Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Planting Blue Hydrangeas

It looked sweet when we finished it last year, especially if you ignored the fact that we had lots of landscaping stuff to attend to behind it. But these days it’s looking more like this: That’s a whole lotta ugly going on. The patio itself still looks great (and is weed free thanks to this step, while our un-polymeric-sanded cobblestone driveway is covered with them), but the “garden” area behind the patio has never looked worse. We even learned from the Katherine (the certified landscape designer who recently came over) that some of the trees were diseased and dying (which we actually heard from the previous owners as well but didn’t want to believe) along with

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How To Plant Succulents

I’m on a greenery kick (both outdoors and apparently indoors as well), so this is the story of four cheap-o succulents that I impulse-bought from Home Depot and then decided to plant in kind of a weird way. The two small ones were $2.98 and the two middle ones were $3.98 a pop. Oh and I used to have a red cactus for years throughout middle school and high school. Seriously, I couldn’t kill that thing if I tried. So that’s why he’s in the mix for nostalgia’s sake. Then I hunted around or some planters or baskets or old boxes to plant them in (Anthrophologie had some great succulents planted in old wooden boxes

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Using A Certified Landscape Designer

Who watches Jersey Shore? Remember when they went camping and Deena stood on that picnic bench and said “the wilderness!”? For some reason it made me laugh. I’m from Jersey though, so it might be a you-had-to-be-there you-have-to-be-from-there thing. Anyway, we mentioned that we had lots of outdoor upgrades on the agenda this spring, so let’s get into it, shall we? Remember how our yard looked like this when we bought the house?   And then we limbed up the magnolia and transplanted/removed a lot of the bushes and painted the front door, to get it looking more like this?   Well, it has definitely come a long way, but it’s still a far (far!)

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Fab Freebie: Sharing The Love

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Good news – the prize pot is now up to over $500! Even better news (at least for one lucky person) random.org has selected our winner as… Karina (who notes that both teaching and learning to share is hard, just ask her kiddos). Congrats Karina! As we mentioned last week along with our curator collection, Joss & Main offers small referral fees in the form of store credit to anyone who refers someone who makes a purchase, but we wanted to pay those forward. So instead of accepting the referral fees, we saved all of those credits up in a separate

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How To Change A Boob Light To A Pendant

The evening after posting our plans for a mini-update to our master bathroom last Monday, Sherry had us in the car and off to hunt down the blue light fixture in her mood board. It’s a Shades of Light fixture that we hoped to find at a local lighting outlet called The Decorating Outlet (which is also where we bought the glass pendants over our peninsula, Clara’s capiz chandelier, and the shade that we added around the chandelier in our office). Sherry was nervous that our luck would run out and they wouldn’t have any in stock – but they actually had not one, but two to choose from. They were half off the original

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The Most Expensive Toilet

Yup, it’s a rare Sunday post- just because we have an exciting bathroom update to share. I know we mentioned that we’ve had great luck with under-$100 American Standard toilets, but we’re eating those words. Why? Because we just discovered the most amazing toilet that we have ever heard of. It’s like the Jake Gyllenhaal of toilets. As in, there is nothing better. Feast your eyes on this sexpot: I mean, who wouldn’t want a toilet with: a heated seat and heated foot blower ambient lighting (right in the bowl!) a motion activated lid and seat (it opens and closes for you) advanced bidet function built in speakers and a remote docking station for playing

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How To Fix A Leaky Roof Yourself

Last week was shaping up to be pretty good week. Sherry celebrated turning 30. We declared the kitchen done(-ish). Spring was in such full bloom it was practically summer. In fact, we even got a pretty awesome thunderstorm one night. Seriously it rained buckets. Faster and harder than we had ever seen since moving into our new house. And then around midnight, it happened… We were watching some TV when we heard a sudden, loud rushing sound. Like someone dumped a gallon of milk on the floor in the kitchen. Our first instinct was that the new-ish-ly installed dishwasher was leaking, so we both dashed towards the kitchen – only to stop in our tracks

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A Kitchen With Glass Cabinets, Wood Counters & A Marble Backsplash

Just as we finished our big kitchen adventure, Amanda and her handy husband were finishing theirs. Except she and her husband Ben completely gutted theirs and have literally rebuilt it by hand (yup, they even DIYed new cabinets). And although we’ve been sharing quite a run of kitchen-related Reader Redesigns lately, we couldn’t resist sharing this one too. So here’s her letter: I wanted to send you a link to our recently finished kitchen. The room started out as a 90’s oak and almond appliance box: We tore everything out to start from scratch: My hubby and I did all of the work, no contractors involved. He tore down a wall, built custom cabinets, laid

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Updating An Old Wooden Highchair

This is such a fun and simple project that is so smile-inducing it’s ridiculous. Remember this old highchair that I got from my mom almost a year ago, which she ate out of when she was a bambina? Well dude, I finally got on that. I had been waiting patiently to give it a little upgrade (it was covered in old paint splatters and smelled musty and smoky from a ton of years in storage) and now that Clara is big enough to sit in it without a lap belt, it was finally time to get ‘er done (after, you guessed it, sticking it in our playroom for at least eight months). I debated a ton

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Who’s The Joss?

Last October we had fun teaming up with Joss & Main to curate a sale event over on their site (which entailed picking favorites from hundreds of items in their database to make a “Young House Love collection”), so when they invited us back for a spring collection – and agreed to an extra special perk for you guys this time around (more on that in a sec) – we were psyched. Side note: I used to think that word was spelled “siked” until freshman year when my BFF laughed ’til she cried and finally clued me in. It’s really funny to hear the title of “curator” used to describe us (except maybe Curator Of

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How To Make A Fabric Covered Bulletin Board

It’s time for a board meeting guys. Nothing official, just an actual meeting of cork boards, like so: Let’s back up. I had this random idea that a hidden bulletin board in my closet would be a fun place to tack up a bunch of pages I’ve torn out of magazines. You know, cute outfits, haircuts, and other various tips/reminders that I rip out (like how to check my freckles for signs of skin cancer – yes I actually do that). That way, instead of shoving them somewhere like a drawer or letting them pile up on my desk, I can see them all at a glance… with the push of a few hangers. See

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The Best Gray Paint Color: Rockport Gray

Yup, our formerly beige-on-beige master bathroom is officially rocking Rockport Gray. And we love it as much as we did when we saw it in this kitchen. Here she blows without the shower curtain hung back up yet (we snapped some pics with it up as well, which we’ll get to in a second): But let’s back up. Before applying two coats of paint to our bathroom (we shared our little mood board for the room yesterday) first we had to remove that unused-shelf-and-towel-bar (read why we didn’t use them here)… …to make way for some art on the only wall that isn’t tiled nearly all the way to the ceiling. So we did (using

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