Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

| By | | 336 Comments

Renovating Arguments – They Definitely Happen

Occasionally we get comments like “I don’t know how you spend all day together without fighting.” While I appreciate the assumption that we have some flawless, all-smiles marriage – we fight. We get upset with each other… and Clara… and even Burger. I’m not saying we have Real Housewives-worthy throwdowns (our table flipping count is still at zero) but like any normal couple we argue. Sometimes in a healthy, I-fight-because-I-care way. Sometimes in a probably less-than-healthy Sherry yells and I give her the silent treatment way. But the point is – yes, we fight (skip to about 11:45 on this old blogiversary Q&A video for a brief mention on the subject). As upfront as we’re

[ Read More ]

| By | | 6,163 Comments

Fab Freebie: Magnesium

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Wow. You guys are a lot more opinionated about the periodic table than I had assumed. Anyways, random.org selected the winner of this giveaway as… Andi W. (who likes Sodium for all of the salty snacks it provides, but admitted “My inner nerd wants to vote adamantium.”) Congrats Andi! Hold onto your seats, chemistry nerds. We’re giving away some magnesium this week. It’s coming in the form of Oreck’s latest and lightest-weight upright vacuum ever – the Magnesium. In fact, at less than 8lbs it weighs in at about half the poundage of an ordinary upright. Not to mention its skinny but strong

[ Read More ]

| By | | 254 Comments

Building A Frame To Make A DIY Upholstered Headboard

We owe you a huge post about all things Haven/ATL, but we’re actually driving home today (after crashing a bunch of awesome houses, doing a thrift store tour with Katie B, hosting an informal backyard wedding for Clara and Will, etc) so we’ll share what we snuck in before we left for Atlanta: the beginnings of a headboard for the freshly rearranged masted bedroom. With Ed the Bed officially minus posts, we quickly turned our attention to making him plus headboard – as you saw Sherry mock up in Photoshop last week – along with darker floors and a darker dresser: We wanted something upholstered over something wood/tin/woven/stenciled/painted since we wanted something cushy to lean

[ Read More ]

| By | | 238 Comments

Buying Rugs For Our House

It feels like the last few months have been The Age Of Rugs. We got this one from a local outlet for our bedroom… … this one from Urban Outfitters for our kitchen… … and just got this one from Joss & Main for our office…   It was actually kind of hard to find an 100% jute rug that was 6 x 6, so when this guy came up for $89 (down from $150) we finally pulled the trigger.  Especially since Pottery Barn sells a nearly identical one for $129 down from $149 and Overstock has something similar for $115. We had always wanted something round to soften all the angles in the room

[ Read More ]

| By | | 112 Comments

Outdoor Updates And A Landscaping Tour

It’s yard tour time, baby! Every year we try to take a few video tours of the inside of our house, just to look back on how it has evolved (you can check those out here). And we even made a little outdoor tour post last year, complete with a full video of John bush-wacking his way around our yard. So we thought it would be fun to make that an annual tradition. Just so we can see how the exterior of our house is evolving as we tackle projects big (like the patio and the deck) and small (like all of the transplanting/seeding/weeding that we do – more on that here). The funny thing

[ Read More ]

| By | | 453 Comments

Oops We Failed Our Deck Inspection

#FAIL Oh how I wish that hashtag was in reference to some cheeky Internet meme. Instead, it’s about the result of our deck’s footing inspection. Sigh. Picture us singing “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have, the facts of DIY life.” So here’s the deal. We scheduled the inspector to come look at the six holes we had dug for our footings. By my understanding, he’d simply be looking at each one to make sure they were in the correct spots and dug to the right width & depth. Pretty straightforward by my assumption. But if you recall, we chose to go above and beyond by

[ Read More ]

| By | | 656 Comments

Cutting The Posts Off Our Canopy Bed

Yup, we finally gave Ed a little haircut. For over a year and a half we tried to work with the posts on Ed the bed, but the realization that we didn’t have a lofted ceiling or a floor plan that made sense of those big dramatic posts slowly worked its way into our conscious and we finally decided that just because Ed was born with long hair posts doesn’t mean that a little haircut is cruel and unusual bed punishment. So here he is before… … during… … and after… This whole bed-trimming project was free, took about an hour of work, and we totally dig the more open look. It was just too

[ Read More ]

| By | | 567 Comments

Finding The Right Spot For The Bed In A Bedroom

First lets rewind to this post where I said “As for if the bed can move, the floor plan of this room is a definite challenge thanks to “things” on each wall (two very off-centered windows, a nook across from the door, and a nook with the sink tucked into it on another wall – and a chandelier in the exact center that looks off if the bed isn’t in the right place). So we’ve tried the bed in a bunch of spots, but the place that works best for us is where it lives now (it’s the only long flat wall in our entire room).” Well, after seeing a few inspiring glossy mag photos,

[ Read More ]

| By | | 10,003 Comments

Fab Freebie: This Little Life Of Mine…

*** This giveaway has reached its cap of 10,000 entries, and has been closed – see who won below!*** After reaching our cap within 24 hours, we’ve gone ahead and let random.org pick our one lucky winner. They are… AJ (who can’t wait to take our next picture for our annual anniversary photo). We know the feeling. Congrats! …I’m gonna let it… be organized online? If you’re one of those people that can’t seem to get a handle on your family photos – between your camera, phone, computer, and Facebook / Instagram / Flickr – you just might find the answer to your prayers in ThisLife. It’s a free cloud photo storage tool that, among

[ Read More ]

| By | | 146 Comments

Making Our Post Holes To Build A Deck

Before we get to our weekly deck update, we just have to say HOLY COW you guys have awesome homes! So many folks submitted house crashing photos for our upcoming trip to Atlanta for the Haven conference – and we wish we had time to see every last one of you! We’ve worked out a plan to crash as many as we can fit in and are crying a little inside that we can’t get to all of you –  but we might be back out that way for book tour stuff in the fall so there’s always next time! So this is just a huge thanks to everyone for offering to allow a toddler, a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 295 Comments

Our Anniversary Photo Tradition

Deck progress drags on, so we’ll be back with more details for you on Monday (wish we had more full days to devote to it, but it’ll probably be a weekly update situation like our first house’s bathroom reno and our kitchen redo since it’s such a big undertaking). But I just couldn’t resist sharing this in-progress picture of John and his dad telling the auger who’s boss: Oh but the time it’s taking us to build this deck isn’t what I meant by the title of “half a decade” (at least we hope it won’t take us five years to get ‘er done). That has to do with our five year wedding anniversary, which

[ Read More ]

| By | | 138 Comments

House Crashing Update: Kelly’s Outdoor Escape

We had tons of fun House Crashing Kelly Moore last May (you can see the whole shebang here)… … so when she told us she had made some outdoor updates, we couldn’t wait to check out this little haven that she created out on her deck. Complete with outdoor drapes, a hanging egg chair (from Ikea), some colorful seating (from CB2) , and lots and lots of potted plants  – it definitely has serious come-hither charm. We especially loved the leaning pallet planter that she DIYed with hose clamps from the home improvement store. Some pallets have chemicals in them while others are more naturally sealed (with heat) so they’re less questionable for outdoor crafts

[ Read More ]