Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint Archives | Page 4 of 42

Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint

All Things Home

prepping a piece of furniture to paint

I intended to get a post up last night and then this morning, but time escaped me. The mix of work, family, and church stuff has kept me busy. I still have a few more posts to write about my trip, including our quick stay in Florence, but today I’m going to share a dresser I have been working on… I bought this pretty dresser off craigslist just a few weeks ago. From the listing photo, I thought it was an empire dresser, but it’s actually a reproduction of an empire dresser. It’s smaller in scale and it’s machine-made. It’s still an older piece (probably 1940’s-50’s) and it’s a nice piece. It had been refinished at some point and whoever did it did a beautiful job. The finish is smooth and unmarred. I sort of hate to paint it, but that’s the whole reason I bought it, so it’s getting

October 17, 2018 52 Comments

All Things Home

hutch makeover in tuscany

I must admit, when we got on a plane headed to Florence, Italy, I wasn’t ready to leave Paris, yet. I loved our time there and it was tough to pack up our belongings and leave that apartment. I was excited about Italy, but Paris would be hard to top. Well, Tuscany was not going to be upstaged or underestimated. It charmed me throughly with mountains, walled cities, narrow cobblestone streets that opened into piazzas, olive groves, and sun-kissed paint colors. I can’t wait to tell you all about it. As I did with Paris, I’ll tell you about the trip in stories instead of in one long narrative. Today, I am going to tell you the story of a hutch hidden in an attic in Tuscany that needed a little TLC. Do you see the red building on the left side of this tiny street in Barga? This ancient

September 27, 2018 34 Comments

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

August 1, 2018 51 Comments

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

July 30, 2018 42 Comments

All Things Home

milk paint mural tutorial

One of the reasons I decided to DIY my own dining room mural was so I could share how to do it with others. Well, I realized about 10 minutes into it that I was totally flying by the seat of my pants and I didn’t know if it would even look good in the end! It’s hard to teach something when I’m just making it up as I go. This project had been on my mind for a few months, but I kept dragging my feet on actually starting it. As I would begin to formulate a plan and gather colors, memories of a failed attempt at a chinoiserie mural haunted me and intimidated me. Years ago, pre-blog, I decided to paint a white-on-blue chinoiserie-style (sort of an asian toile) mural in our master bedroom. I knew just how I wanted it to look in my head. Jeff was

July 19, 2018 32 Comments

All Things Home

repainting the primitive blue cabinet

The primitive blue hutch has been one of my favorite pieces of furniture for several years, but it is a little too primitive for my current home. The shape is simple enough, so I think it has more to do with the color and distressed, worn paint. I have been debating painting it for months and I finally did it! Here is how it looked originally… And how it looks now… I know the blue paint on the cabinet looks like it’s old, but it had been repainted before I acquired it (I could see the roller marks) and I repainted it when I brought it home (to tone down the blue a little bit.) All of that to say I wouldn’t have painted it if the paint was original. The new coat of paint is Shutter Gray mixed with some Lucketts Green and Linen MMS Milk Paint. It made

July 8, 2018 88 Comments

All Things Home

milk paint landscape mural | reveal

Unless you follow me on Instagram, when you last saw the milk paint landscape mural in the dining room, it was just getting started with the watery Lucketts Green base for the land. Well, Friday it was hot as the blazes here in Rochester, MN (heat index of 104), so we all hung out inside and I had a lot of time to work on the landscape mural. I wasn’t planning on being able to finish it, but the work went quicker than I expected and the boys were content for long stretches, so I got it all done! And here it is… (Remember that the furniture isn’t done, yet!) (Or the butler’s pantry! You can see it finished HERE.) As I shared in my first post about the mural, this was inspired by Susan Harter’s mural style mixed with a hint of Rufus Porter in the folk-feeling of the

July 2, 2018 136 Comments

All Things Home

pine desk refresh

One thing that has been on my shopping list for a while is a desk for the master bedroom. Since Jeff has an office at the church, he doesn’t need one at the house. He occassionally does work at home and requested a desk in our room, since it’s a quiet room, pretty well removed from the rest of the house. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I would know it when I saw it. I was thinking it might be along the lines of a simple writing desk, but when I came upon this pine desk in a local antique shop a couple of weeks ago, it caught my eye and I thought it would work in the space… It had some short-cut repairs, was missing a knob, and it was dirty, but it was solid, had a nice shape, and a pretty

May 10, 2018 52 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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