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Room Makeovers
All Things Home

Painting Checkboard Floors | Part 1

I’ve had the painting-checkerboard-floors itch for a long time!  Back in 2012 I was contemplating finishing my dining room and living room in a two-toned stained checkerboard pattern (you can find that post HERE), but Jeff didn’t love the idea and talked me out of it.  I was slightly relieved because the prospect of doing all of that geometry made me nervous.  I just wasn’t sure I had the patience or attention to detail to pull it off well. When we moved into this house, I knew the studio would be the perfect candidate to finally try a checkerboard floor, but there was just so much to be done that it seemed to be silly to crawl around on the floor taping off squares for an entire day.  I just needed to get paint on the floors and then deal with more elaborate ideas later. Can you believe this is

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February 24, 2020 32 Comments
All Things Home

studio shelf plans

I’m only a few weeks into crocheting and I already have a yarn problem.  Many of you warned me about this, but I knew it was coming.  It was a  foregone conclusion.  I felt drawn to yarn even before I had a good excuse to buy it.  Now that I have an excuse, well…I need to troll the yarn aisles at the craft store to see if anything calls my name.  I am trying to only buy yarn for specific projects or to test out for specific projects, but it’s still filling a basket and already a bit of a jumble. So, I’ve decided it’s time to move forward on an idea I’ve had for a while…building a shelf under the window behind my “guest chair.”   It’s the perfect stretch of wall for a narrow, built-in shelf that will be ideal for storing yarn and books. Here is a rough

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January 7, 2020 26 Comments
All Things Home

boys’ bathroom refresh

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by . As always, all opinions and words are honest and my own. Believe it or not, there are rooms in this house that have been furnished, but are otherwise untouched.  I haven’t painted the trim or walls or intentionally decorated them.  One of those rooms was the boys’ bathroom.  And, it was probably the worst room in the house.  The paint had been slopped on the walls, getting it on all the tub, floor, and all of the fixtures.  The faucets were crusted from 13 years of running without a water softener and the light fixtures were rusted. With some paint, repurposing, new fixtures, and a few new accessories, this bathroom feels like a completely new space.  The best compliment I received was when Marshall looked over my shoulder while I was editing the photos and asked who that bathroom belonged to.  (He hadn’t

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September 2, 2019 40 Comments
All Things Home

painting the living room trim

Back in March, my mom and I installed a chair rail and picture frame molding in the living room (along with the basement guest room and 1/2 bath.)  You can find the tutorial HERE. Since then, painting below the chair rail has been hanging out on my to-do list…languishing there.  It’s one of those projects I had built up in my mind.  It’s going to be difficult.  It’s going to take forever.  I’m going to hate every second of it.  And, given that it didn’t look that bad as it was, I procrastinated.  Lest you think I am always the model of action and productivity…I am not. But, procrastination starts to wear on me after a while.  I get frustrated with myself and I know from experience that relief will come if I just buckle down and do the project.  So, I declared on my Instagram stories that I was

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June 25, 2019 28 Comments
a slice of life

all things lavender

When I shared my “secret” for making my house smell nice,  I received several requests here and on Instagram to share the exact lavender products I use.  Well, I aim to please, so here are the products I use in our home… Actually, before I show you the specific products, I’m going to make a request.  I have learned that, for some reason, discussions about cleaning products can get heated.  This is just one of those things that you learn after 10 years of blogging!  I think the reason is how we chose the products we use for cleaning, laundry, and bathing can be heavily informed by our convictions about the environment and health.  If someone is using a product we feel is wrong or bad for general health or the environment, we can get opinionated and verbal about it, because it doesn’t align with something that important to us.

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June 24, 2019 64 Comments
All Things Home

sewing room fabrics

Before we dive into the fabrics for the guest room, thank you so much for all of your encouraging words about Mustard Seed Mentoring yesterday!  I am looking forward to working with those who signed up so far!  If you’re still thinking about it, I will be on Instagram Live and Facebook Live over the next couple of days to share more about it and I’ve also answered some FAQ’s at the bottom of this post. If you totally missed it, you can read all about it HERE. So, to the sewing room!  I shared my plans to drape the entire room in toile last week.  You can read about that HERE. Well, I received the fabric sample and it’s perfect!  It even works great with a woven stripe I already own, so I can use that as an accent. I like to get a visual (as best as I

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June 11, 2019 45 Comments
All Things Home

sewing room plans

When we’re not doing fun summer stuff and when I’m not working at my desk or easel, I’m hoping to get some projects done around the house.  I’ll share my ambitious project list in another post, but one of the rooms on that list is our sewing room. One thing we love about this house is that we really use it.  We use almost every room almost every day…except for the sewing room.  It is a luxury to have a room for my fabric stash and upholstery supplies and it is nice to be able to close the door on a room carpeted in threads and fabric scraps when I’m in the middle of a project, but it’s not a room we regularly use. It is nice to have an extra guest room, though, should we have the occasion of hosting several people at once, but that hasn’t happened yet. 

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June 3, 2019 46 Comments
All Things Home

studio closet reveal

The studio closet is finally finished!  I cannot express how awesome it is to have all of that functional storage in this space now.  It was one of my goals this year to make my workspaces more functional and that has been accomplished in my studio and home office. Previous Posts: If you missed any previous posts in the studio closet series, including plans and some process pictures of how the closet was built, you can find them here… studio closet: framing and shelves studio closet progress: building the doors studio closet progress: straightening warped doors with turnbuckles studio closet progress: building the 3rd door & adding catches So, this weekend, while everyone else in my family was occupied, I took some time to prime and paint the closet.  I used Smart Prime by Zinsser as the primer and then Benjamin Moore’s Aura in White Dove in an eggshell finish

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May 7, 2019 69 Comments

I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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