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home improvement

All Things Home

studio DIY built-in shelf dimensions & cut list

Reminder – Always use caution and common sense when using power tools on all DIY projects including this built-in shelf. There are some projects that go beautifully as planned. It’s smooth sailing and there aren’t any hiccups or bumps. This DIY built-in shelf was not one of those projects! It wasn’t a disaster, but it sort of felt like that when we were in the middle of making it. The calamity that happened while building this shelf came down to a lack of precision, not following my own good experience, and being impatient while trying to build it in a messy garage on a cold and dreary day. I just wanted to knock this thing out and that’s usually the mindset that leads to mistakes. You wouldn’t think it to look at the finished shelf, though, so all is well that ends well. Several people asked if I would share

March 31, 2020 6 Comments

All Things Home

painting checkerboard floors | part 2

When you last saw the floors, they were all taped off and ready to paint. You can find that post HERE if you missed it. The taping was definitely the most time-consuming part. After that, it’s pretty much smooth sailing for this project. I initially purchased the same color I used on my kitchen walls – Stonington Gray mixed at 50%. I wanted the squares to be a very pale blue/gray, so the checkers would be subtle and not too high contrast with the bright white. I painted the first row of squares, removed the tape and knew, even before it dried, that it wasn’t what I wanted. The color looks very blue/gray in my kitchen, but in the studio, it looked like a pale beige. I pondered it for a few minutes and decided I spent waaaaaay too much time and energy taping off those squares to settle. So,

February 25, 2020 34 Comments

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

February 24, 2020 32 Comments

All Things Home

straightening the studio closet doors

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, we got the first set of doors for the studio closet built and installed, but unfortunately, they were a little warped! Ah! We were trying to make this a simple, easy project, but these doors were not playing along with that and made things complicated. They were warped just enough so they wouldn’t even catch on the magnetic catches we installed. They would just pop right off. It was a drop-head-in-my-hands moment. The good news is that they didn’t look that warped or that bad and there was a fix that did not involve taking anything apart or building new doors. (Which would not have fit in the simple/easy plan.) I bought a piece of hardware called a turnbuckle. It is made specifically for screen doors, but I watched tutorials where it was used on gates, shed doors, and even cabinet doors.

April 24, 2019 29 Comments

All Things Home

picture frame molding tutorial

While my mom was here, the biggest job on our project to-do list was wallpapering the guest room. I was planning on installing the chair rail as a part of that, but I was going to stop there and work on the picture frame/box molding with Jeff. He’s the real woodworker in our family and he is much more detail-oriented than I am. Plus, there’s the math. But once we got the wallpaper done and the room was looking so good, we didn’t want to stop. I decided to just go for it. I’ve done other types of trim and I took a chance that I would be able to figure this out. So, my mom and I went and bought all of the trim we would need for the guest room and we even got a little ambitious and bought it for the bathroom, too! One tip – The

March 19, 2019 29 Comments

All Things Home

wallpaper paste comparison

I know you’re just dying to know which type of wallpaper paste won out in my head-to-head challenge. Was it Roman 880? Was it Dynamite 780? Oh, the suspense. Oh, the drama. This is the post you’ve been waiting for all your life. Okay, not really. Wallpaper paste isn’t exciting, but I will tell you that you will appreciate this post if ever you’re installing unpasted wallpaper! By the way, I was paid heaps of money by the brand I’m going to encourage you to use and I bought stock in their company. I’m just kidding. I bought both pastes with my own money and I have no affiliation with either brand. I compared them on my own, primarily because I ran out of the first gallon and had to run out and buy whatever I could find locally to finish the project, so I had to use two brands

March 13, 2019 39 Comments

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

March 10, 2019 26 Comments

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

February 26, 2019 33 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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