Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Our Finished Laundry Room Makeover Before & Afters

With the addition of a light fixture and shoe storage this past week (and deciding to nix a window covering for now and just frost the window when we convert the carport into a garage), we just had one last item on our tig ol’ bist (which is how I would imagine Missy Elliott would say “big ol’ list”): Frost the side door for privacy <– seen here Remove the narrow shelving that gets blocked by the open door <– seen here Remove the old shutters that block much-needed light <– seen here Craigslist the old un-energy efficient stacked top loaders and snag a killer deal on new Energy Star front loaders <– seen here

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We Got Professional Photos Of Our House

The following images make me wish I could carry a professional photographer around in my pocket at all times. But since I can’t, at least we had the pleasure of having one over for the afternoon. Local-ish photographer Andrea Hubbell (she’s from nearby Charlottesville, VA) is doing a series of “living spaces” photo shoots and asked if we wanted to participate for fun. Since we’re (a) not too camera shy – at least when it comes to our house and (b) always excited to see our home through someone else’s eyes (especially someone a lot better with a camera), we gave an enthusiastic yes. And boy are we glad we did. Not only was Andrea

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How Many Patterns & Fabrics Should You Use In Each Room?

I was watching Sarah Richardson (Sarah 101) the other night (thanks DVR) and she mentioned that at the end of a makeover she has usually used around 10-14 fabric textiles in each room that she does. And as the title of this post suggests, it totally surprised me. Doesn’t that sound like a lot? Of course she’s an expert when it comes to layering prints and patterns, but I couldn’t imagine a “regular Joe” going into a fabric store and walking out with 10-14 swatches that they were going to combine. But then I realized that she was counting the upholstery fabric on chairs and sofas and headboards along with curtains and a ton of

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How To Potato Stamp A Wall For A Stenciled Look

I did it. I finally completed Clara’s closet stamping project (you know, the one I started here)! And yes, if you couldn’t tell from the title, I made a potato stamp. It was actually really fun. Don’t roll your eyes. It was. And it was free. In fact this entire project cost me 99 cents since I used one tube of Folk Art Paint in Champagne (a soft and pretty metallic gold color) and two potatoes that we already had (never thought I’d list potatoes as existing DIY materials). As for landing on a pattern, last week I shared how my first idea, a $1 rubber stamper from Michael’s, didn’t work (the rubber stamp pattern

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How To Spray Paint A Mailbox

Remember when John met his frog friend (well, technically his toad friend) here? Well, this time around we made a new neighborhood acquaintance… … a snaaaaaaake! And we were skeeeeered. But not to scared to take a picture. Thankfully he was just a harmless garter snake. Why were we outside? Yard maintenance. We figure our exterior will need a whole lotta small phase projects if it’s going to ever-so-slowly transform like our last one did, which went from this… … to this (over the course of 4.5 years)… So since that’s nothing we’ll ever be able to accomplish overnight – or even within a year – we’re all about breaking that humongous task down into

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How To Make A Clothespin Chandelier

Woo to the hoo. We did it. We met our self-imposed Tuesday morning deadline and finished our clothespin chandelier as part of our little (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie B to make us stop pinning and start doing stuff that we’ve already pinned). Here’s how it all went down. We already explained the whole Pinterest Challenge thing here, which is where we snuck in a few photos of our supplies, like this one below: We actually didn’t end up using those three 10″ metal rings from Ben Franklin, but the rest of the stuff came in handy. So for those who can’t quite make everything

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Adding Shoe Storage By The Door

We couldn’t do all of this work in the laundry area and just ignore our sloppy shoe situation. Since the side door into our laundry room is our most-used entrance, it’s also the dumping ground for most of our footwear (since we try to keep shoes off in the house).  Up until now, our “storage solution” has been a shallow woven basket from Bed Bath & Beyond about five years ago (that and a pile next to it – not pictured, because I don’t want to ruin the illusion that we’re not complete animals). This system actually worked fine at the old house since the basket stayed in the sunroom, where it sort of fit

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Hunting Around For Clothespins To Make A Chandelier

Sure it’s Sunday, but how about a little bonus behind-the-scenes tale of hunting down clothespins for the Pinterest Challenge light fixture that we have in the works? Other considered titles: “The Petersik Clothespin Tour of Richmond” “Wow, I’m a really patient husband.” “Sorry environment, we vow to plant three trees to make up for all that driving” Okay, so here’s the deal. When we first started our clothespin light fixture (first mentioned here), we snagged four bags of clothespins at Ben Franklin just to get us started. We knew we’d need more, but we didn’t want to go crazy buying them until we decided on a pattern and had a better sense of how many

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July Superlatives

We’ve been getting requests for some sort of monthly roundup or recap when it comes to all of our undertakings (just so it’s easier to hunt posts down and see what we’ve recently conquered at a glance). And because we wanted to put our own weird little spin on it, while we were out to dinner alone (for the first time since Clara was born, mind you) we started chatting about how cheeky little nominations and titles for certain projects might be funny (or not, you decide)… and so the idea of monthly superlatives was born! As was the conviction that we have to get a life and stop talking about the blog while on

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A Quick DIY Bouquet

Oops, we totally fell off with the whole used-to-be-monthly budget blooms thing. But lookie what I found growing in the jungle that is our front lawn:   Allow me to put on my best Australian nature-show voice to set the scene for you: The air is still. Not a predator in sight. Something moves in the brush. A buzzard circles overhead. Somewhere in the distance a lion roars. No wait, that’s a baby crying. And just like that I’m out of character. I don’t know the real name for them (flower whisperer, I’m not), but I like the sound of Purple Ring Pops. So that’s how I’ve been referring to them. At first I just admired

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Turning Note Cards Into Wall Art

Well well well, if isn’t those little photography note cards again. You know, the ones we bought on our anniversary from a local art gallery to hang in our bathroom? You might not even have registered them in that post since everyone went bananas over the whole Sherry-haircut thing.   Anyway, hanging them in the bathroom was the initial plan. Until I noticed some of the photo colors were in the same neighborhood as our framed $5 scrapbook paper. That neighborhood being Sue-the-Napkin-ville. Or is it Sue-the-Napkin Heights? We figured that maybe our $4 a pop Sherri Conley note cards were destined to live in these eight frames (plus we couldn’t decide on a configuration

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An Artsy And Eclectic House Tour

Who’s in the mood for some house crashing? This gorgeous old home is in the Forrest Hill area of Richmond, and we couldn’t wait to scope it out for you. Because, get this, Wendy’s house is used for commercials and photoshoots! As in, it’s such an amazing backdrop, the house is practically famous. Cool huh? And she’s a professional retail design and merchandising pro who just happens to design light fixtures when she’s not styling spaces. In other words, she’s got mad skillz (more on her here) so we couldn’t wait to snoop around. Oh look, here’s Wendy out on the porch to welcome us in: Her porch was super charming with everything from a

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