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All Things Home

All Things Home

farmhouse table reveal & sealing chippy paint tutorial

The farmhouse table is finished and I’m so happy with how it turned out! If you remember, it was painted brown.  I could see some original green paint showing through and I was hoping to reveal that through some chippy Farmhouse White MMS Milk Paint and that is exactly what happened. If you missed the other posts about this table transformation, you can check them out here… Prepping the table for paint Hemp Oiling the top & applying the second coat of milk paint Distressing & getting the “chippy look” Now, the table was distressed and ready for a finish.  I chose Tough Coat, since that is our best finish for sealing in chippiness, so the paint doesn’t continue to flake. Here is a tutorial showing how I sealed the table base… This table was a great piece and I’m glad I was able to give it a fresh look

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All Things Home

painting the stairway wall

A couple of weeks ago, I finally started painting the wall and trim in the back stairway.  It had been bugging me for a while, but the idea of painting those spindles and taping off the carpet seemed like an annoying, tedious project and I kept putting it off.  I knew that once I pinned myself down to start working on it, it wouldn’t be as bad as I had built it up to be in my head and that was exactly the case.  Why was I so whiney about taping off carpet when it took about 3 minutes?! I find myself doing that often…talking myself out of starting on a project, because I’m fairly certain it might be torture (or require a small amount of patience.)  There have only been a couple of times in my full DIY career that have turned out to actually be miserable, so I

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All Things Home

distressing the farmhouse table | all about the “chippy look”

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!  Jeff was on a backpacking trip, so I busied myself with the boys and doing some work around the house.  The combination of warmer weather and creative inspiration from Junk Bonanza has me excited and motivated to cross things off the to-do list and start to add some more layers to rooms that have the “bones” in place. I’ll share more about what I’ve been working on in future posts, but today, I wanted to share the next step in the Farmhouse White table makeover. After the second coat of MMS Milk Paint in Farmhouse White (you can read about that HERE), I let it dry and waited to see if it would chip as I thought it would.  It did! And the chipping was perfect, because it was pulling up the not-s0-pretty brown paint to reveal that yummy green, which looks to

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All Things Home

farmhouse white table progress

Remember this table?  Well, I got around to working on it again over the past couple of days.  This is how it looked when I bought it… I knew that I wanted to paint the base, because brown-painted furniture isn’t really my thing.  I also wanted to smooth out the top and hydrate it with Hemp Oil.  I wrote about sanding and prepping the top in THIS POST. With the top smoothed out, I just applied a generous coat of MMS Hemp Oil to bring out the richness of the wood. Call me nutty, but I love all of the scratches and imperfections.  You can tell this table has been a hard worker! Now, I needed to deal with painting the base.  It’s wearing a drab coat of brown paint, but under that, I can see a yummy green.  I was hoping I could apply a couple coats of Farmhouse

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All Things Home

better than black friday

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by and contains affiliate links. Happy Way Day! I bet you didn’t know today was a holiday!  Well, it’s the newly proclaimed “Way Day” by Wayfair.  What that means for you is savings better than Black Friday and free shipping on everything from an online resource that has everything under the sun for the home.  Decor, furniture, rugs, wall art, appliances, indoor, outdoor, you name it.  Chairs to chicken coops.  Planters to playgrounds. And EVERYTHING ships for free.  Even the chicken coops. I like to buy a lot of my home furnishings second-hand, since I love antiques, but (and their brands like Birch Lane and Joss & Main), have been my favorite resource for natural jute rugs, lamps, and things that need to be sturdy and functional, like dining chairs. Since spring had finally arrived in Minnesota, I’ve got gardening on the brain, so I’m

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All Things Home

training rosemary topiaries & other garden things

We almost broke into the 60’s in Minnesota last weekend, so I had gardening on the brain.  We’re still waiting for all of the snow to melt and the ground to thaw, but the warmth and sunshine gave me the itch to get my hands dirty.  It’s going to be a while before I can start on the yard, so I decided to repot some of my houseplants that needed more elbow (root) room and give everything a haircut. First up were the rosemary plants that have been flanking my kitchen sink for a few months.  I’ve never had much luck keeping rosemary alive for very long, but plants love all of the rooms on the back side of our house, which faces south.  We get beautiful light all day long, so they can grow and stay healthy. They were both looking like they needed more soil and I have

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All Things Home

small changes

I knew that attending Junk Bonanza would be fun, but I didn’t realize what a creative pick-me-up it would be!  (Well, after I slept for 12 hours and lounged around for half a day.)  Once I was rested, that creative spark got me going.  I was ready to rip up carpet and jack out some tile!  But, those are all pretty big projects that involve some amount of planning, a budget, and permission from my husband!  So, I figured I should take that energy and work on changes that were small and free and wouldn’t get me into any trouble. The first change I made was something I’ve been thinking about for a while… I swapped out Eulalie’s frame! She’s been in a gold leaf frame from the very beginning and that worked great in my last house, but it felt a little off in this room.  I think it

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All Things Home

Junk Bonanza Buys

Oh man, oh man!  If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’ve spent the last day and a half at Junk Bonanza in Shakopee, MN and I am pooped!  It was so much fun, though, and such a great event.  I took lots of pictures and I’ll tell you all about it next week. Today, though, I’ll just share the things that I bought.  I couldn’t be around all of those amazing antiques and not buy anything! I know this will come as a huge shock to everyone who knows me even a little bit, but I bought some ironstone.  I found three pitchers, including this large one with a pretty handle and fluting… …and two milk pitchers.  Milk pitchers are one of my favorite things, so I pick them up if ever I find them at a good price.  The pitcher above was $65 and the milk pitchers

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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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