Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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How To Stencil Fabric Chairs

The soft spot we have for stencil projects has certainly grown since our office undertaking, but this one by Amy at The Casablanca Transformation would probably win over even the most skeptical stencil fans. And it actually sounds doable in well under fourteen hours! Score. Here’s her letter: No matter how many decorating projects I do in my lifetime this one will surely go down in history as one of my all time best! I am so happy I had the idea and even happier that I dared to try! Here is the plain white leather bar stool before: And the after! I used a stencil from cuttingedgestencils.com and the paint is from turtlefeathers.net and

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How To Hang A Pendant Light In The Closet

Looks like I’ve once again been wrangled into one of Sherry’s schemes. This time it’s her “Dude, Get On That Already” challenge (apparently the “dude” applies to me also) where she’s trying to actually do something with some of the items that we’ve been collecting hoarding in our spare room. It’s a use it or lose it challenge if you will (well, more like a use it or donate/craigslist it challenge). This week’s victim: the light fixture that we rescued from a thrift store in Delaware nearly an entire year ago for a mere $19. That guy just sat on the floor of the playroom since then, and it was high time we actually allowed

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Hanging Two Glass Kitchen Pendants

I like big globes and I cannot lie. You other brothers can’t deny. When a light walks in with an itty bitty waist… … and a round thing in yo face you get sprung. At least I do. John just gets all blown out and looks angelic. The purpose of that photo was actually just to show you why we picked the height that we did. The common pendant light recommendation is to hang it 30″ above the top of the counter (from the top of the counter to the base of the pendant), but we went 31″  because my tall hubby didn’t want those round things in his face obstructing the view. It’s so

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Our Picture Storage Solution: Yearly Photo Books

We’re working on hanging our new pendant lights so we’ll be back to share those pics in the morning. In the meantime, let’s talk about something people ask about all the time: photo storage. Ever since seeing Katie Bower’s family photo book two summers ago, we’ve been drinking the photo book Kool-Aid – starting with our very first Family “Yearbook” that we made last summer (you can read about that here). And now that another year has wrapped up, well, let’s just say this arrived last week: It’s one big glossy photo book stuffed to the gills with all of our family photos from 2011. Except the perk is that while it has around 600

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Finding A Jenn-Air Hood Range On Sale From Craigslist

Woot. We did it. We found a stainlesss steel range hood on craigslist. It’s an industrial strength pro JennAir one (valued at around $350) but we got it for… $60! Oh craigslist, I could kiss you on the mouth. The listing said $65, but you know I did the old “how about sixty, we have cash?!” thing when we got there and looked it over… and… sold! It definitely appeared to be purchased but never used (it still had some of the white sticky peel-off stuff on the underside that new hoods have) – although it didn’t look like it had been kept completely protected while it was being stored (there are some scratches on

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Planning Electrical Upgrades During A Kitchen Renovation

Remember when we shared how shiny and polished our kitchen started to look after we finished grouting?   And then revealed the chaos that ensued a hot minute later? Well, the room is all put back together and we made a whole lotta lighting cha-cha-changes. Sure our ceiling looks like swiss cheese. But it’s all for a good cause. Inching towards a more luminescent kitchen. Everyone says that lighting can make the room, but I’m here to refute that. Just kidding, it totally makes the room. If you have a gorgeous space but it looks dark or yellowed or all angry and fluorescent, well, it kinda ruins the whole effect. So we knew something had

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The Real J-Boom

First off, in kitchen progress news, all of the chaotic electrical work has been completed! In just five hours actually. Woot. So we’re cleaning things up, taking pics, doing some pendant hunting, and writing a big ol’ post about it for you guys on Monday. But apparently when Sherry shared “The Real $herdog” on Tuesday there were a bunch of requests for a John version. Color me surprised (I honestly thought Burger and Clara would get mentioned before I would). And since I don’t really have a cool street name like Sherry, she has suggested that I use “J-Boom” for the time being. It’s a little too close for comfort to a certain busty Jersey

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Stenciling A Bedroom Wall

Even though we’ve been embracing a clean-lined and colorful aesthetic lately, we can definitely appreciate all sorts of styles. And we’ve still got a soft spot for the warm, layered neutrals that we filled our first house with. So when Rhoda sent over this redo of her sister Renee’s room, it was like a shot of wow to a part of our design brain that we hadn’t exercised in a while. And we kinda want to curl up in what looks like a SUPER comfortable bed. Here’s Rhoda’s letter: Hi, Sherry & John! Just wanted to share my latest project: a redo of my sister’s bedroom suite. It’s a big space that had not been

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Finishing Lingering Home Projects

We have a new friend hanging out in our kitchen. I found this guy at Hobby Lobby during one of their all-the-time 50% off sales for $12. You know me and faux animals. Faux sho they’re mine. Then he sat in our playroom for a while (a while = 6+ months) and I recently walked in there and had this moment where I said to myself “Self: you have got to stop hoarding things in this room. Use them or lose them.” Which led to an initiative I like to call “Dude, Get On That Already.” The dude being me. Naturally. So I’ll probably revisit this initiative over the next few weeks and months (at

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How To Grout Penny Tile

Let’s talk about grout, because with our penny rounds finally all installed, grout was next on the agenda. It has a way of taking things from in-progress to looks-completely-finished-oh-thank-goodness. Observe: So here’s how we got there. First I have a little “materials shot” for ya: Bucket of clean water Putty knife & another bucket to mix grout in Paper towels because, well, grout is messy Sanded grout (from The Tile Shop, $19 with discount) – ours is the Mobe Pearl color Rubber float (from Home Depot, $2) Flexible Grout Admixture (from The Tile Shop, $17 with discount) – this reduces grout shrinking and cracking Sponge. Woot! Oh and we used leftover rosin paper from Home

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The Real $herdog

One of my favorite things about blogging is keeping it real. Even around the new year when the whole “be the perfect person/wife/family” voices can kick in, I try to fight the good fight and remember that authentic = awesome. And perfect = most likely impossible. So if our house is a mess I’ll make a video to prove it (without even putting my bra away first). If we don’t know how the heck to tackle a project, we’ll admit it (like this). If we fail miserably at an undertaking, we’ll blog alllll about it (like this and this, just to name a few). We actually love being a DIY diary that’s literally about the

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Cutting Curtain Panels To Make More Curtains

Remember when we cut four curtain panels that we loved from Ikea (which were sadly discontinued) right down the middle to make eight of them for our living room? Well, here’s that story, but to refresh your memory, here are a few pics: We loved the added height, texture, and pattern that they brought to the room, but I always wondered if layering some breezy sheers in there someday might make my curtain-loving heart sing. You know, so they’d be fuller and airier and sort of layered and soft looking. So I lived without ’em for a while but kept my eye out for some cheap fabric or sheers that I thought might do the

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