Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Playroom Plans

You guys already know that our playroom is looking kinda rough these days (thanks to this whole house update post from last week): But we’ve decided that once we clear it out, it’ll actually suit our family better as a less traditional space. Burger is a beloved member of our family, so we think he deserves his own little area. And since Clara plays pretty much all over the house (in the office, the living room, the kitchen, and her room – depending wherever we are with her) we won’t really need an official “playroom” until baby number two comes along (and we turn the playroom into a bedroom). And I’ll spoil the surprise for

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March 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 March – high school yearbook style. Most Archeological: Digging around in the dirt next to our driveway to find all sorts of things (and eventually cleaning things up after the treasure hunt ended). Most Likely To Result In A Crack Joke: Hanging a ceiling medallion in Clara’s room (to solve a cracked drywall situation). Most Times Square-esque: Our new chandelier from Ikea, which we hung

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Limbing Up Trees So You Can See The House Again

Alternate post title: Trees: 0. Sherry: 2. You might not remember what our first house looked like when we bought it so I’ll remind you: And this is what it looked like five hours after John left and I went crazy with a clipper (surprise!): Three cheers for being able to see the house. And we gained a view of the neighborhood from our front windows. You know, instead of the view of a dense “tree fence.” So much better. Plus it was free and gave me a nice little arm workout. Of course that house’s curb appeal was a pretty constant four and a half year evolution (these things take time) so when we

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Thrifting in Huntington West Virginia

A few weeks back we packed up the car, went over a few rivers, and through a bunch of woods to go see my 89-year-old grandmother (aka Granny) in Huntington, WV. It was primarily a weekend of eating and baby holding (is there anything better?) because we were joined by my parents, my cousin Erin, and her 2-month-old son Finn. But we managed to squeeze in a few side adventures that we thought you all might enjoy… which we would’ve shared sooner if most of the pictures weren’t stuck in photo purgatory on our old point-and-shoot camera (we finally found the camera cord that we lost during the move this weekend). Here’s the obligatory “Clara

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How To Customize Ikea Furniture Legs With Paint

That’s right, Karl‘s legs are pale no more. After some thought we decided to give all 12 of our sectional’s cheap looking birch legs a coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint to deepen them and give them a subtle sheen and dimension that brown paint just wouldn’t offer. It was pretty easy except it necessitated a bit of Karl disassembly. Poor guy. But once we got all of those legs off it was as simple as sanding each of them with low grit paper by hand (I used 60 grit stuff I had around). Although the legs looked pale and stain-less, they actually had some sort of clear finish on them (here’s one before sanding):

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Fab Freebie: Get Your Soapbox On

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – check back soon to see who won!*** Good news – everyone can get 10% off Mrs. Jones Soapbox products using code YHL10! Even better news (for two of you), random.org has chosen our winners as… Jenna (who can’t wait to clean up and declutter her office) and Erica (who’s excited to clean her garage of all the winter cobwebs, salt and dirt). Congrats! Spring is (mostly) in the air, so we figured this week’s freebie will excite anyone who is setting out to do some spring cleaning and doesn’t want to disturb the fresh spring air with the scent of chemical cleaners. Since we’re not ones to

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Getting Cheap Dining Chairs From Craigslist

We finally scored some chairs for the dining room, thanks to this craiglist ad emailed to us by our friend Sandra (muchas gracias!). You’re probably thinking: what are they thinking?! Parsons chairs? Yup, that’s exactly what we’ve wanted since day one. Thirty bucks? Yeah baby. Weird green and blue swirly pattern? Um… no comment. But since the price was right (we actually bargained them down to $25 per chair, coming to $200 total for all 8) and the shape/lines were right (they’re solid and very well-made) we figured it was time to pounce (with some reassurance from a few online tutorials about dyeing fabric, making slipcovers, or reupholstering parsons chairs). So in the end we

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Monster Eyeballs

Three cheers for a $12 fifteen minute project that makes us giggle. Because sometimes you just gotta laugh. We switched out the old knobs on our dining room built-ins. The first step is to put on your safety goggles and protective gloves. Kidding. The first step is to unscrew the old ones and the second step is to screw in the new ones. So easy. Here’s a little in-progress action shot for ya: And here are the new ones all “installed”: But back to the whole monster eyeballs thing. When I fell in love with these greeny-yellow knobs at Hobby Lobby (for $1.50 a pop thanks to a 50% off sale), it never crossed my

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Three Months In…

We finally got around to updating our House Tour page with some progress pics and it dawned on us that we haven’t really done a progress report about the new house since this one at Day One and this one at Day Fifteen, so here’s where we are at a little over three months in (Day 101 or so). Here’s the house’s original formal living room that looked into the original dining room on moving day (which we decided to turn into an entryway/dining room that looks into a home office because that better suits the way we live): Here’s the dining room looking into the converted office now, thanks to arranging those shelves and

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A Crisp & Classic House Tour

This house crashing adventure in Northern Virginia had us drooling over materials and finishes, especially in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Talk about a gorgeous place to come home to. And here’s Melissa The Homeowner now, so let’s go in. Her house was actually built in 1940, but she and her husband Jim added an awesome addition to the back of the house in 2009 which included a new kitchen. And it just happened to be one of the most amazing ones we’ve ever been in. So we’ll cut right to the chase. You can see it down the hallway near the front door… … and it’s glorious. Is it not? Everything from the thick

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Oh Snap.

And now for a behind the scenes ceramic animal related story. While we were working on this… … this happened: Since I’m still not ready to talk (or write) about it in depth, here’s John’s depiction of how the tragedy occurred: Alas, my favorite giant ceramic dog (snagged from HomeGoods three years ago for just 29 bucks) sadly lost his face. In the words of the world’s most famous blogger, it sucked and then I cried. Yes, there’s a candle lit vigil in progress. Goodbye Mr. Ceramic Dog. You were a wonderful pet. Never had to clean up after you once. Until this happened. I might try to glue him back together (although some of

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The Big Two Nine

Now that all the birthday bid-ness is over I can tell you guys all about it. It was sweet. Turning 29 didn’t really feel any different than the past few b-days and it involved everything from a foot massage with shaving cream (John mistook it for the lotion bottle) to Clara taking her “first crawls.” Holy cow it was amazing. Everyone, including the doc, thought she’d just go straight to walking since she has been scooting around on her butt for a while – and even recently started pulling up. But lo and behold she decided it might be fun to give crawling a go (you know, just for kicks) and we even caught it

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