Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

| By | | 311 Comments

House Crashing: John And Sherry Plus 8

You know how excited we get to snoop around houses and share the goods with you guys (we’ve even crashed open houses and stores), so just picture our excitement to crash EIGHT houses on one block for your viewing pleasure. It definitely wasn’t our most traditional house crashing adventure – it was actually a home show here in Richmond called Richmond Homearama, where home builders team up with local designers to construct and decorate eight houses in a variety of styles. Most of the homes are already sold by now, but you can still stroll around for ideas and inspiration. So we thought we’d show you a few of our favorite nooks and crannies. It

[ Read More ]

| By | | 145 Comments

How To Add Floor Trim, Transitions, and Reducers

Since sharing this photo over a month ago, some of you have asked for more detail about putting the transitions around the cork floor in our kitchen (and around the fireplace’s floor surround). Oh but remember we’re eventually going to be refinishing the rooms with the orange wood flooring to match the darker cork tone, so it should look something like this down the line (pardon the bad photoshop): Finding the right thing for the job was a bit of an effort on our part since our Lisbon Cork doesn’t come with matching transitions. In fact, the guy at Lumber Liquidators recommended against any kind of cork transition because they’re not as durable as a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,573 Comments

Fab Freebie: The Closers

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** We gave random.org the assignment again of helping us choose our winner and they chose… Sarah (who could think of 10 little projects that have added up that she could use this for). Congrats Sarah! Since the early days of YHL, we’ve been buddies with the foursome over at One Project Closer. Ethan, Fred, and their wives Jocie and Kim dish up tutorials, tool reviews and decor posts to help us all get (say it with me) one project closer to our dream house. Recently they’ve launched a series of “Pro-Follows” where the boys tag along with professional contractors to document big projects

[ Read More ]

| By | | 591 Comments

How To Spray Paint Upholstered Chairs

Yup. I spray painted chairs. Upholstered chairs. Dude, I’m the first to admit it’s weird. And it’s definitely not the answer if you’re sane. But when you’re a desperate woman with nothing to lose, well… stuff happens. Remember these Craigslist chairs we found last March? They were originally from an old hotel (with faded and stained eighties fabric to prove it) but we got them for $25 a pop. Then I tried to paint them a soft apple green color like a tutorial I’d seen, but didn’t have as much luck (read more on that hot-mess here). We were set on green for a while (not this neon of course) until we realized it’s a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 1,508 Comments

Busted (My Run In With Eminem)

Ok, so I naively thought this day would never come, but I have been busted. I mistakenly believed that I could get through my adult life without this being brought up 13 years later, but people are smart and the internet is wide. So after more than a few “Who me? I don’t know what you’re talking about, haha” comment denials, I’m coming clean. My name is Sherry $herdog, and I was on MTV when I was 17. And it was easily the most embarrassing compilation of moments that could ever be edited together. I’m an over-sharer, so some folks might wonder why I’d try to hide from this video. And to you I’d say:

[ Read More ]

| By | | 97 Comments

A Quick Kitchen Update With Stenciled Floors

If you ever wanted to quiet that voice in your head that says “Kitchen makeover? Are you crazy? You don’t have the money for that!” – let this transformation by Erin inspire you. Here’s her letter: I wanted to share my blog post on our kitchen remodel with you. It’s a temporary remodel, as cheap as possible, until we can afford to completely gut it and get a new kitchen in a few years (hopefully!). The biggest purchase was new appliances, besides that we spent max $100 for paint, stenciling supplies, and a shelf above the microwave. I also finished the floor by stenciling on it, and I love the results! I don’t know if

[ Read More ]

| By | | 316 Comments

Selling A Kohler Toilet On Craigslist

Remember the almond toilet that came with our master bedroom (which we recently switched out for a taller and cleaner-looking white one)? Well, for a while the old almond guy – who looks oddly white in this picture below – just sat in our entryway. What, is that weird? The reason? We decided to try our hand at Craigslisting it. Once John found out it was an over $1300 (!!!) toilet by Kohler (more on that here) he was convinced we could get some money for it from someone in search of an upscale almond toilet. You’d be amazed what people buy on Craigslist by the way. And a few days later… we sold it!

[ Read More ]

| By | | 552 Comments

How To Build A Rockbox

Yes, just when you thought the sandbox-citement was over – it continues. We chatted all about how we built the base of the box here and how we made the lid with a locking system that secures it to the fence here – but it still wasn’t done. That’s the funny thing about DIY in general – you might expect a kitchen reno to run across 35+ posts and to last four months, but you never think that something like a simple sandbox will be a three part process. On the other hand, sometimes projects that we think will be really complicated end up being no sweat and we wonder why we put them off

[ Read More ]

| By | | 251 Comments

Finishing Our Sandbox Project

Ready for the next chapter of our sandbox project? If you’re not, I can tell you one person who definitely was. Her name rhymes with Blara. Here’s where we left off. Box built (more on that here) and awaiting sand. But in need of a cover first. Having looked at a bunch of other DIY sandbox covers (like the awesome ones from Dana Made It, Small & Friendly, Modern Parents Messy Kids, and Dover Projects) and based on our own experiences, we compiled a mental list of what we wanted (and didn’t want) out of our cover. Our checklist was something like this: Should primarily keep out natural debris (leaves, acorns, etc) and animal “debris”

[ Read More ]

| By | | 292 Comments

How To Build A Sandbox

Building Clara a sandbox has been a project that was nearly a year in the making. Just check out this post about her first birthday party from last May (yes, our girl is a month away from being TWO). So much for “any day now.” My excuse, well, our excuse is that we couldn’t figure out where we wanted it. We debated building one on wheels that could sit in the middle of the patio when in use (and be pulled out of the way and stored at all other times), but with so much land around us it felt like we should just find a permanent spot for one instead of making an eternally-rolling-around

[ Read More ]

| By | | 7,932 Comments

Fab Freebie: The Killer Radio Star

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – soon to see who won below!*** After a busy giveaway (and a surprising amount of NPR-heads), random.org has selected our winner as… Kathy (who says music is therapeutic to her and on a bad day, songs on the radio can always pick her up). Congrats Kathy! How excited are we to be giving away a Model One Radio this week? You probably know that our cheery yellow one is one of our favorite things that we’ve bought for our new kitchen (more on that here). Sure it’s been dubbed “the best sounding table radio ever made” by some (MSNBC in this case), but our love for it

[ Read More ]

| By | | 325 Comments

Clearing A Path To Our Front Door

Let’s do the path (I’m not good at math, but digging up a path, I can do). And John’s good at both. Overachiever, much? Anyway, this is just a photo from before we started working on the garden beds on either side of the porch (more on that here and here) so you can see how that clump of bushes in front of the porch was kind of weird and reversed. Don’t you think plants on either side of the porch would look nice and balanced while the path to the door and the porch should be more open and airy instead of crowded by overgrown boxwoods? It was like things were backwards. Business in

[ Read More ]