Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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October Superlatives

It’s that time again! When we take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff to spice things up. This month we were all over the place as usual, from doing a bunch of kitchen things to dipping into a few office projects, some landscaping tasks, and even a few Halloween crafts. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives (you know, just for kicks).

Most Destructive: Demoing out our fridge cabinet, which officially kicked off to the kitchen makeover madness.

FridgeDemo Taking Down Cab

Best Timing: Our long-awaited appliance purchases, which allowed us to save nearly 1,400 big ones.

Appliances Four Final Price

Best Moves: Swapping the location of our fridge and pantry by moving them to opposite sides of the kitchen to improve the flow (look how intense Sherry is when she moves big things).

PantryDemo Sherry Pushing

Best Removes: Taking out our wall oven, its cabinet, some counters, and our cooktop to make way for our new appliances.

WallOven 4 Removing Oven

Cooktop 8 Removing Granite

Thriftiest: Fun secondhand finds from our road trip to Brevard, NC for my cousin’s wedding.

Brevard Wooden Letters

Cutest Couple: Clara and her BFF Gee (she named him herself) all packed and ready to go on our little weekend road trip. Sidenote: Good thing the cabinets are keeping an eye on them.

Clara Road Tripper

Cutest Couple (Runner Up): A tie between Sherry & Katie’s very giggly performance and me & Jeremy’s Sprite-tastic cameo in this Q&A video from the Bower’s visit to Richmond.

Worst Looking: Our kitchen in the midst of some electrical work so that our new appliances had a place to plug in.

Kitchen Electric1

Most Killer: Stenciling the walls of our office, which took Sherry three 4.5 hour installments to finish. A killer process, but we think it’s a killer result.

Stencil Computer Lamp

Most Likely To Include Ceramic Animals: The “Curator’s Collection” that we had the honor of creating over on Joss & Main (it’s completely normal to get hyper about dog lamps and map art, right?).

Joss Main Collage

Cheekiest: Our office chairs, which got a few coats of green paint and bold new upholstery.

Chair Done3

“Gone To the Dark Side” Award: The bottom half of our office walls, which look a lot more grounded now that we painted them a darker grey color.

Office Painted Under3

Least Likely To Take Themselves Too Seriously: The personal, bright, and sentimental art solutions that we made for our office, which provide a nice visual break from the daily grind (and only set us back $13).

Office After Art

Sloppiest: Clara’s finger-painting skillz on our psychedelic kid-friendly Halloween pumpkins.

Pumpkins 12 Clara Striped

Pumpkins Outside

Spookiest: Our mildly creepy Halloween decorations, including bloody candles, white wooden snakes, and green apples and gourds.

Halloween Decor6

Halloween Decor8

Most Hair Raising: The spider that tried to thwart our quickie mum upgrade to our front porch. I’ll spare you guys the close up pic of our girl “Charlotte” again.

Mum After With Spider

Most Open: The view of our front yard, now that our bush fence is gone.

Front After

Most Open (Runner Up): Outlining a few of our kitchen decisions (and indecisions) including the addition of some open shelving.

Open Shelves Tile Ceiling3

Most Grounded: The new flooring that we’ve chosen for our kitchen – some dark cork purchased on sale at Lumber Liquidators.

Cork And Pergo Sold

Most Well Rounded: The penny tile that we chose for our new kitchen backsplash (so glad Clara approves).

Clara Petting Tile

“The White Stuff” Award: Our decision to forgo granite and use white Corian counters in our kitchen.

Counters5

Deal of the Month: Saving over $300 on cabinets by getting them at the ReStore instead of the home improvement store.

Restore Cabinets

Most Likely To Catch Flies: KB & SP as they announced the return of the Pinterest Challenge, open mouths and all.

Guess What Time 2

So there’s our October at a glance. Can you believe it’s already November? What did you guys knock out last month? Have you ever made a list of accomplishments to look back on? If not, feel free to use the comments of this post to break down what you’ve done. It’s so nice to take a break from adding things to The List while appreciating what we’ve completed. Just for a second. Then it’s back to the kitchen. By this time next week there should be a giant 8′ opening into the dining room. Raise your hand open your mouth if you’re excited.

Psst- You can check out July’s superlatives here, August’s here, and September’s here. 

Pssst- We announced this week’s giveaway winners. Click here to see if you’re one of them.

Comments

  5. Melanie @ Mailbox Journey says

    You guys had a CRAZY busy month of October!
    I can’t believe how much you did!

    What did I do in October?

    Signed a lease on a new apartment:
    http://mailboxjourney.clanbs.com/2011/10/19/keys-in-hand/

    Made some art from my anniversary card:
    http://mailboxjourney.clanbs.com/2011/10/17/card-art/

    & I bought some new canisters for my flour, sugar, etc:
    http://mailboxjourney.clanbs.com/2011/10/10/latest-additions-i-found-my-new-favorite-store/

    Have a great weekend YHL!

    Reply

  6. Julia @ Chris loves Julia says

    Oh man! You guys got so much done this past month. And I can barely contain my excitement about about that wall opening up next week! I looked back at our projects last month and we were kind of all over the place, too! Making lampshades for our bedroom, staining the concrete floor in our guest room, tearing out wet drywall in our basement after a rainstorm (not fun), revamping our laundry room and building a big ‘ol chalkboard for revolving monthly art–which is quickly becoming our favorite project of all time. Every month I erase my drawing and draw something new.

    Here’s October’s drawing:
    http://chrislovesjulia.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-2011-chalkboard-drawing.html

    And November’s drawing, too:
    http://chrislovesjulia.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-2011-chalkboard-drawing.html

    Reply

  7. Faithful Reader...anonymous for a few more weeks :-) says

    We made a baby…well, technically, I think it was in September, but we found out last month. So hard not to tell everyone…..So thankful we painted the future nursery last summer, so now I can just decorate!

    Reply

  9. Amy @ this DIY life says

    “Have you ever made a list of accomplishments to look back on? If not, feel free to use the comments of this post to break down what you’ve done.”

    I keep thinking that I need to sit down and make a list of the things we’ve done on our house. Every time people ask what we have done, I struggle to come up with things other than paint and repair the ceiling then I get discouraged because I feel like we haven’t done enough and our 10 year plan feels more and more like it should be a 20 year plan. Blah! Thanks for the idea of making a list of “dones” instead of just “to do”. I have my weekend project!

    I do have a question about how you write this monthly post (which I love BTW). Do you start it at the beginning of the month and just add to it as you work on stuff throughout the month or do you really sit down and do a recap in one day or is it another method entirely?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      When the end of the month sneaks up on us we just scroll back through that month’s posts to see what we’ve done and recap them all! We don’t always write the recap in any sort of order just because we like switching things up!

      xo,
      s

  10. Darcy says

    WOW! That is a seriously busy month! So much accomplished! I can’t believe that the stencil project was just done a few short weeks ago – It feels like it was ages ago!! Hmm — maybe not to your hands and arms though, Sherry?!!?

    Fantastic month — And congrats for getting some much needed personal time with family trips and friends stopping by! Sounds like it has been a great month personally and professionaly for you all! :)

    Reply

  12. Kaitlyn says

    Wow! Your end of month superlatives are always so inspiring. I wish we could say we kicked off a kitchen renovation, but we did FINALLY paint a catch-all room upstairs a dark blue-gray and loved it so much we decided to make it our bedroom! We frequented IKEA a few days ago for curtains and a new duvet, so hopefully we’ll make the big move this weekend.

    Reply

  13. Angie says

    I painted my way around about a third of my basement which is slowly going from grimey to glowing with its newly white walls and greyish-blue floor. Just two thirds of grime to clean and paint over left. Sigh. My husband and I also purchased our living room furniture! We love it! So fun to see things come together…in all end of the house!

    Reply

  14. my honest answer says

    So excited for the kitchen wwall demo! Oh and cutest couple def goes to John and Jeremy – that video was hilarious! The girls can try to win back the trophy another time, I love Bower Power visits.

    Reply

  18. Jess @ Little House. Big Heart. says

    This month went by really fast, but looking back, you guys really accomplished a lot! Looking back on the month, the hubs and I finished quite a bit on the Little House, too!

    I can’t wait to see the progress on your kitchen, but I have to say that the best transformation for me was getting rid of the bush fence in front of your house. It really made a huge difference!

    Reply

  21. Rebecca says

    I meant to ask this when you actually posted about the new wall art….
    Do you have any recommendations on hanging heights? I recently hung up some frames in a variety of locations (on a blank wall, above a desk, above a bed, between closets) but am not 100% set on my chosen hanging heights. Any ideas would help!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      We just try to eye it and use other objects on the walls as a guide (for example the window and the chair rail were things we looked at when holding art up to hopefully find the most balanced spot for things). A general rule is that you want the middle of things that you’re hanging to be at eye height. Hope it helps!

      xo,
      s

    • Stacey says

      We always have a problem deciding on the correct eye height. I’m short and sweet like Sherry so what looks good to my husband always looks too high for me. I should be used to it by now, haha.

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Maybe split the difference? John is 6′ and I’m 5’2″ so we usually just hold it up so John’s eye height is a little above the middle and mine is a little below it!

      xo,
      s

    • Heather W. says

      This topic was on The Nate show and he said to figure it out based on the avg which would be about 5’8. That is my height and it seems to work perfectly. Just sharing…..hope it helps.

    • Heather W says

      Oops by avg I meant the average height person combining both men and women being 5’8 that is. Hope it makes sense. I had always wondered that too and someone on his show asked him the same question. Love Nate!!!

  24. Allyn says

    Where did you get Clara’s giraffe? I have some super preggo friends and I think that’d be a great gift. Way better toy than the usual teddy bear/dolly that most kids drag around. Include myself. My childhood teddy bear currently resides in our guest room. No judgement, please.

    Reply

    • Ruth says

      No judgement from me as that’s better than my childhood teddy bear. I still have it, but it has been sitting in the garage wedged between the dryer and the wall for the last 18 months. Not because that is a great place, just because when I unpacked it, I put it there temporarily and have never found a better spot. My poor bear… it even has dryer lint collecting on its head. I see the poor thing every time I do laundry.

  25. Emily says

    Cleaned out the garage! It was much-needed since we moved in over a year ago &just kept tossing stuff in there during the bathroom reno! (Kinda like your playroom, lol!)

    Next up is converting the mudroom to a laundry room. I’ll be so happy to not have to throw on an extra sweatshirt just to go in the garage to get the clothes out of the dryer!

    Reply

  26. Lora D. says

    Love reading your blog!!! Great month! My favorite was the Katie & Sherry video. So funny! I am deep into painting my kitchen cabinets. So I can’t wait for your posts on painting yours. Such a long process!! But so worth it. Good Bye brown grainy oak. Hello sleek black. Looking forward to seeing yours, hopefully soon. :o)

    Reply

  27. Jennifer says

    I KNOW, this is a full time job for both of you, but I always feel completely inadequate! You guys get sooooo much done (not just house stuff but blog stuff too!!!) Maybe instead of inadequate I should use it as a motivator!? But at 31 weeks prego with 2 small boys, I’ll just sit here and read what everyone else does and make list for when the contractions stop! :)
    Seriously, love what you guys are doing!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I can promise you that when I hear what you’re up to I feel totally inadequate. You’re making a human being! Hope you feel great and have a great rest-of-your-pregnancy!

      xo,
      s

  28. Sarah says

    Thanks for including something new in with the other superlatives(that cuuuute pic of Clara!).

    This is a great idea so those of us stalkers who’ve already read all of your posts still get something fresh :)

    Reply

  30. Patti says

    um, I hot glued some seashells into a shadowbox frame for a Christmas gift. Wow, you guys did all this in a month?! I’m seriously lazy.

    Reply

  31. Emily E says

    We found out my husband got accepted to a university 60 miles away, made the decision to move, made an offer on our first house, and are now wrapping up the process for a November 22 closing date!

    Reply

  32. Teresa says

    I made the decision to quit being so scared of decorating “out of the box”, heck just decorating with something besides black and brown.. lol

    Not much, but it’s a move in the right direction for me!!

    Reply

  33. Krista says

    You forgot to mention that this is the month that SUE THE NAPKIN made her debut on The Rachel Ray Show! Sue is all over the cooking challenge on today’s episode :)

    Reply

  34. Kim says

    Love everything you do and am closely following your kitchen project! Any chance you give design consultations?! Haha! I’m dying over here over DIY cabinet painting! Have you chosen which paint you will use for your cabinets? Are you planning to fill the wood grain before painting? I want to copy you..hee hee. ; )

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Aw you’re so sweet! We used to do little consults but sadly just don’t have the time anymore with the baby and the blog and the book and all that stuff. Wish there were more hours in the day! As for what paint we’ll use for the cabinets and how we’ll deal with the wood grain, we like using self-leveling paint like Benjamin Moore Advance (we used it to paint the cabinets in the office, so we’ll probably follow that method again since we loved how they came out). Of course we’ll share all those details as we go!

      xo,
      s

  36. Christine Johnson says

    Hi John,

    This is Christine Johnson from DuPont. Everyone here thoroughly enjoyed reading your original post on all of the new additions done to your house – particularly your choice to use Corian® for your kitchen counter, and we are honored to receive the “White Stuff” award this week! I think the Glacier White color helps your kitchen create a dynamic and contemporary feel while working seamlessly with the other kitchen elements and renovations your family has completed. As with the rest of your readers, I’m looking forward to seeing all you can accomplish next month!

    Best,
    Christine

    Reply

  37. Jamie B. says

    Sorry, I have an unrelated question I hope you might have a moment to answer.

    I’m moving into a freshly renovated apartment with a brand new coat of (of course) renter’s beige paint. I was planning to just live with it a while but a week later it still reeks of paint fumes in there and I feel like it’s killing me slowly. :( Leaving the windows open isn’t really an option as it’s getting chilly in these parts of Canada.

    So I wondered if I painted over it with no/low-VOC paint, would it get rid of the fumes? Sealing them in, so to speak? Thank you.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I’ve done a little research on that and apparently it will continue to offgas through the new paint, so it shouldn’t really help to use no-VOC paint over it (other than not adding any additional VOCs, but the ones that are there in the old paint will still slowly release as they would if you didn’t repaint). Certain products can seal VOCs in (like SafeCoat, but that’s a poly, so it’s meant for furniture, etc). I would recommend blasting the heat while you’re at work (heat speeds up the release of VOCs) and then opening the windows a bit as soon as you get home (to allow those released VOCs to escape outside. Hope it helps!

      xo,
      s

  40. Kayla says

    Me me me! *raising hand* I’m excited for the big wall opening in the dining room! I can’t believe it will be next week! I can’t wait!!!!!

    Reply

  41. Melanie says

    After discovering your blog sometime in August (right before closing on our first house) and deciding to read from the beginning, starting with your original kitchen renovation, I have just now caught up to “real time” on YHL! Just in time for the current renovation!
    Thanks for all the DIY inspiration!

    Reply

  42. Vonda says

    Wow, you 2 were busy this month! Other than decorating for Halloween, I think we did NADA. Oh wait we did plant grass seed.
    I have a question. We are trying to make a decision on the gray to use in our kitchen and the pictures of Moonshine (one of our choices) and one slide down (Gray Horse) in the office look amazing and like the perfect gray. Do you think your pics are pretty true to color? Do you think Gray Horse would be too dark covering all the walls? It looks like blue undertones as opposed to green (which I’m trying to avoid), but it’s really hard for me to judge colors and y’all always read the undertones so well.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh yes, I think the photos are pretty true to how the color reads in our house (and Gray Horse would be an awesome wall color- we’re even tempted to repaint the bedroom that color someday) but it might read differently in your house since every space has different lighting which alters how the colors read. If it looks like it has blue undertones in your house I would trust that it will read that way in your light even though it’s not blue at all in our light. Hope it helps!

      xo,
      s

  45. susan says

    Just came back from Lowe’s where we looked at things to redo our bathroom. I want to tile the shower, hubby wants pre-fab shower thingy. We couldn’t even agree on light bulbs. I have a new found appreciation for all the work you two do together. I just keep telling myself, “think happy thoughts”, as I went aisle by aisle through Lowe’s with my man………arrgh.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Haha, we definitely disagree as we go! We just have one rule that we call “the full agreement agreement” – which means we agree that we both have to agree. Or we don’t get something. So it saves us from getting something that one of us will loath and hold against the other person. It takes longer to find something we both love, but it’s so worth it because… we both love it! Haha.

      xo,
      s

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Yikes, that’s so weird. Wouldn’t someone who is pretending to be me get busted when they meet these potential roommates and don’t look like me? So strange. Thanks for the tip! Off to report it.

      xo,
      s

    • Heather W says

      Ohhh how creepy. They also said they were in advertising!! I hope you did report this could be some psycho way of luring females to this apartment or something. What would be the point??????

    • YoungHouseLove says

      That’s the thing, I have no idea what the point would be, but I’ve let them know so it should be taken care of soon. Thanks for always reporting this weird stuff to us guys! We love having so many eyes and ears out there!

      xo,
      s

  47. Lindsey Rockers says

    The office is looking great!! I love everything about it except I still can’t stand those dang lime green chairs!They totally steal the show and detract from all the other great aspects of the room :/ The crazy paint + the busyness of their design is just tooo much. I think they’d look much better in the same color as the back of your built-ins or another less in-your-face color that lets the design of the chairs and the rest of the room take center stage! Maybe you can change my mind with the right curtains or rug… but right now they just stand out way too much! Even a slightly more muted color of green closer to the color of the art on the far left wall would tone things down just enough and look great!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh yeah, our green chairs definitely aren’t a choice everyone would make. And none of the rooms in our house make complete sense yet since they’re all only about 30-70% done. You’re right that adding a rug & curtains will change things, so it’s all just trial and error and taking risks and seeing what happens. We like to remind ourselves that our first house looked like this about eight months in, and we’ve only been here ten months! Haha. Oh and as for painting the chairs the color of the art on the left, they’re almost exactly the same color in person – so maybe it’s just how they photograph/show up on your monitor?

      xo,
      s

  49. Micha says

    I really love those recaps! Maybe I’ll steal that idea for my own project diary :o) Only steal from the best!

    October was my slacker month compared to other months before. We focussed on the bathroom: trim out with baseboards, installing the sink, painting and hanging a vintage mirror – that kind of stuff. November is shaping up nicely because we’re in project panic: we have guests and family coming for Thanksgiving. Nothing is better than a tight deadline!

    Reply

  50. Sarah says

    Cutest couple isn’t monkey and banana?? or Clara and will during the visit?

    I guess they’re all cute though :)

    Reply

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