Candice Wagener
The Sun Prairie shop gives instruction on using milk paint and helps with furniture revamps.
Whether you’re a DIYer with an environmentally conscious side or a garage sale shopper with some pieces you’d like to fancy up, consider using milk paint for your next project. The Ironstone Nest in downtown Sun Prairie is the place to learn all about it.
“Milk paint is the original paint. We are going back to the way our ancestors used to paint,” says Laura Distin, owner of the shop. Distin says milk paint is ideal for use inside homes, especially those in the Midwest, seeing as how we’re stuck indoors much of year.
Milk paint can also be life-changing for people with allergies. It’s made from five all-natural ingredients: lime, clay, chalk, casein and iron oxide pigments. It contains no volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Versatile, milk paint has five basic finishes: chippy, wash, pickle, crackle or opaque. It can also be used as a stain, without the odor of traditional stain.
There’s no need to prime with milk paint. It comes in a powder form, with a bonding agent already added; all you need to do is add water to get your desired consistency. “If you can mix chocolate milk, you can use milk paint,” says Distin.
Milk paint helped the Ironstone Nest evolve to the store it is today.
Distin has long hunted for curbside and garage sale finds to personalize, at first out of necessity because money was tight.
In 2010, taking a break after a successful 18-year legal career, Distin was at home with her new baby and needed something to do.
Online, she ran across the Miss Mustard Seed blog and, on a whim, filled out a retail application to sell its line of milk paint.
“We didn’t even have a store,” Distin remembers. “Four days later we got an email that we got accepted.”
Distin and her husband settled on their permanent retail space in May 2014. In line with the Miss Mustard Seed standards, Distin offers how-to classes and workshops so customers can feel confident using the product at home. Options range from “Milk Paint 101” to “Distress to Impress.”
The Ironstone Nest also offers other products to complete a decorating project or furniture revamp, from wood glue to drawer pulls. The shop also sells completed hand-painted furniture.
“We want to be one-stop shopping for the avid furniture refinisher or the weekend DIY’er,” says Distin.
The Ironstone Nest
240 E. Main St., Sun Prairie, 608-772-2117, theironstonenest.com, 10 am-6 pm Wed., 10 am-7 pm Thurs., 10 am-6 pm Fri., 9 am-5 pm Sat.
