Author

Beatrice Hartman

Hi, I'm Bea — welcome to our forever-project of a house.

I'm Beatrice Hartman — Bea, always — former elementary art teacher, lifelong DIYer, estate-sale loyalist, and the maker behind The Warm Walls.

I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, in a house where things got fixed by us or they stayed broken. My dad ran a small handyman business, and my childhood Saturdays were spent holding flashlights, sorting screws by size, and eventually swinging the hammer myself. I could patch drywall before I could drive. My mom handled the other half of my education: she could make our modest house feel layered and loved with garage-sale finds, homemade curtains, and pure nerve. Everything I do here is, honestly, just Dad's toolbox plus Mom's eye.

The official part of my resume: an art education degree and nine years teaching elementary school art. A decade of explaining color theory to eight-year-olds — and repeating "it doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful" approximately eleven thousand times — turns out to be excellent training for both decorating a home and writing tutorials. I still teach; my students are just taller now.

In 2018, my husband Sam and I bought the cheapest structurally-sound house in a Pittsburgh neighborhood we loved: a 1942 brick Cape Cod with gorgeous bones, original hardwood, and a kitchen I can only describe as aggressively beige. We've been renovating it room by room ever since, on two teachers' savings, doing nearly everything ourselves. I started this blog in 2019 to keep our families updated. Then a before-and-after of my $180 cabinet makeover escaped into the wider internet, strangers showed up, and by 2022 — right before our son Theo arrived — The Warm Walls had become my full-time job.

Here's what I promise you on this site:


Every project is real. Done by me, in this actual house, with my own slightly paint-splattered hands. No stock-photo tutorials, ever.
Real costs, itemized. Every project lists what it truly cost — including the painter's tape and the second can of paint everyone forgets to count.
You'll see the ugly middle. My before-and-afters always include the "during," because the messy stage is where people give up, and I want you to see mine and keep going.
Honest difficulty ratings. Every project is labeled Beginner, Comfortable, Confident, or Call a Pro — and I mean that last one. Electrical, gas, structural, and roof work: I hire professionals, and I'll always tell you to do the same.
Renters are welcome here. Wherever a genuine removable alternative exists, I include it.


These days you'll find me painting trim with an audiobook on 1.5x speed, hunting estate sales with a strict forty-dollar rule I break twice a year, or running our family's 20-minute Sunday reset while Theo "helps" and our cat Marmalade supervises from the tallest surface in the room. Each time we finish a room, I paint a tiny watercolor of it — a little ritual to mark that this house, one slightly crooked project at a time, is becoming ours.

That's what I believe, and it's why the site has its name: warm walls aren't bought. They're made. Come make yours.

Keep those walls warm,
Bea 🔨