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All Things Home

All Things Home

laundry room makeover | part one

If you follow me on my Instagram Stories, you know that I’ve been working hard on my laundry room/mudroom over the past several days.  It’s still not finished, but it’s well on the way and I thought I would share the details of what I’m doing and show you the progress.  As point of reference, here is how the room looked before… …and I use the word “room” very loosely.  This is a small space that’s basically a hallway, closet, utility sink, and a place for the washer and dryer.  My mom pointed out that it’s bigger than her laundry room, which is just a hallway with a washer and dryer in it, but it’s smaller than a lot of the mudroom/laundry rooms that you’re seeing in suburban family homes these days. Despite it being a little tight when folding clothes, I love this space.  I am throughly enjoying having

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All Things Home

makeover of the paisley chairs

I know some of you really loved the red paisley chairs as they were and, I agree, they were pretty.  I’m sure they were beautiful for the first few decades they spent on this earth, but now they were only pretty if you didn’t look too closely at them.  They were stained, watermarked, smelled a little musty from years of accumulated dust.  It was time. And, well, the red just wasn’t working for me in this space.  I wanted to stick with my cool blue, white and green color palette, with warmth coming from the wood finishes.  Whenever I looked around this room, these chairs stood out as unfinished and not-quite-right.  I think that’s mostly because I always envisioned them in a different fabric in my mind’s eye. So, I finally took the time to remove those thousands of nails and even more staples and then reupholstered them in this

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All Things Home

painting the interior of the primitive hutch

It was on my “annoying project list“, so I got the interior of the primitive hutch in the dining room painted when I was knocking out all of the other annoying projects.  Painting furniture is normally like therapy for me, but painting the interiors of hutches and cabinets is my achilles heel.  It always takes more paint and more time than one would think and it usually involves awkward angles and hand cramps. The darker wood interior wasn’t working in the full scope of the room, though.  When viewed as a standalone piece of furniture it was fine, but once I finished everything around it, it became the darkest thing in the room.  It’s nice to have a balance of light and dark and some contrast, but this was more like a black hole.  It didn’t add anything to the room, but detracted from everything else. So, knowing it wasn’t

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a slice of life

annoying project day

I’m sure I am not alone with it comes to not quite finishing some of the more annoying and easily overlooked parts of a DIY project.  When I am really focused and disciplined, I’ll pin myself down and force myself to finish that last bit of painting or put in that final piece of shoe molding.  But there are other times that I want to move onto to something higher impact than installing a small piece of quarter-round that’s hidden behind a door or painting the 1 1/2″ strip of trim around the screen door. There are a couple of larger, alluring projects I’m excited to start working on, so I decided to use those as an incentive to finish some of the annoying things that have been languishing on my to-do list.  I can’t start something new until I completely finish those projects.  I called it my “annoying project

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All Things Home

dining table makeover

Independent of one another, two of my friends from church asked me if I could give them advice on refinishing a table.  It occurred to me that I have a table I want to refinish, too, so why not make a day of it and refinished all of the tables together?  Projects are always more fun when fellowship is involved and, as an added bonus, we have boys who are the same age and they could play together while we worked.  Projects are also more fun with the kiddos are occupied and happy! Since I was working with friends on their tables as well as my own, I didn’t take the time to do a tutorial for this one, but I’ll share links to tutorials I’ve written in the past when I used the same techniques. Here is the table before… It wasn’t in bad shape, but it had a

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All Things Home

mid-summer garden update

It’s been a few weeks since our front garden overhaul, so I thought I would give an update!  First of all, everything has been a success so far.  Everything is growing well and I’m enjoying checking on all of my flowers and bushes in the evenings to water, deadhead the petunias, pull weeds (although there aren’t many popping up), etc. Here is how the garden looked back in early April… And how it looks now… I can even see how much our grass has improved.  It took a beating this winter from Sebastian’s pee and sidewalk salt to melt the ice.  Jeff’s really been working on it this spring and summer (thatching, aerating, spreading weed & seed and lawn fertilizer, etc).  It’s nice to see his hard work paying off. I found the Annabelle Hydrangeas late in the season, so they were on sale and I was able to buy

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All Things Home

summer bed & fluffy towels

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by .  As always, all opinions expressed are honest and my own. We had a late spring here in Minnesota, but summer is definitely here now.  It was officially signaled by the fact that we finally kicked off our down comforter in the middle of the night.  I am always eager to bring it out each fall and am reluctant to put it away when the weather warms. This year, though, it wasn’t a sad day when I folded up the thick feather decker for the summer, because now we have a  from to replace it. It is the perfect weight to offer the coziness I like, but it’s breathable and light enough that we don’t wake up sweating under it. So I don’t add more bulk, I didn’t put it in a cover, but sandwiched it between the sheets and our quilt. Before I

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All Things Home

making an “antique” hook rail

I think one of the hardest areas in a house to keep clean and tidy, aside from the kitchen and bathrooms, is the foyer.  It’s natural to walk in and dump everything that your carrying, kick off your shoes, and then go about your business.  Our foyer, even though it’s two stories, is relatively small as far as square footage on the floor is concerned.  There is just a small space by the door and, of course, a pile of shoes quickly collects there and it gets even more out of control over the winter with all of the wet and salty boots! There also wasn’t a place to hang purses, coats, hats, and Sebastian’s leash, so the doorknobs in the foyer (to my office and the coat closet) were always engaged as hangers for those items.  I’ve been looking around for an antique-style hook rail that would fit next

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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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