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blog

Creating a Metallic Backsplash

9/12/2020

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Follow Annie Sloan's step-by-step guide to giving a tired kitchen a real wow-factor with this super-glamorous gilded backsplash.
​Follow Annie Sloan's step-by-step guide to giving a tired kitchen a real wow-factor with this super-glamorous gilded backsplash.

If you've followed us for some time, you know that Paul and I love a good metallic finish and some of our most popular pieces have been the ones where we've used [more than a little] Metal Leaf.  

​Until now, we've had to search around to find a good brand to use and offer for sale in our shop, but the search is finally over. Annie provided it and we have it!

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Our Home Office

7/21/2020

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​The Home Office has become one of the most important rooms in the house in the last few months, hasn't it? 
We’re Paul and Johanna of Soldier58 in Bordentown, NJ. For this project we chose furniture and accessories to add color and interest to an otherwise neutral room using art, colorful textiles, and furniture painted using Chalk Paint® by Annie Sloan.
Paul and I have just finished giving our home office a top-to-bottom makeover and we wanted to share a little tour. 

Since the beginning of the year, We've been renovating our home one room at a time. We began with the Guest Room and the Guest Bath. With those two rooms complete, it was time to focus our attention on home office.

​This was the room we were most excited about working on for a couple of reasons.

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Our Top 5 Tips for Using Annie Sloan Pearlescent Glaze

4/3/2020

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Paul and Johanna are Annie Sloan Chalk Paint stockists in New Jersey and online.  Here they take Annie Sloan's new Pearlescent Glaze for a spin with some fun results.
​One of the things we pride ourselves on in our shop is the fact that we freely share information.  

If we know how to do something, we want our customers to know it also.  

Often after we share a tip our customers will ask 'how do you know all this?' Paul and I reply that we've had a lot of practice. But that's only part of the truth.

The full story is that a lot of practice is accompanied by a good number of mistakes. Sometimes it takes a little playing around with a new product or technique to learn all the things you can do with it...and what you probably shouldn't do...or what you should do differently.


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The Guest Room (part 2)

3/3/2020

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This is the second of our two-part DIY Guest Room Renovation. We’re Paul and Johanna of Soldier58 in Bordentown, NJ. For this project we chose furniture and accessories to add color and interest to an otherwise neutral room using art, colorful textiles, and furniture painted using Chalk Paint® by Annie Sloan. We also chose to use ‘responsible redecorating’ which is what we call repurposing and reusing items we already own as well as incorporating used and vintage pieces as much as possible.
​A couple of weeks ago we shared the first part of the Guest Room Renovation, in that post we covered the nuts and bolts of the room – the paint, the new floors and the details. In that post talked about all of the basics that need to be done in order to get to the really fun part...the decorating!
 
Our idea for the guest room design was to keep it simple, relaxing, and comfortable.  

​Paul and I love color, but we kept the walls neutral because we plan to sell this house at some point in the no too distant future. So, the color would need to come from the things we put in the room.  

We also wanted to incorporate a concept which we call Responsible Decorating.  Repurposing and re-using things we already own as well as incorporating used and vintage items rather than buying a lot of new things.


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The Guest Room (part 1)

2/18/2020

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Soldier58's whole house renovation kicks off with the guest room. See how we transformed every surface of the room from painting the walls to installing the flooring. We also explain the little details that we changed to make a bigger overall impact.  This part one of a two-part series by Chalk Paint by Annie Sloan stockists, and husband and wife duo Paul and Johanna.
​​I’ve never had a guest room…I mean, never.  

​When I was growing up if there was a spare room, a kid would be put in it. The only guest we ever had was my grandmother and she had to sleep on the pull-out couch in the family room when she stayed with us. No door, no privacy, and she’d wake to find a bunch of kids starting at her.

The idea of a guest room was so extravagant…so fancy.
 
But the reality is, Paul and I have plenty of room. There’s only the two of us and our house has no less than 3 extra bedrooms!
 
We've discussed making a guest room but for years we’ve been so involved in work and our client’s homes that we really haven’t paid much attention to our own home.  


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The Road to Rhinebeck with Annie Sloan

7/27/2019

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It all started with an early morning email.

​​Well, it was early for us.  For the sender however, it was the middle of the day.  
 
The email was from the head of Marketing at Annie Sloan Interiors which is located in Oxford, England. Amy had a simple question: would we be willing to coordinate the Chalk Paint® by Annie Sloan retail booth at the Country Living Fair in Rhinebeck, NY at the end of May?
 
Without hesitation, I replied ‘Yes, we’d love to!’
 
And so it began. 


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Painting Under the Moon

4/16/2019

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This week the sophomore issue of Annie Sloan's The Colourist arrived in stockist shops and newsstands around the world. If you take a peek at page 10, you'll find a gorgeous ceiling painted using Chalk Paint® by Annie Sloan.  This ceiling is the work of our talented friend Santiago.  So, we thought it would be fun to provide a little background on this beautiful ceiling as well the rest of the project.  ​


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Australian Artist Catherine Halligan-Jolly

10/10/2018

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​Several months ago I was working from home while Paul was in the store.  He texted me to say that our friend CJ Mugavero had asked if we’d be interested in hanging some paintings by an Expressionist artist she had just begun representing in her gallery, The Artful Deposit. 
 
CJ mentioned to Paul that I had liked a few of them when she posted them on the Artful Deposit Instagram and she suggested that they’d be a good fit in our shop.


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Creating a Wood Plank Look Using Chalk Paint® by Annie Sloan

4/25/2018

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What do you do when you've stripped damaged veneer from the top of a piece of furniture and you're left with something really ugly? Try creating the look and feel of wood planks by using Chalk Paint by Annie Sloan. Painted furniture looks great with Chalk Paint and there are so many unique looks that can be created, you're only limited by your imagination!
​What do you do when you've stripped damaged veneer from the top of a piece of furniture and you're left with something really ugly?
 
Over the years, we’ve removed veneer from furniture and were able to simply stain it with Chalk Paint® by Annie Sloan or regular wood stain and it looked beautiful.
 
But the top of this low chest of drawers wasn’t in such great shape.  It had a lot of texture and rough cut wood so we knew we’d need to come up with another plan.

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Design Dorks Unite!

2/10/2018

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​A couple of weeks ago I was painting alone in our home studio while Paul was at the store.  As I worked in silence I was thinking about a conversation I was having with my friend Carrie over text the night before. 
  • Carrie: I just read that Dorothy Draper and Sister Parish were cousins. Sister Parish was an original decorator at the Kennedy White House, but was usurped by a French decorator. I believe there are still textiles with her name on it. I mention this because I’ve mentioned her to you and you have spoken about Dorothy D.



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Bold Patterns & Graphics

1/17/2018

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​Paul and I often view our work with furniture as functional works of art.  Something special and beautiful to look at, but also something that can be touched and used. This is why we choose special finishes, custom color mixes, an on occasion…bold graphics. 
 
We both have our favorite artists, graphic designers and illustrators that inspire us and in a future post I’ll share some of those with you, but today I wanted to share some of our favorite pieces and talk about the inspiration and how we accomplished these. 


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Trending Now: Chinoiserie

1/13/2018

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​​I studied fashion in school and like most people, very little of what I studied ever comes back to help me in my day-to-day life.  The only exception is the semester that I spent in a class called History of Textiles & Costumes.  I don't think a week goes by that I don't call upon something that I learned in that class. Although it was a fashion history class, it was taught from the perspective of how fashion is influenced by other design of the day, like art and architecture.  


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Playing it by Ear

1/9/2018

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Blog Post: Playing It by Ear
​I’ve written about inspiration before, and for good reason.  Paul and I know that inspiration can come from anywhere so it’s important to keep your eyes open.

A few weeks ago, during one of our Chalk Paint® 101: The Basics workshops, a participant named Barb added a little too much water to her 2nd paint color on the two-color wet distress.  She was looking at it and feeling a little disappointed that it didn’t look like the finish created by another participant who used the same color combination.  Paul however, was really taken with the finish. 


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The Barcelona Server

10/6/2017

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​​​Iconic graphic designer Milton Glaser said “There are three responses to a piece of design: yes, no, and wow. Wow is the one to aim for.”
 
For the past year or more, Paul and I have been leaning more towards bolder, more modern designs for our furniture.  One reason for this is because our style has changed.

​​​For me, Coastal Cottage has been replaced by clean Mid-Century design.  Paul has moved from Art Deco to a fondness for bright color and a mix of old and new.


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Coastal Blues

8/17/2017

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Every year starting in the spring our custom painting schedule starts to fill up with furniture that have one thing in common - they’re going to a beach house. 
 
Painting beach house furniture is fun because for a lot of people, the beach house is less formal, more fun, and the decorating is a little more colorful. 
 
However, you don’t need a house at the beach to love the coastal look.  The casual feel is so comfortable that this style is at home just about anywhere...


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  • Home
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