new space!!

Kelly: The most difficult thing about this project was trying to make sure that Brad had real space for his office while also not butchering the room and making it seem really strange, and the office out of place.

Kelly: I have known Mary for several years now I really feel like I know her style. Also walking through her house, I felt like she really likes pretty antiques and that traditional antique style. It was fun to use the blue prints that we used. We actually had them in the shop at the time and I immediately thought of using them and that Mary would really like them. We started with that and kind of arranged the rest of the room based on that.

As for the walls, Mary really liked that traditional southern antique kind of style. I just had it in my head it would look really cool to do that putty color on the trim and creamy white on the back paneling. The back room had the coolest paneling and we really wanted to highlight it.  The paneling is a fun architectural detail of the house. A lot of those old houses don’t really have that anymore and we really wanted to work with it.  I felt like painting the trim and molding the putty color really highlighted the paneling even more and also achieved that antique/ southern / traditional look that Mary would really like!

Have you ever made a dog house before?

Clint: I have! But it was incredibly simple and not nearly as fun to make! Taking cedar logs that have been sitting in a pile for years and then turning them into something useful and beautiful is really one of the greatest joys of what I do with my team here at HDC.

Tell us about the design and what you took into account in the dog house? 

Clint: Space, space and more space. Tucker, at the time of filming, was barely a year old! He was going to get much bigger so he needed some room to stretch out and enjoy some shade. Besides space the structure itself needed to be as sturdy as possible. Tucker is HUGE! Just him bumping into something can cause damage. So we definitely wanted to make something that could stand up outside and stand up to Tucker.