Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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My Secret: It’s Goo Related

Raise your hand if you think I’m anal. (I’ll pause while you do that). Well, I probably am. I’m definitely type A. But I think there might be a misconception that our house gleams and the faucets are always shined and there aren’t any toothpaste splatters on the mirrors. Yeah right, I wish. We tried to disprove the whole perfect thing with this video (yes, we leave clothes on the floor and mail in a pile like the rest of the population- haha) and it seemed like the masses were relieved. We’re human I promise (although I’m pretty sure if I weren’t human I’d pretend that I was for assimilation purposes), and my dirty goo-related

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A Reason Not To Use Pallets For Certain DIY Projects

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? What do I look like, a woodchuck expert? I have no idea. But I do know the answer to a related yet far lesser known riddle: how many pallet planks could a Petersik pry free if a Petersik could pry free pallet planks? You practice saying that five times fast while I walk you through the answer. You know by now that the plan for our mondo 12′ long DIY console table (last shared here and here) was to build a rustic weathered-looking top out of some old pallets left in our yard by the previous owners (spotted in the background of

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Painting & Hanging Big Metal Keys On The Wall

Remember when we mentioned snagging these old iron keys for $8 in an antique store in West Virginia while visiting John’s grandma? Well I finally got around to painting them and hanging them in our hallway frame gallery (see how we made that here). Where did we squeeze them in? Well, see that card stock placeholder key? That was, well, just a placeholder. I could have easily spray painted them for a quick makeover but since I love to use no-VOC paint whenever I can (especially since I have a huge gallon of white paint around at all times), I opted just to brush on a few coats by hand. It’s the same semi-gloss Olympic

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Painting Upholstery With Fabric Paint Medium

Alternate post title: “In A Minute, I Have To Hairdry The Chair” Guys, I did something crazy. Since we’d like to take our $25 hotel-ish dining chairs to a crisp not-patterned apple green (the curtains I want to make will be patterned, so I just want chairs in a fun color but without a pattern that I’ll tire of) I decided to paint them. I know. Insane. But I didn’t think I had much to lose since the backup plan is to reupholster or slipcover them (both of which would still be entirely possible if I didn’t like how the whole painting thing turned out). I went into it as a hmm-this-experiment-should-be-interesting thing. Nothing was

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Cleaning & Organizing Our Closet

In the words of Eminem… I’m cleaning out my closet. But first a closet-themed dance break for the Marshall Mathers fans out there (I can actually do a mean Eminem impression): Ok, now that we have that out of the way, I’ll get to the meat and potatoes of this post. I’m actually not currently cleaning out my closet, the deed has already been done. And it’s not just my closet, it’s both of ours. We’ve mentioned a few times that before we got a proper dresser we were living for over three months with piles of socks and pajamas on the floor of our bedroom closet. Yeah, it was a disaster, and we just

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How To Build A Console Table

After victoriously completing the two end sections of our three-piece DIYed console table (explained here), I turned my attention to the middle portion. You may recall that this piece will be entirely hidden between the other two (and sandwiched between the back of the sectional and the wall) so I could’ve gotten away with a very simple platform on which to lay the long tabletop that will span across all three pieces that we’re planning to make out of our already-around reclaimed pallet wood. But we figured that would just be wasted space, so we took the less simple route of creating some hidden storage in the middle piece. Allow my sketch to explain: Who

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A Keeping-It-Real House Tour Video

I thought it might be fun to walk around the house with the Flip cam and show you guys how each room can look on an average day. You know, before we pick the clothes up off the floor, put away Clara’s toys, and fold the big blankets that we snuggle under on the sofa. So here’s an impromptu house tour (while John and Clara ducked out to the post office and grocery store) in all of its average everyday glory: Things to note: Ugh, I have a cold. Sorry about my annoying voice. Who am I kidding, my voice annoys me even when I’m not crazy congested. I’m terrible at walking around, talking, and

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12 Design Mistakes We (Hopefully) Won’t Make Again

Q: I have an idea for a blog post. “Design mistakes we won’t make again.” As I look through pictures of all the beautiful work you’ve done, I’m thinking of choosing many similar styles & purchases. But then I wonder, over time – did you ever regret a design choice? – Shannon A: That’s a good one. And now for 1,970 words on the subject. We’ll start by saying that we definitely don’t always know what we’re doing when we do something (us = so not experts) so we just try to take things one day at a time and learn as we go. We make tons of mistakes. You’ve just gotta feel your way

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Broken Up About My Broken Ceramic Dog

All The King’s Horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put my faceless ceramic pooch together again. Well, maybe they could, but they weren’t around. So I tried to do it myself, using only a mother’s love (and some super glue). And because I’m a freak about fumes I did it on the back patio while Clara was napping (baby monitor in hand). Pretty much immediately things got wonky. Womp-womp. Nothing matched up and it looked all crazy and jagged. I think the fact that some shards were just too small to keep & reglue threw everything off. And somehow there was a huge chunk from the top of my beloved pup’s head that was

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A Tiny House Painting As A Moving Gift

Something big happened last week: my parents sold the house I grew up in. They’ve been planning to do this for a while, so it’s not a shock or anything. It’s also not as depressing as it could be since they’re selling it so they can move to Richmond (right now they’re about 2 hours away in Northern Virginia). My parents are both retired and have been planning to downsize for a while now. They picked Richmond for a bunch of reasons, including that four of their five grandchildren live here. So all in all, we’re really happy about the news. But there’s still something major about the closing of this particular chapter, so allow

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Fab Freebie: The Devil’s In The Details

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Thanks to the devilish randomization that is random.org, our two winners are… Steph (who was just talking to a colleague about the two tattoos she has…for now) and Alason (who’s thinks her little butterfly tattoo on her back makes people assume she’s a bad girl). Congrats ladies! Since you guys seemed to enjoy last week’s spring cleaning related giveaway, how about another? Your house can’t possibly be all cleaned up yet can it? This one comes from the folks over at Dirt Devil who are gonna hook two of you up with a tattoo. But you’re not going to disappoint the

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Buying Wood And Building A Console Table

First things first. Thanks for being such great sports about our little April Fool’s Day prank (seen here). Sherry was giggling the entire time she made that crazy nautical themed doggie mood board (at one point Katie Bower called and I actually heard a laugh-snort or two as she shared her little “project”). And it’s safe to say that every single comment – ranging from those of you who fell for it and those of you who knew it was a joke from the first sentence – made her day. Which made mine. Happy wife = happy life. In fact things were so copacetic around here that I was inspired to start my next big

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