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Room Makeovers

All Things Home

wallpapering the guest room | pasted vs. unpasted

I have been looking at wallpaper patterns for a couple of rooms in our house for months, but I haven’t pulled the trigger on any of them for one main reason – almost all of the papers I liked came unpasted.  To me, “unpasted” might as well have read “you cannot install this on your own and will have to hire a professional.”  Unpasted seemed complicated and intimidating and, perhaps, easier to mess up. Well, now that I have installed both pasted and unpasted paper, I can tell you that my assumptions were wrong.  Not only that but I now prefer unpasted. I used prepasted wallpaper for the upstairs bathroom in our PA house.  It was beautiful mural from . The upside to prepasted is that you don’t have to go through the extra step of applying the paste.  The downside is that you don’t have any control over how

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All Things Home

wallpapering the guest room | part 1

Thanks so much for all of your encouraging comments on yesterday’s post!  I am really looking forward to reworking some of those designs (even just making the scale larger) and getting them available for you (and me) to purchase.  Your supportive words have made me even more excited about it. So, if you’ve been following my Instagram stories, you know my mom and I worked on wallpapering the guest room (yes, the room she’s staying in) this week.  We always like working on projects together and this was the biggest one we had to tackle, so we wanted to work on it during the first half of her visit. I was ready to get right to papering Monday, but we had a lot of steps to do before we could even open the first roll.  First of all, I wanted to install a chair rail, so we had a “stopping

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All Things Home

tips on selecting wallpaper

As I shared a few weeks ago, I’ll be hanging wallpaper in our guest room (above a chair rail).  Well, my mom is visiting this week and we’re taking that on as our big project.  Hanging wallpaper in an entire room feels like a bit of a risk for me, but a guest room is a good place to take risks.  This particular one is in our basement, so it’s separate from the rest of the bedrooms and the living spaces where we spend most of our time.  Ever since I hung a wallpaper mural in our tiny upstairs bathroom in our last house and saw the visual impact it brought to the table, I’ve been eager to try it again on a larger scale. And this guest room is one boring box that could use a visual punch to make it special. I realize that I’ll be putting a

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All Things Home

studio closet

I have always loved this corner of the studio…  the oak hutch with the bird pulls, filled with art books.  The vertical row of brushes and the dress form flanking it. Having a good storage piece seemed like the best solution for that wall, but once I started really using this space, I realized that the oak hutch only provided a fraction of the storage I needed.  I had bulky photography equipment and video lighting and tripods and stands tucked all over the house and I really dislike work stuff encroaching on spaces meant to be just our home.  (I know it’s a fine line, but I try to keep the spaces distinct as much as possible.) So, over the Christmas break, I made a list of things I wanted and needed in my workspaces.  More storage was at the top of the list and that had me looking a

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All Things Home

office details

Welp, yesterday was yet another snow day in Minnesota!  We didn’t have much snow through December and even into January, but we have been having one of the snowiest Februarys on record and another storm is expected this weekend.  I actually love getting snow, but I am getting weary of having everyone home during the day while I’m trying to work.  I love my boys, but I need that time!  I do enjoy watching their excitement about the snow days, though, waiting with anticipation to see if Rochester Schools end up on the list of cancelations.  And it won’t last forever.  Spring will eventually come. Anyway, today I’m showing another wall in my office.  I shared the bookcase earlier in the week… …and this is the adjacent wall.  It’s between one small window and the french doors that serve as the entrance to the room. I knew I would move

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All Things Home

the other side of the studio

I showed the right side of the studio in yesterday’s post and today, as promised, I’m sharing the left side.  This side is tricky, because of all of the windows, the mini-split (heating & cooling unit), and the fact that it’s the part of the room that’s most visible from the kitchen. From the moment we first moved in, I felt like I needed to put the hardware cabinet under the window.  It is, after all, one of the coolest pieces I own and I wanted it to be the focal point!  But, it was a clutter magnet and almost always had stuff stacked on it and the stuff on the adjacent wall (the chair, table, etc.) obscured the view. When I made the decision to move it over to the “big wall” and stack the bookcase on top, that meant I would need to find something else for the

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All Things Home

the bookcase & the hardware cabinet

Today, I wanted to show you how the marriage between the hardware cabinet and craigslist bookshelf look in the studio now that the piece had been organized and styled. When I first sketched out the idea, I thought it might work and it was at least worth trying.  There was some doubt, though! When the bookshelf was set in place on the top of the hardware cabinet, it confirmed that these pieces at least worked together.  The wood tones and the patina on the pieces looked like they could’ve come from the same place. (As a note of safety, the first thing we did was attach the bookshelf to the wall with L brackets at the top.  You can see the edge of one sticking up on the right side.) And now that I’ve moved in, I am sold. Even the lamps and ironstone milk pitchers and brushes worked just

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All Things Home

home office plans

I’ve already shared the plans for two spaces we’ll be working on this winter and spring (the guest room and studio) and today, I’m sharing the plans for my home office. This is a space made up of a mix of pieces, most of which were brought from our last house and my former studio.  I bought the shelf second-hand off craigslist almost a year ago and the small table used for my printer at a flea market.  While it all looks good, I’ve realized I don’t have the kind of storage and function I really need in a home office. I found myself increasingly frustrated with the workflow in my office that I finally sat down and made a wish list of things would address the issues… Larger desk surface, so I can have my larger monitor and a couple of “working piles” out and still have free desk space.

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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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