Furniture Makeovers Archives | Page 43 of 110

Furniture Makeovers

All Things Home

reupholstering a French chair | part 5 | upholstering the chair

We are finally here…get your staple guns out and let’s start upholstering!! I know it’s hard to believe that it takes four parts to get to the point when you can actually upholster, but that’s often how DIY projects are – you have to do several steps to get to the fun part (or at least the part when it starts looking like an improvement and not an epic fail.) This episode is the longest, because I wanted to show each step in detail, especially the tricky places. I know it also helps visual learners to actually see what I’m doing as opposed to just hearing me describe it. I also wanted to do a bit of hand-holding for people who are brand new to upholstery. I talk about the staple gun I use in the video, but I thought I would link to it here as well. It’s a

February 23, 2015 30 Comments

All Things Home

upholstering a french chair | painting & finishing the chair frame

Here we are at parts two and three of our makeover of these French chairs I found on Craig’s List… We stripped off the upholstery in part one, which you can find HERE in case you missed it. Once the upholstery is stripped, that is the time to deal with the frame if you want to change it at all. I love leaving wood frames alone when they are to my taste, but this one had a shiny finish, black speckles that speak to the 1970’s-80’s and a hand painted gold detail that wasn’t really my thing. Stripping the finish would’ve been much more than I wanted to take on, so I decided to paint. Kriste and I painted the frames in MMSMP in Mora… (In case it’s driving you nuts, I did paint the inside of the back left leg of my chair once the camera stopped rolling.) Since the

February 19, 2015 12 Comments

Before and Afters

paint brush on a stick

I was all set to meet Kriste at the studio this morning, but as I was getting up and about for the day, I realized I really wanted to paint my walls and trim and get the tedious painting project that’s been hanging over my head for years, finished. When the mood strikes to do something like that, you do it. So I did. I shared last week about some of the painting on my to-do list… Yesterday, I painted the walls (Gray Owl) and the trim (bright white out of the can) in the hallway through the arch. It just looks fresher and brighter than it did with the off-white trim and creamy-beige walls. Here the hallway is from the bathroom view before it was painted… …and after. The stairway was the same color and really dingy and scuffed. You can see I have touched it up over the

February 4, 2015 38 Comments

Before and Afters

Furniture Makeovers Galore…

If you like furniture makeovers, you’re going to have an overflowing cup after perusing this post. This weekend, the Mustard Seed Studio hosted our first BYOF (bring your own furniture) workshop. This is less instruction than the milk paint 101 workshop and is more about finishing a piece and learning along the way. We had seven ladies attend, plus Kriste and my mom. The furniture (and their owners) started showing up about 15 minutes before the start of the workshop. Of course, I loved this French-back cane chair, a find from Craig’s List, instantly. I got a little anxious, though, when Nancy, the owner, said she was going to paint the upholstery as well. The frame painted up really well, as I expected. Nancy added the Bonding Agent to the paint, so it would adhere to the slick yellow-ish finish. I nervously checked in on her as she was painting the

February 2, 2015 32 Comments

All Things Home

styling the jelly cupboard

I’ve been under the weather for the past few days. I’m getting better, but hanging out in bed doesn’t make for very fun blog posts. I checked out my draft folder to look for posts I started, but never finished or posted, usually because something more exciting comes along to write about. As I was digging through the drafts folder, I found this one… I have written about styling before and I thought I would share the process I went through styling this primitive jelly cupboard I sold at the Chapel Market last October. I started out with a large market basket sitting on top. I’ve learned when it comes to styling that a lot of little things can get lost in a picture. It’s better to use pieces that make a bigger statement. I think this can also translate to styling a piece for your home. Imagine this jelly cupboard with

January 29, 2015 24 Comments

All Things Home

how I hand painted the Mora dresser

I shared this hand painted dresser last week and, as promised, I’m now sharing more detail on the hand painted design. First of all, I’m always asked if my hand painted designs are stencils. No, they are hand painted. I know that will immediately lose some folks when I say that, because a lot of people don’t feel comfortable with hand painting. I get that. The kind of hand painting I do is simple strokes, repeated over and over again until it makes an overall design. When you see it up close, you can see how simple and even a little messy it is. I have learned that the less I overthink it, the better it looks. I always start out by chalking out the rough design. That way, I know the design is going to look the way I want it to before I put a drop of paint

January 26, 2015 23 Comments

Artistic Endeavors

the first workshop

We opened the doors for our very first workshop in the Mustard Seed Studio on Friday. It was so much fun getting ready for it and a great incentive to get things in the studio finished. My goal for these workshops is to educate, but also to share this amazing creative space with others and make our guests feel pampered…in a DIY sort of way! I know many of them are taking a vacation day or hiring a sitter or getting this for a birthday present, so I want to make it worth it! Each space was set with a look book, a note card for taking notes, an apron and a hand painted linen name tag. I found these adorable mini wood clothes pins in the office section at Wal-Mart and they were the perfect way to clip the tags onto the apron. Attendees wrote their name on their tags

January 25, 2015 21 Comments

Before and Afters

say hello to “mora” | hand painted dresser

It’s now time for me to introduce the final color in the MMSMP European Colour line. I have to say that it’s been so much fun developing these colors, painting pieces in them and then revealing them here. It’s been a true creative journey for me. The last color I’m introducing is perhaps one of my favorites. Say hello to Mora… Mora is a pale blue/gray/green color that can look entirely different depending on what it’s next to. It was named for the Swedish town of Mora, which is famous for those gorgeous curvy standing clocks. (I hope to have a “mora clock savings fund” going one of these days.) Anyway, it’s a soft, beautiful color. Believe it or not, I found TWO empire dressers on Craig’s List a couple of days after Christmas and they were both very well priced. I have been on an empire streak lately! I decided

January 22, 2015 26 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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