Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Choosing Between Pergo and Cork For Our Kitchen Floors

Houston, we have liftoff! We made a big kitchen purchase. We ordered the floor! Wait, we should back up. We originally hoped to find hardwood floors running all the way under the linoleum in the kitchen (after finding out that it ran under the fireplace side of the room here)… … but we removed the transition between the kitchen and the office on the other side of the room to find… booo!… plywood. So no refinishing for us. Gotta start from scratch. But there were a few limitations off the bat. We learned from the previous owners that the kitchen floors couldn’t handle tile (they would need to be reinforced/leveled from underneath = $$$), so

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The (Joss &) Main Event

So… our afternoon post is a few hours early. Surprise! Fancy meeting you here. Anyway, after teaming up with Joss & Main on one of our most entered giveaways (apparently you guys love you some Joss & Main), they asked us if we’d be interested in curating a sale event over on their site. Which essentially entailed doing some virtual window shopping (sifting through hundreds of items in their database) and telling them everything that we loved, which would then make up a “Young House Love collection” over on their site. Uh. Let me think about it. YESSSSSSS! Never in a million years did we think that the title of “curator” would ever be used

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How To Paint A Chair

Our $35 secondhand chairs – found here – aren’t quite done yet (picture me tapping my foot as I not-so-patiently wait for the paint to dry) but we thought we’d share our makeover progress in the interest of real-time fun. First a quick rundown of all the colors that John & I talked about for the office chairs at one point or another: emerald green turquoise, aqua, or dark teal dark gray or light gray plum navy white or light celery lime green or grellow Oh and here they are in the office before paint and new upholstery (from a few different POVS), just to refresh your memory: Here’s where our brains went when we

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Fab Freebie: Gone Fishing

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Our two lucky winners as selected by random.org are… Susie (who doesn’t like fish, despite her former employment at Red Lobster) and Sarah (who especially loves Maryland crab, shrimp, salmon, and freshly caught smoked trout). Congrats ladies! Back when I lived in Brooklyn there was this cool dishware store down the street called Fishs Eddy that I loved. Last Christmas I even bought Sherry two coffee mugs from there. And now, in what can only be called a full circle moment, we’re teaming up with them for a giveaway for you guys. They’ve got tons of fun colorful patterns so we’ve put together

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Wall Stenciling Tips & After Photos

My little stenciling project above the chair rail in the office has officially concluded. Woooo to the hooooo! It only took three 4.5 hour installments spread out over four days (so my hand-claws could turn back into hands between sessions). You can read all about my stenciling process here), but in short: it was well worth all that work and a bag of chips. Behold: Of course since it’s a subtle tone-on-tone effect, the further away that you get the more – well, subtle – it gets. In person when you stand at the doorway to the office you see pretty feathery texture, but of course in photos it’s somehow MUCH harder to capture. Here’s

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September 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, just because we’re over-sharers. This month felt pretty scattered since we did everything from finding secondhand night stands and starting to stencil some walls to building a 13 foot desk, altering a light fixture, framing out a mirror, making free art, and beyond. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives. Why? Because that’s our idea of a good time. Most Pro-Banquette: Starting off the month with a

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Easy DIY Art With Food Coloring

All week I imagined a big office stencil reveal post here. Sadly, it’s not done yet. Oh DIY, why do you take such pleasure in toying with my emotions? Quit playing games with my heart, home improvement. But regardless of the fact that it’s not exactly a quick project, it’s looking awesome and totally going to be worth the blood, sweat, and tears (all three of which have occurred, incidentally). So hopefully by this weekend I’ll be doing some celebratory Rocky laps around the house (yes, with music blaring and fists in the air) and I can share photos & deets of the whole shebang on Monday. Woot! Until then, here’s a still-needs-to-be-finished wall (the

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Online Tools for Planning A Space in 3D

Break out the 3D glasses! Okay, not really. Put them away. This blog will not be coming to you in any additional dimensions today. As you saw in our latest kitchen planning post yesterday, I finally bit the bullet and learned me some Google Sketch-Up (as many of you recommended) to help us plan our kitchen renovation. But having been a loyal user of Floorplanner.com in the past and having recently become acquainted with Ikea’s Kitchen Planner, I thought I’d give you my take on how these three 3D modeling tools stack up against each other… because there’s actually not a clear winner in my book. Each have pros, cons, and a different scenario where

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Why We Decided Not To Do A Banquette In Our Kitchen

For all those wondering when the heck we’ll tackle that kitchen banquette idea that we mentioned a few weeks ago (here and here), well… probably never. Cue the frowny face emoticons. Here’s the deal. After getting lots of positive feedback on the idea a few weeks ago (over 1,400 comments total!), Sherry and I were certain your collective enthusiasm would push us from “we think this is a good idea” to “this is definitely a good idea.” And it nearly did. But parts of us still questioned the whole commitment-factor when it came to actually doing it (we definitely described it as a half baked idea when we shared it). We worried if it’d really

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A Classic Marble Bathroom Renovation

Just as we mentioned last week, Reader Redesigns are back y’all!! And we’re kicking things off with Michelle’s amazing bathroom renovation. She and her husband David gutted the crazy yellow bathroom, completely reconfigured the layout, and built it back up in beautiful greys and fresh sparkling whites. Here’s her letter: Hi Sherry & John! Your bathroom at your first house sparked me and my hubs to renovate our 1952 en-suite bathroom. We followed soooo many of your tips (we ran into all of the same demolition problems, including the wire mesh). It was no bueno! But thank goodness all of the hard work is done. I shared the big final reveal of the bathroom here

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How To Stencil A Wall

Dude, stencils are no joke. But I did it! I bit the bullet and ordered the stencil that John and I have been pining after for the past month (mentioned here a few weeks back). We loved the idea of adding some subtle tone on tone detailing above the chair rail in our office (we didn’t want anything with too much contrast since it’ll compete with the dark teal built-ins and the fun curtains in the nearby dining room). So we settled on a softer gray tone with a tiny pop of color (leftover grellow paint from the adjoining kitchen). At 54 honking dollars it was hardly a drop in the bucket, but let me tell

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Fab Freebie: Canine Design

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Burger barked a few times at random.org and it spit out our two winners. They are… Ruth (who’s jealous of the “sleep wherever you want” factor) and Mattie (who envies the happiness her dog finds in a squeaky toy). Congrats ladies! Everyone else – don’t forget about the discounts listed among the giveaway details. They’re still valid! Tomorrow is Burger’s 5th birthday (I’m sure you already had it marked on your calendar), so this week’s giveaway is distinctly doggy-themed in his honor – thanks to two puppy lovin’ shops. The first is Oliver Blu Designs whose punchy animal silhouettes find their way onto

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