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All Things Home

All Things Home

painting tips that could save you $1000

Catchy title for a post, isn’t it?  You’ll see why once you get to the bottom… I have done a lot of painting over the years…every wall, ceiling, piece of trim and cabinetry in my current house AND previous house.  Some rooms have been painted multiple times.  And I’ve helped a lot of friends and family paint their rooms. Not to mention all of the furniture… I know how to give a brush a workout. I’ve shared all kinds of painting tips on this blog, but I figured I’d share a few more. Megan and I were painting her office last week and, although she’s a proficient painter, she asked me to do the cutting in where the chalkboard wall met the Gray Owl (Benjamin Moore) wall. It’s definitely more pressure when there is a high contrast between two paint colors meeting at a corner, like in Megan’s office and

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All Things Home

Megan’s office makeover | part 4 | wall colors & design elements

I spent a good part of the day at Megan’s house, helping her paint her office.  If you’re just hopping in on this series, we’re in the middle of giving her small office a farmhouse-style makeover on a budget of $1000.  Here are the previous three posts, so you can get caught up! part 1 | the before part 2 | the “franken-chair” part 3| the plan In a nutshell, here’s the plan for the space… …but you can get the full details HERE. Today, Megan and I were able to put two coats of paint on the walls in a few hours as our four boys (two mine, two hers) played together and her husband acted as referee. We were both giddy as the paint was drying and the look of the room was taking shape. And we took a few minutes to talk about the wall colors as well

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All Things Home

vintage-style deck makeover

I’ve always been what you call an “indoor girl” when it comes to home decor.  When we put our house on the market (and ended up not selling it) last spring, our realtor put an “I’m Beautiful Inside” sign above the “For Sale” sign.  That’s realtor code for “It looks better once you walk through the front door.” It’s not that I didn’t care about the outside, but with two little boys, a business to run and a limited budget, we focused our attention on the inside and didn’t have much time, money or motivation to work on the outside. Now that the boys are getting older and we’re almost finished with the inside of the house, we’ve been working on the outside in bits and pieces.  We replaced the front door (you could actually see outside through some cracks in the old door), installed a new driveway (the old one was

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All Things Home

aging terra cotta pots

There are some people who like things shiny and new.  They want to be the first person to own something.  They like the smell of a car with 32 miles on it.  They want their furniture to be delivered, tags still attached. I am just not one of those people. Unless we’re talking about electronics, mattresses or toilets, I want things in my home that have the patina that only comes with time. Or a bit of trickery. I have a few antique terra cotta pots and, while I’d love to fill my whole potting bench with them, that would get too expensive.  So, I have some new ones mixed in. Can you tell which one is the new one? Yeah.  It’s pretty clear and the new ones were bugging me a bit. While I had the Ironstone (white) MMS Milk Paint out to paint the sides of the potting bench, I decided

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All Things Home

dear reader | to the one with the tiny room

You hear me talking about rearranging furniture and you look around your “cozy” room and laugh.  Everything is wedged perfectly in the space and any rearranging would be impractical at best and a fire hazard at worst. You want to change things around, to experience the joy of getting a new look without spending any money.  But you feel stuck. You’re not alone. Several people have walked into my house, after having seen it only on the blog, and most of them say, “Oh, it’s smaller than I thought it was!”  Aside from the kitchen and family room, which are generous in size, the rest of the rooms are average or on the small side.  Or at least small compared to newer homes. (That rug in the living room is 8 x 10, so the actual room is about 10′ x 12′.) And there are several rooms in my home

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All Things Home

the antique, hodgepodge potting bench

Don’t you love it when projects come together perfectly? Such is the case with this hodgepodge of a potting bench. We just finished it today and it looks even better than I imagined.  It’s especially exciting, because we already had the workbench in the basement (it was free with the house) and I bought the chicken nesting box without a solid plan on turning it into the top-part of the hutch. This morning, Jeff bought about $40 of pressure treated wood for this project, a couple of 2 x 12’s and 2 x 4’s.   While he was out, I took care of the red overspray marks on the front of the work bench.  It wasn’t a big deal, but they just bugged me. So, I brought out my big-boy sander, the belt sander, and I went to town. I really love how the paint looks distressed, with some of the

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All Things Home

step-by-step dresser makeover

Thank you so much for all of the wonderful feedback on my very first MMS Milk Paint “commercial”.  It was so fun to put together and I was proud of it, but your comments were a confirmation, so thanks! The bar has been set for the second one! Today, I thought I would share more about the dresser makeover and how we made the commercial.   I was always planning to paint the dresser in Mustard Seed Yellow, but I only picked out the dress to create the “story” for the commercial the morning we filmed it.  I also decided that day to shoot outside instead of in the studio…another decision that ended up being perfect. The feel would’ve been totally different if it was inside. We’re fortunate to have this amazing old mill right across the parking lot from the studio, so we could literally wheel the dresser over

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All Things Home

the transferware jackpot

I know this is going to be an incredible shock to some of you, but I love ironstone and blue transferware.  I would say it’s out of hand, but I do sell far more than I keep, so it’s not totally out of hand.  You can tell the minute you step in my house, though, that it’s a soft spot. So, when Kriste told me she spotted a bunch of blue & white transferware pitchers she thought I would like at a local antique shop, my ears perked up.  She pulled up a picture she snapped of them on her phone.  I knew immediately from the shape and faded blue pattern that they were old and the kind I specifically hunt for.   “How much were they?” “Oh, I don’t know.  About $10-15/each, I think.” I just about fell off my chair. “You bought them all, didn’t you?!?“ Kriste looked

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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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