Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

| By | | 476 Comments

How To Sew Curtain Panels

Our recent road trip to see Katie and her amazing house gave us that tickle to get down to business when we got back home. You know how your DIY momentum is up and you’re moving right along ticking things off your to-do list and then the dust clears and you’re just spent and need a little break? Like, mehaps, a road trip? That seems to be the way it goes with us. When it comes to house progress, we tend to work in fits and starts. But then something sparks that get-back-to-business excitement and suddenly we’re done with our four-ish day Hammer And Paint Brush Hiatus and are refreshed and ready to go. Yeah,

[ Read More ]

| By | | 436 Comments

A Chic House Tour In North Carolina

We do our best to crash a variety of homes, both old and new, big and small, traditional and modern, expensivo and super cheap, etc. This one falls into the glamorous high-end realm, but its cup runneth over with adaptable ideas – even if you’re on a tight budget. So we’re happy to bask in the inspirational eye candy (and pass it along to you guys of course). As we mentioned in yesterdays post, this gorgeous home is located in Charlotte, NC. So on with the tour. Here’s the charming exterior: And here are Jennifer and her sweet six week old daughter Eleanor to let us in: Here’s the gorgeous view that greets you when

[ Read More ]

| By | | 255 Comments

Buying Fabric At Mary Jo’s Near Charlotte

Earlier this morning we mentioned that we slipped through Mary Jo’s fabric store outside of Charlotte, NC again (read about our first trip here) where they have bolts of discount fabric stacked higher than my 5’2″ self. We thought it would be fun to share what caught our eye along with what we actually bought since some of you guys might be on a fabric pilgrimage of your own. And the good news is that a lot of this fabric should be sold by multiple places (although MJ’s prices are hard to beat) so if you see something you love, I’ve tried to include as many details as possible so you can sleuth it out

[ Read More ]

| By | | 201 Comments

Sneaky Little Petersiks

S’prise. We’ve been on the road for the past five days and just got home last night at 7pm after a nine hour drive. Did we unpack or snuggle up to Karl the Sectional after our home sweet home arrival? Nah, we threw this post together. Just your typical case of “unpacking procrastination” at its finest. Actually I’m just dying to fill you guys in on our adventures, and typical annoyingly energetic gal that I am, I’m too excited to relax. Anyway, we headed out early Thursday morning for Charlotte, NC and stayed there through Saturday morning. Then it was off to Loganville, GA where we remained until early Monday morning when we hit the

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,491 Comments

Fab Freebie: Here’s Looking At You, Mate

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Good news: everyone can get 10% off their MirrorMate order with code VIRAL. And if they get 1000 new Facebook followers or new email subscribers, that code doubles to 20% for everyone. But here’s the better news (at least for one of you): random.org has chosen our winner as… Jessica (who says she’s usually checking the mirror to “make sure nothing is obviously out of place or gross”). Congrats! So maybe I fudged that line from Casablanca a little. Thanks for letting it slide. It’s turning out to be a mirror-tastic day today, so if you’re stuck with a basic builder mirror that’s

[ Read More ]

| By | | 187 Comments

Getting The Scale Right With Furniture

Nope, this isn’t a weight loss post. The scale that I’m talking is this too small had-it-so-we-used-it bookshelf that we shoved into the guest room (just days before my mom arrived) a few months back. Talk about teeny tiny: And somehow we forgot to update you guys about a little switcheroo that took place after we got our new (well, very old) dresser for the bedroom from John’s dad. So here’s a very belated dresser related news flash: we moved our old malm (from Ikea five years ago when we moved to Richmond from NYC) into the guest room. So it looked like this: The scale is definitely better. Someday we’d love to get a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 209 Comments

Gift Idea: A Custom Wooden House Replica

As of last week, my parents officially live in Richmond. This rocks for several reasons (free babysitting) so we’re excited to have them (as free babysitters) just about 15 minutes down the road (close enough to easily babysit for free). Plus, you’ll probably get some peeks at their new digs as they settle in (between babysitting jobs) and as we help them tackle some projects around their house (perhaps in exchange for all of the free babysitting). And if you follow us on Flickr, you’ve noticed that we wasted no time breaking in their community pool as soon as the moving truck was returned: Three days after closing on their new house, my parents also

[ Read More ]

| By | | 215 Comments

How To Make A Wood Plaque With A Number Or Letter On It

I like to consider our hallway frame wall a constant “work in progress” since the art in the frames can be swapped out at anytime. But there was at least one element that was less a “work in progress” and more an “um, you’re not going to leave it that way, are you?” Can you spot it? Yep, it’s the placeholder photostrip in the center. We didn’t have a frame to fit that slot at the time, so we figured down the line we’d cut a piece of wood, paint it white and mount the strip on something more officially looking than, well, a piece of office paper held up with painter’s tape (oh the

[ Read More ]

| By | | 269 Comments

Shopping In Bethany Beach

We snuck off to the beach over Memorial Day weekend to spend some time with John’s family (at their amazing beach house near Bethany Beach, Delaware) so we thought we’d share our house-related adventures. A while back a reader (thanks Ann!) recommended checking out The Old Screen Door in Lewes (about 30 mins from Bethany), so we took a drive out there and it was the cutest little town (which boasts that it was the first town in the first state). Here’s the front of the shop: It’s not very big inside, but there’s a collection of really fun old stuff going on (mixed with some new stuff to keep things interesting). And Clara loves

[ Read More ]

| By | | 522 Comments

How To Dye Fabric Chair Slipcovers

Remember how we envisioned modern and cheerful green leather parsons chairs around a chunky wood table from pretty much the moment we moved in? And how we decided that dyed-green slipcovers were pretty much the same thing when we found chairs for $25 and slipcovers for $23? Well, we were wrong. I dyed two of the chairs green and they were just not “it” (even if we altered the shade of green, we just knew it was the wrong way to go for us as soon as we saw these babies): Especially considering that there would be seven or eight of them around the table at all times (and we have the bold built-ins going

[ Read More ]

| By | | 1 Comment

May Superlatives

Note: This is a retroactive post that I cobbled together in December of 2011 so I could make this page full of monthly recaps for the entire year (our first in our new house!). Yup, I’m just a bit type A. So here’s what we tackled throughout the month of May – high school yearbook style. Most Improved: Organizing The Insanely Cluttered “Playroom” (more like “disaster area”). Biggest Procrastinator: Painting The Dining Room (after living with swatches for five months) Most Repetitive: Mounting Prints On Canvases (Not Once But Twice) Most Outdoorsy: Sketched Up An Outdoor “Floor Plan” (not to scale though – oops – the house is way too big & our almost-acre lot

[ Read More ]

| By | | 160 Comments

Aren’t Mother-In-Laws The Best?

When Sherry’s mom was here a couple of weekends ago for Clara’s birthday party she clocked more than her fair share of hours helping us clean the house in preparation. Perhaps her most miraculous accomplish was in the future playroom / second kids bedroom (aka: current junkroom) which looked like this when she arrived (no kidding): Since our junk basically screamed “I Will Topple Over On Your Baby!” we were just planning to close and lock the door during the party to keep all of the littler guests away from certain death. That plan went to pot when we realized that we couldn’t physically close the door anymore (mainly due to the poorly timed delivery

[ Read More ]