Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Back To The Drawing Board

Here’s a little behind the scenes Friday bid-ness. Remember us saying how we recently debated how to best share our house hunting experience while still respecting the privacy of the sellers’ homes we were critiquing? And how we finally opted to share only a doctored image of the exterior, like this one below?

Cottage In Woods

Well, we actually came to that solution only after this sad first attempt to disguise each home occurred:

Sketch Bungalow

I love my wife. And I think she’s very talented. Really. Especially with her cute drawings of our home’s floor plan and our lot (both of which came out really well). Which is why it wasn’t easy to look her in the eye and tell her that I didn’t think her crooked colored-pencil “interpretations” were, uh, the way to go.

Sketch Cape Cod

Luckily for me, Sherry took one more look at them and cracked up. Then we turned to our trusty friend (you may know him as Photoshop) for the job. Oh and we used the Paint Daubs filter to work our blur magic. As for how it all went so terribly wrong, Sherry blames Danielle Staub (she was catching up on some Real Housewives reruns while getting her colored pencil on). That beeyotch ruins everything.

So that’s our little behind the scenes Friday outtake for you. Have any of you had to resort to Plan B after Plan A was an epic fail?

Comments

  3. Shreya says

    That really put a smile on my face :)
    I think Sherry’s illustrations are actually pretty true to life and since protecting the privacy of the owners was an objective – they definitely achieved that!

    Reply

  5. Allison says

    Awwww poor Sherry! But I agree … I don’t think the pictures would have done the houses that you went to see justice. :)

    Reply

  7. lizkayl says

    I think Sherry’s drawings are perfectly fine- I can match each house from the drawing with no problems. It’s definitely something I would have done.

    The only difference is the blurred photos gave us an idea of the condition of the house and the age. Colored pencils don’t quite convey the nuances needed.

    Oh well! Maybe next time.

    Reply

  8. samantha says

    Plan A was to make a perfect, 2 layer pineapple upside down cake for Easter. The 1st layer came out beautiful, the second layer, thanks to my lack of convection oven knowledge, was still batter inside. However, I didn’t know this until I flipped it onto the first layer. After having a short break down (sitting on the kitchen floor crying like a 3 year old), I succeeded in scooping up the majority of the batter off, and covering up the mess in toasted coconut and pansies. It was still delicious and actually ended up quite pretty.

    Reply

  10. Beth@Just{Heart}It says

    I just posted about that exact thing on my blog this morning!

    And BTW, I know you’re going to miss your backyard. Does it make it even harder knowing you’ll not be free to go back to where you got married? I dunno – I got married in a church and I’ve never been back there (13 years ago), so maybe not.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Hey Beth,

      Yeah, that’s kind of what we figure. Most people never get back to their wedding spot, and we’ve had the opportunity to enjoy it every day for the past three years so we consider ourselves lucky just to have had that time with it.

      xo,
      s

  12. Snickrsnack Katie says

    UGH when I read that title and saw a picture of a house, I thought you were going to say that you had to go back to the drawing board with finding a house. I figured something fell through. YOU SCARED ME! :)

    LOL, well I love Sherry’s little drawings.

    Reply

  13. Barbara says

    There’s a little lack of perspective, but I must admit the details are very accurate!
    I discovered Real Housewives through your blog, I think I’m going to look for some episodes on the web. Ah, being Italian and not knowing Teresa Giudice is such an shame.. :))

    Reply

  15. Nicolette {Momnivore's Dilemma} says

    I think your solution is fantastic…you all also could just shoot extreme close-ups of areas of those homes as well.

    Our Plan A was to flip our “estate” in 2 years (we bought before the bubble)…and now 7 years later, Plan B is underway…with 2 kids in an 1100 sq foot two bedroom with a layout from the Donna Reed era.

    I think the boys sharing a room is hilarious though. Even if we score a bigger home (the estate may go on the market soon)…I think I will still bunk the boys.

    And bedroom 3 will be my mom cave…

    Sherry- I think you have mad skills with drawing. Hey, I am an expert; I used to teach K-8 art in Chicago Public Schools…

    Reply

  19. Angela says

    Hilarious! I can just imagine John trying to break the news to Sherry. Thanks for sharing!

    P.S. Can I just tell you how happy I am you got rid of the polls EVERY Friday. I like these type of posts much better.

    Reply

  20. Teresa@Where In the World? says

    Feel no shame Sherry. Your crosshatching is top drawer. I have to use graph paper. And then I still get it wrong.

    Though if you take as long as I do, the photo shop approach was more realistic depending on how many houses you guys would have ended up featuring!

    I cannot imagine trying to draw the huge gray house.

    Reply

  21. Patti says

    You crack me up! I’m sitting here laughing…not only at Sherry’s attempts…but “bid-ness”! (my son, in a COLLEGE application listed his father’s occupation as “business man” so we started making fun saying dad’s a “bid-ness man” … i guess ya had to be there) anyway, and the beeyotch Danielle. Nice try Sherry!

    Reply

  22. anna says

    Whahaha… By the way, you scared me when I read “Back To The Drawing Board”, I thought the deal on the new house had fallen through or something. Luckily it was about these cute drawings ;-)

    Reply

  27. Hannah says

    I’m with @Snickrsnack Katie, when I saw the title of the post and a blurry photograph, I assumed the worst! So I was glad to see there was no bad news in this post.

    I probably would have posted an image of each house taken from google street view, that way you’re not giving away any more than is already out there.

    Reply

  31. Sara says

    Oh my goodness…this post is hilarious! I love it. I think you should have gone with Sherry’s drawings, they’re good!

    Reply

  35. Rose says

    Although the Photoshopped pics look a little nicer than Sherry’s drawings (sorry!) I think that the colored pencil pics were the way to go for privacy. I can see way too much of the houses when they’re just a little blurry. But someone pointed out that Google Maps already shows this stuff anyway, so I guess there’s not much left to privacy anymore anyway.

    Reply

  36. Lauren says

    Haha, adorable! It’s definitely better than anything I could have drawn. I’m so excited for you guys to move and start renovating your new place!

    Reply

  37. sonya says

    Sherry, I have to tell you that I was at Homegoods the other day and they had some pretty awesome white ceramic-looking reindeer in the Christmas decor! I feel like this sounds a little creepy since I don’t know you personally, but I thought “I know of someone who would go bananas over those!” Haha! They were actually made of iron I think but coated in glossy white so I thought they were ceramic at first glance. They were easy to spot in a sea of gaudy and glittery deer they had on display!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Haha, I guess colored pencils just aren’t my medium!

      xoxo,
      s

      p.s. I actually went to FIT, a SUNY art school in Manhattan (Chelsea) and got my BFA in advertising there (after taking two years of Fine Art training)- but many people assume I went to NYU though! Either way these drawings do not do my education proud- that’s for sure! Haha.

  40. Keri says

    I think you should have posted both! The blurred version AND Sherry’s drawing. At least the drawing doesn’t make me feel like I need glasses lol

    PS: I was really hoping we would get to see more pics of the new house this Friday but I understand the whole waiting thing. *sigh*

    Reply

  45. Erin @ Two Story Cottage says

    Those drawings are so something I would have done. :) Fun though. We actually commissioned a painting of our first house. I found the artist online (really reasonable) and she did an amazing little canvas rendering based on a picture. Something to think about with the holiday season coming up! I always get a lot of comments on it. We plan to get one done for each house we live in.

    Reply

  46. Jessica says

    So.. I know there were blurred photos of the houses you checked out, but was there ever a blurred photo of the one you guys are buying or is this a COMPLETE surprise? Oh I cant wait!

    Reply

  47. Jules says

    If this post reflects what you guys were talking about a while back when you described wanting to loosen up with your posting and have more fun…me likey. :)

    Reply

  50. Kirstie says

    Actually, I think you could have gone with the drawings – they convey what each house looked like and have the all important personal touch!

    Reply

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