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Before and Afters

All Things Home

looks can be deceiving…

Let me take you back to high school. Remember that first day of a new class, looking around the room, scoping out your classmates? Who might be your friend? Who is going to be a troublemaker? And where is the – oh, there he is… The hot guy. Perfect hair. Great smile. Gorgeous eyes. At first glance, he is your dream guy. And then you get to know him a bit and you realize that attractiveness stops as soon as he opens his mouth? Yeah, that is this cabinet. And what’s so funny and true about this analogy is that I was so busy making heart-eyes over this cabinet that I didn’t even notice! My mom pointed it out to me, though, as mothers do. (With boys and furniture.) She was sitting in a chair next to it on Friday and said, “Eeeew, this cabinet really needs to be cleaned” “Oh, I know.

April 18, 2017 26 Comments

All Things Home

revamped balance scale

When shopping for pieces, I try to look past things that aren’t my taste cosmetically, like color and fabric, and try to envision what the piece will look like when I make it my taste. In the case of this scale, the bright yellow just wasn’t my taste. I love yellow, but this yellow was pretty in-your-face and I felt like it clashed with the mellow brass. I obviously wasn’t alone in thinking this, because the scale was marked 75% off of its original price. That made it perfect for me, because I’m a girl who likes a bargain and I know how to paint things! Now, I use milk paint 99% of the time, but this piece needed something else. The shape would’ve been a royal pain to paint with a brush and I thought an enamel finish with a little bit of gloss would look sharp. I ordered Krylon

April 13, 2017 28 Comments

Before and Afters

the cottage bed reveal

The cottage bed is all finished, assembled, styled, and photographed. It even got its own little room in the corner of my studio. I just used things I had on hand to create an eclectic, cottage-y, bedroom, a ‘tween girl who was in my imagination. The color of the bed is a custom mix of Kitchen Scale and Boxwood from the MMS Milk Paint line and it was finished in Tough Coat to seal the chipping paint. The needlepoint was made by Jeff’s grandmother and I purchased the German oil painting off of Etsy a few years ago. Those are both just props for the shoot, but most of the other pieces will be for sale at Lucketts. I will apologize to all of my perfectionists out there. I didn’t try to straighten out the wood applique on the headboard. I fix things that are structural or functional issues and, of course,

April 10, 2017 45 Comments

All Things Home

the French twins of Lucketts 2017

It has become a Lucketts tradition, it seems, to have a twin pair of French-style chairs at the Miss Mustard Seed booth! Well, we do not want to break that trend, now, do we? As a recap, here is the pair from 2014… …from 2015… …and from 2016… And here is the pair for 2017 (before their makeover, of course)… They are a new-ish pair, so they are in good, sturdy condition, and they sit a little higher, making them ideal for pulling them up to a table. The frames are nice as they are, but they look a little too “factory finished”, so I will most likely paint them. I’m going to wait to decide until they are stripped and I “try on” some fabric to see what I want to do. I always base the wood/paint and color decisions on the fabric I’m going to use. Now, I almost didn’t

March 19, 2017 21 Comments

Before and Afters

a million tiny drawers

Okay, so the post title is a bit of an exaggeration. These little handmade hardware cabinets have just 17 drawers between them, but it seems like a lot more than that! Do you remember what they looked like before? Here’s a refresher… Clearly, some guy (or perhaps a gal) made them for a workshop space and have gone in and out of those drawers with greasy fingers. There was something that spoke to me, though…the crude design and all of the imperfections and irregularities. They definitely needed to be freshened up, though! We painted them in two coats of Farmhouse White from the MMS Milk Paint line, lightly distressed them, letting the paint chip where it wanted, and then applied Tough Coat to finish. I like that they look fresh, but still old. Well worn and well loved. The inside of the drawers looked a little grubby, though, and I had

March 8, 2017 21 Comments

Before and Afters

farm table & hitchcock chairs

Another piece is finished and ready to wait in the wings until the Lucketts Spring Market in May! It seems so close, yet so far… Anyway, the finished piece is this antique farmhouse table… …and, though they are not 100% finished, these antique Hitchcock-style chairs I purchased last fall… For the chairs, I decided to tape off the rushing and just paint the frames in MMS Milk Paint Grain Sack. Kriste worked on applying the coats of paint over a few days, since chairs are tedious! It’s best to work on them in doses. (As an aside, a few people have asked about Kriste. Well, she is now six months pregnant and is expecting a boy! So, she is mostly doing computer work, pricing, etc. and not as much crawling around on the floor, sanding, etc. Jenn and my mom have come in a few times to help with that sort of

February 24, 2017 44 Comments

All Things Home

progress on the craigslist counter

I did some work on the craigslist counter last week and I thought I would share how it’s shaping up. Now, I’ll be honest…I was planning on painting it. The wood was looking really red, the finish has some unsightly paint splatters, it was really dirty, and it seemed like such a massive black hole with how dark it was. But, I stripped a section of the side, I painted a swatch on the side and the back, and I even painted one drawer. It just wasn’t working for me. The paint was flaking a lot and I didn’t like the contrast of the dark wood and the pale gray paint. I also felt like the piece might look ordinary painted. So, I took a step back and decided to give it a little spa day. Buff it out, oil it up, and see how I felt about it then.

February 21, 2017 88 Comments

Before and Afters

the landscape wardrobe

There are some pieces that are screaming to have a landscape painted on them. This was one such piece. And how can I ignore the pleas from an old piece of furniture? One that’s been around the block, but has a lot of life left? I can’t. And I didn’t. I have been terrible about taking proper before pictures with the most recent pieces I’ve acquired, so here is the best before shot I have of this wardrobe… I found it on craigslist at a nice price, but like most of my finds, this one had some, shall we say, problems. There were some odd modifications and it had clearly been exposed to some moisture. So, we unmodified the odd modifications, cleaned it up, repaired the damaged parts, and added some shelving to make it a more functional piece. We (and by “we”, I mean my dad) also installed a

February 17, 2017 53 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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