Furniture Makeovers Archives | Page 72 of 111

Furniture Makeovers

Before and Afters

Blank Canvas

I shared a few weeks ago that I found the perfect dining room chairs on Craig’s List. They were vintage oval-back French caned chairs…just what I have been hunting for. AND they were sturdy, which was important. You know…so people could actually sit in them. (I have been known to have chairs in my house that are just to look at and that’s a bad idea. People do what you do with chairs and sit in them and I cringe, hoping the chair doesn’t flatten under them.) Anyway, the only bummer is that these perfect chairs had multiple coats of paint on them, the last one being maroon. They were pretty gummed up with paint, so another coat of paint was not going to get these chairs where I wanted them to be, so I looked into having them stripped professionally. I was surprised that it was not as expensive

July 6, 2013 83 Comments

Furniture Feature Friday – Favorites & a Link Party

Good evening FFF fans! Today was a good day. I finally found a great fabric for my French daybed, the new toilet and bathroom tile arrived (I’m sure the UPS guy loves me), some of my Hungarian fabric came in from Germany and I dealt with my sewing machine issues (operator error) and got started on a big sewing project for a freelance article. Ah…good mail and productivity. I love days like that. Anyway, I’ll share all of that later. Tonight…it’s about furniture. Here are some of my favorites from last week… Brynne from The Gathered Home shares the triumph and trials of her Craig’s List score in this entertaining post… (hint: it’s the tufted sofa.) Sticking with the sofa theme for tonight, Paint in My Hair shares this sweet whimsical sofa. I think the colors and the way the fabrics play off one another is so cute. Kelly of

June 28, 2013 17 Comments

Furniture Feature Friday – Favorites & a Link Party

June 27, 2013 27 Comments

Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint

Inspirational Shop Space – The Ironstone Nest

You might think that I’m super organized when it comes to my blog. That I have some fancy calendar where I schedule my posts months in advance. That would be a totally rational assumption, since it is my business, after all. That assumption would be wrong, though. I just blog on the fly. I’ve tried the calendar thing, but I always abandon it. I like to write about what I’m excited about, what’s inspiring to me. Well, thankfully, something super inspiring fell into my lap today. My day was spent on hanging and mudding drywall, pulling off trim, cleaning, e-mail and paperwork, etc. Stuff that is not exciting and not inspiring. (Well, I did get a few exciting e-mails today…) So, anyway, the awesome people who retail MMS Milk Paint have a Facebook group where they can share ideas, questions, successes, etc. It’s always thrilling for me to see pictures

June 25, 2013 37 Comments

Furniture Makeovers

Milk Paint on Raw Wood

I know I’ve shown a lot of the chippy goodness that can be created with Milk Paint. That’s just a look I love. Paint that held on to a piece of furniture that has been well-used and well-loved for generations. I love the character and uniqueness it gives to a piece. Chippy pieces are striking to my decorating eye. While all of that is true and that chippy, time-worn, authentically-aged look can be achieved with MMS Milk Paint, it’s not the best thing milk paint can do. Milk Paint is at its very best over raw wood. I’ve used a lot of different paints throughout my DIY career and I don’t know of another paint that is better over unfinished wood than milk paint. Milk Paint has been around for thousands of years and is recognized as one of the earliest known paints. When you look at it from

June 24, 2013 40 Comments

Furniture Makeovers

Painted Bar Stool Tutorial – Part 2

Welcome to part two of the painted bar stool tutorial. In case you missed it, or just for future reference, you can find part one HERE. In part two, I’m going to share how the do the distressing and finishing to achieve the final look… We’ll also chat about the kind of sand paper I use for distressing. So, I painted the bar stool in two coats of MMS Milk Paint in French Enamel (with the bonding agent added) and let it dry overnight. I didn’t have to let it dry that long, but that’s just how it worked out. You can start distressing once the paint is dry to the touch. I prefer to distress most pieces by hand. Sometimes I’ll hit a piece hard with the orbital sander, but it’s harder to control, especially on a piece with lots of corners and edges. The orbital sander is really best for

June 20, 2013 24 Comments

Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint

Painted Bar Stool Tutorial – Part 1

I’m painting my kitchen bar stools one at a time, so my kids don’t freak out. They sit at them quite often during the day for meals, snacks, drinks, treats, coloring, playing with the iPad, etc. So, I’m working on number two and thought I would take some pictures along the way for a tutorial. The color I’m using is French Enamel in MMS Milk Paint. I started out by lightly sanding the stool with 100 grit sand paper. I wanted to take a bit of the shine off the finish and remove some of the dried oatmeal, yogurt and various other splats that have added a nice “texture” and “patina” to the chairs. Sanding to prep a piece to paint doesn’t have to be a big intricate ordeal. It’s just roughing up the surface to give it “tooth” for the paint to grip. It only took about 4-5

June 18, 2013 44 Comments

Paint Types – Pros & Cons

I decided it was time to update some of my “painting posts”, sharing the products and techniques I use now vs. a few year ago. I was looking through some of the posts highlighted on my side bar and they are ancient! It’s time for an update! So, what better place to start than paint? Here are the paints I use most, the pros & cons for each, and what I use them for. Of course, I have my biases (who doesn’t?), but I am going to try my best to be impartial and honest. I’m not going to link to or mention any specific products, so I can talk about the groups of paint generically. I have a HUGE paint shelf that is filled with different brands and kinds of paints, because there is not one magic paint that does everything. MILK PAINT (I’ll just put it out there

June 17, 2013 1 Comment

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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