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Furniture Makeovers

FURNITURE FEATURE FRIDAY – Favorites & Link Party

Good evening everyone!  Thanks so much for all of the links last week.  It’s so much fun for me to look through them and see people showing off all styles of furniture, techniques, paint, fabrics, makeovers and awesome finds.  Each week is truly a  furniture feast for the eyes, so thank you for that!  I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.  Here are three of my favorites from last week… I love all of the details and custom touches on this drop-cloth-slipcovered ottoman by Patti of Old Things New.  The double ruffled skirt with the frayed edges make this piece super special. I’m game for painting anything, but I’ve never tried to paint upholstery.  This piece by Terry of Forever Decorating, and the tutorial for it, looks fabulous and makes me want to give it a try! I think this finish by Cassie of Primitive and

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Before and Afters

Say Hello to “Trophy”

The dresser with attitude is finally finished and photographed! As a recap – this is what it looked like before… …this is what it looked like during (aka – the ugly stage)… …and here she is all finished! You can read about how I dealt with the bleed through HERE and the striping technique HERE.  And if you’re the sort who is still aghast at me painting a piece of wood furniture, you can read my thoughts on the subject HERE. This piece is a great example of how you never know what to expect when you work on a piece of furniture.  Sometimes everything goes as planned and sometimes it doesn’t.  This piece gave me lots of attitude and pushed me into the design she ended up with.  I love all of her imperfections and quirks…a declaration to the world that she was painted by hand, not a machine

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Furniture Makeovers

the dresser with attitude & other things…

 This is the dresser with the attitude.  Last we saw her, she looked like this… I dealt with the red stain bleeding through by sealing it with Furniture Wax and applied a second coat.  Now, it was decision time.  Those vertical trim pieces were bugging me, so I decided to deal with it by adding vertical stripes to act as camouflage.  I used some delicate surface Frog Tape to tape off some stripes… The trouble is I was just a wee bit too impatient before taping the piece.  This isn’t a failure in the paint or the tape, but “operator error.”  At first I had one of those oh-crap-moments, but then I stepped back and looked at the effect… The tape had pulled away just enough paint to create a chippy, smokey gray stripe.  I really liked it. …so I added some more stripes in a sort of grain sack-ish

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Furniture Makeovers

Dealing with Bleed Through

When I bought this piece, I thought I might have some trouble with the stain bleeding through.   Unfortunately, I was right. The piece looked like this…  …I sanded it to give the surface some tooth… …painted it in MMSMP Trophy… …which is supposed to look like the color shown above – a tarnished silver sort of color.  I left it to dry, came back and it was gray-ish purple.  Not exactly what I had in mind. If you’ve painted even a little bit of vintage furniture, I’m sure you’ve come across it.  You paint the piece, go make some dinner, come back an hour later and the color is not what you painted it.  It’s turned more red or pink or yellow or orange.  That is known not-so-affectionately as “the dreaded bleed through.”   (This quirk that sometimes rears it’s ugly head when painting pre-finished pieces can happen with

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FURNITURE FEATURE FRIDAY – Favorite & Link Party

Good evening my fellow furniture-loving friends.  I’m in Raleigh, NC for the weekend to see my boys get all dressed up in tuxes to carry rings down the aisle for my cousin’s wedding.  I can’t wait to see them all decked out in their shiny shoes and box ties.   It’s also a nice chance for me to get away from my house and workshop and all of the things that need to be done for the upcoming Chapel Market.  I’m looking forward to all of that…I have a few pieces waiting to be refinished and painted and boxes of stuff waiting to be priced.  That will all wait, though, and I’ll try to take this time to catch up on some sleep and enjoy time with family. Anyway, here are my favorites from last week… If you know me at all, you may have guessed that this dresser by

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FURNITURE FEATURE FRIDAY – Favorite & Link Party

Good evening my fellow furniture-loving friends.  I’m in Raleigh, NC for the weekend to see my boys get all dressed up in tuxes to carry rings down the aisle for my cousin’s wedding.  I can’t wait to see them all decked out in their shiny shoes and box ties.   It’s also a nice chance for me to get away from my house and workshop and all of the things that need to be done for the upcoming Chapel Market.  I’m looking forward to all of that…I have a few pieces waiting to be refinished and painted and boxes of stuff waiting to be priced.  That will all wait, though, and I’ll try to take this time to catch up on some sleep and enjoy time with family. Anyway, here are my favorites from last week… If you know me at all, you may have guessed that this dresser by

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Kitchen

sneak peek, butcher block update & color of the month

I finished up the dresser today and here’s a preview of it… This is one of those pieces that I needed to adjust my plan as I worked.  There were all sorts of quirks…with the piece, not with the paint.  I’ll share how I dealt with all of those issues and, of course, show how the dresser looks.  Keep an eye out for that post next week. Photo shoots in my kitchen almost always involve me having to do the dishes and then cleaning up my sink.   Just wanted to let you know my sink is used and isn’t always so shiny. So, how is the butcher block holding up since we installed it this summer?  Beautifully!  There is one mark by the sink where I kept my soap bottle sitting… See the oval ring?  It hasn’t been an issue with the hand soap, so I guess there is

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Miscellaneus

A great gift…

A few weeks ago, I shared the new pictures that Maria of Dreamy Whites took for my milk paint line.  They are so beautiful and she captured exactly the feel I wanted to convey.  This picture was one of my favorites… She had painted one of her antique French pitchers in “French Enamel” milk paint.  She let me know she had sent a package to me containing the thumb drive with the high resolution version of the images, so I wasn’t surprised when a delivery truck pulled up and there was a knock at my door.  I was surprised, though, when I opened the door and saw a large box.  I know there’s more than a thumb drive in there!  When you get a large box from someone like Maria, you drop everything and open it.  The scent of lavender wafted out and I hurriedly dug through the tissue.  This

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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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