Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Painting Our Door Bright Yellow

Allow me to share a few hints: y-e-l-l-o-w-d-o-o-r Yup, I’m painting our front door the happiest of shades: rain boot yellow! That’s not the real name of the paint swatch that we settled on, I just think it’s the perfect way to describe the glossy sunny yellow that we chose. I was hoping to share some after pics, but alas, this is real life and all the prep work took longer than I thought. Boo. The good news is that I’m done with the drilling, the spackling, the sanding, and the deglossing. So all that general readying stuff is out of the way. And if all goes well I’ll be back with a ton of

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Fab Freebie: Talk About Home Improvement

*** This contest is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org got his random on and selected our winner as… Tracey @ Tropical Happiness (who just moved into a new house last week so she has lots of shopping to do). Congrats! For everyone else, keep that chin up – you can still enter the Hometalk $500 Lowe’s gift card giveaway through Sunday. You may already know that Hometalk is a community of home improvement experts (including some familiar HGTV faces) and fellower DIYers sharing home and garden projects, advice, and even contractors. And for this week’s giveaway they’re majorly hooking someone up… to the tune of a $500 gift card

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Rearranging The Nursery

We’re knee deep in the middle of a bunch o’ projects (in the office, the dining room, and the living room- yeah we’re all over the place), so we thought we’d share the one thing we actually completed in the meantime, which was a little moving (and some obligatory shaking) when it came to Clara’s nursery. Here’s what it looked like mid-chaos (chaos = really bad pics): Why the furniture shuffle? Well, we arranged it for Clara’s seven month old self (she wasn’t even crawling when we moved in) and now she’s a fifteen month old walking fiend with a lot wider “wingspan” so we had to make some changes to keep her safe slash

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How To Hide Your Printer

So as much as you guys gushed over our temporary string handles for our new Effektiv file cabinet (note: this is sarcasm), we did scoop up some actual hardware that we much prefer. They’re black glass handles that were originally $9, but Hobby Lobby (aka Schlobby Bobby) was having one of those perpetual 50% off sales, so they were $4.50 a pop instead. As I mentioned here, I was a bit nervous about installing them, since it was up to me to make sure they were all centered and level (Sherry + measuring = meltdown). So I triple-measured and even made myself a little guide out of card stock. First, I figured out that my

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How To Add File Storage To Your Home Office

We haven’t given our office any love in the entire eight months that we’ve lived here (other than deciding that it was no longer the dining room and shifting that into the old formal living room nearby). Pretty much our moving day MO was to: plop old office furniture down, work away, and ignore the fact that the rug’s crazy-off-center and you can bump your head on the old dining room chandelier. Sad times. But the lack of love given wasn’t for lack of trying. We’ve been keeping our eye out for two similar/identical secondhand filing cabinets for, oh, eight whole months. So we were starting to lose hope after about twenty five visits to

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Spray Painting Mismatched Frames

We all know I have a pillow problem. And true to form, I couldn’t resist grabbing two of these boldly striped 26″ x 26″ euro pillows for just nine bucks a pop when we came across them at HomeGoods. In my defense, John walked off and came back holding them, so he might have a pillow problem too. But come on, $9? For giant 100% cotton euro pillows? Sold. In our house, pillows are definitely nomads, so these guys could end up doing a little tour (hitting up the guest room, the playroom, and even the sunroom or living room). But right now we’re loving them in our bedroom with the similarly toned flower &

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Ceramic Dog Flashbacks

To make room for our DIY-ed clothespin light, first we had to give the current fixture the ol’ heave-ho: Well, not literally. Since there’s actually something kinda charmingly retro about that puppy, we wanted to give him a new life somewhere else in the house instead of sealing his fate (aka: donating him to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore). That’s where this hallway that leads to the guest room, hall bath, playroom, and nursery comes in: Clearly our hallway screams “nothing to see here folks, move along” for the time being, so there’s certainly a lot to be improved upon. But our attention kept going to this 18″ wide (I’ll pause while you digest just

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How To Make Faux Butterfly Art

On Sunday we took Clara on a little weekend adventure. And one of our stops was a butterfly exhibit with all sorts of real live butterflies who were doing their thing: And thanks to something that we picked up while there, I was able to make this new framed art for our built-ins as soon as I got home: Wait, it’s not what you think. My little craft isn’t made from real butterflies. It’s actually cut from this information sheet we were given at the exhibit (I asked if I could buy it with this idea in mind and they said that they didn’t sell them but I was welcome to take the one I

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Fab Freebie: Channel No. 125

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org has done it again and selected our winner as… Chelsea (who loves the smell of coffee in the morning). Congrats! The only fragrance we’re giving away this week is that of sweat and elbow grease (yummy, right?). Because this week’s prize comes from Channellock, who not only makes some of our favorite tools but is also celebrating 125 years of forging them right here in the USA. So they’re giving away 1 + 2 + 5 tools (that makes 8, btw) to one soon-to-be-sweaty guy or gal. That lucky lady or lad will be getting a five-piece Tool Roll, two

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Our Finished Laundry Room Makeover Before & Afters

With the addition of a light fixture and shoe storage this past week (and deciding to nix a window covering for now and just frost the window when we convert the carport into a garage), we just had one last item on our tig ol’ bist (which is how I would imagine Missy Elliott would say “big ol’ list”): Frost the side door for privacy <– seen here Remove the narrow shelving that gets blocked by the open door <– seen here Remove the old shutters that block much-needed light <– seen here Craigslist the old un-energy efficient stacked top loaders and snag a killer deal on new Energy Star front loaders <– seen here

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We Got Professional Photos Of Our House

The following images make me wish I could carry a professional photographer around in my pocket at all times. But since I can’t, at least we had the pleasure of having one over for the afternoon. Local-ish photographer Andrea Hubbell (she’s from nearby Charlottesville, VA) is doing a series of “living spaces” photo shoots and asked if we wanted to participate for fun. Since we’re (a) not too camera shy – at least when it comes to our house and (b) always excited to see our home through someone else’s eyes (especially someone a lot better with a camera), we gave an enthusiastic yes. And boy are we glad we did. Not only was Andrea

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How Many Patterns & Fabrics Should You Use In Each Room?

I was watching Sarah Richardson (Sarah 101) the other night (thanks DVR) and she mentioned that at the end of a makeover she has usually used around 10-14 fabric textiles in each room that she does. And as the title of this post suggests, it totally surprised me. Doesn’t that sound like a lot? Of course she’s an expert when it comes to layering prints and patterns, but I couldn’t imagine a “regular Joe” going into a fabric store and walking out with 10-14 swatches that they were going to combine. But then I realized that she was counting the upholstery fabric on chairs and sofas and headboards along with curtains and a ton of

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