Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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A Large Jute Rug For The Bedroom

We’re doing a little bit of happy dance boogieing on our new rug, hence this post’s title. Yes, it’s like High School Musical over here, lots of dancing and occasionally there’s even some ballad-y singing about our feelings. Feel free to click play and get in on it. Now that we’ve gotten through that little dance interlude, here’s the new rug: Oh happy day, we love it. Here’s a recent shot of the space without it for comparison. Isn’t it amazing what a rug – even a neutral and “safe” jute one – can do to tie things together and add balance to a 15 x 16′ bedroom (15 x 21′ if you count the

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A Larger Bedroom Rug

Short story: we bought a bedroom rug! Now for the long story. Because we’re nothing if not wordy and over explain-y. We’ve known that our giant bedroom was in need of a nice big rug to anchor some of the more showstopping pieces, like big ol’ Ed the Bed and our New Year’s Eve ball-esque pendant light from Ikea. And a piddly little 4 x 6′ rug at the foot of the bed with two faux sheepskins on either side of the bed just weren’t doing it for us anymore. Maybe to some people a 16 x 16′ bedroom (which is actually 16 x 21′ if you include the sink nook) isn’t even that big.

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How To Hang A Grid Of Picture Frames

2, 4, 6, 8, Who Do We Appreciate? Planning! And why do we appreciate it? Because we get burned when we don’t do it. At least we did on the frame arrangement we just hung above our sectional. Here’s the story. We’ve always planned to take the big empty space above Karl and do a grid of large picture frames. We sort of envisioned it as a larger version of the frame grid that we hung above the couch in our old den… … but instead of 8 x 10″ frames we’d use oversized 20.5 x 20.5″ Ribba frames from Ikea for more impact (since we already own and love four of them – and

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A Green HomeGoods Lamp

Seeing as this fun little $22 lamp from HomeGoods is one of our favorite Sue The Napkin colors, which we plan to use as our whole house color inspiration (see them all here) I had to make it mine. It’s really cute in person, but it’s kinda ugly with the paneling behind it. Haha. Sorry ’bout that. I knew it would look all purty when it’s glowing – and cast lots of fun shadows on the wall. You know, like this: Except try to imagine it without the soul crushing wood paneling. Slowly but surely we’re working up the energy to tackle the kitchen. Every day that I have to stare at that paneling gets

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A Stellar House Tour (It’s For Sale!)

When Danielle and her husband Nick sent us a link of their newly listed home in gorgeous and charming Church Hill we couldn’t just ogle the listing and let it go. We knew we had to house crash them in the flesh and share all of the eye candy with you. They bought it in pretty rough shape in 2003 and they worked with one of our favorite local organizations, Better Housing Coalition, to restore it to a livable condition. Records trace it back to existence as early as 1855 (although it’s unclear whether it was burned to the ground in 1865 and rebuilt then). Either way it’s extremely old and it needed lots of

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How To Remove A Fan And Hang A Light

Happy New Year!!! (that sentiment will make sense in a little while – hold tight) The time had come to bid adieu to the fan in our bedroom so we could introduce a light fixture with a bit more interest. Hold on fan lovers. Put the pitchforks (or fan blades?) down and let me explain. We also removed the ceiling fan in our first home’s bedroom and picked up a high-powered Hunter table fan that did the trick, which we plan to use regularly in the warmer months here as well. It’s not that we’re anti fan – my wife likes to make the beyond corny joke that we’re “fan fans” – but we just

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Covering Drywall Cracks With A Ceiling Medallion

Whitney Houston once famously said “crack is whack.” I don’t think she had the ceiling of Clara’s room in mind when she said it, but hopefully she’d agree that the situation around Clara’s aqua-colored capiz chandelier could indeed be called “whack.” You never saw this in any previous photos – nor could you really notice it that much in real life – but when installing Clara’s light fixture (which we got here for $50) we became well aware of this unsightly ceiling problem that was previously hidden beneath the larger based ceiling fan. So we finally got around to fixing it. And it was easy thanks to this $19 ceiling medallion that we got at

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February 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 February – high school yearbook style. Coupon-lovingest: This post about how I try to save money by cutting coupons. Sneakiest: The use-tape-to-catch-drywall-dust trick that we outlined here for ya. Most Mischievous: Painting an old glass lamp shade turquoise while John was out for a run. Best Picture Ever Taken: This post about getting a resin ram at TJ Maxx which resulted in a photo of

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Fab Freebie: Line Drawings

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries –  see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org’s, our three winners are Jane (who considers herself an accomplished doodler – especially during a meeting), Molly T (who dubbed herself the least crafty person ever) and Lizz (who’s no artist, but is killer at Pictionary). Congrats ladies! You guys probably know Freshline Illustration from our monthly sponsor shout outs, but soon three of you will know them as the ones who hooked you up with some sweet art / pillows / stationery for your own home. And many of Freshline’s colorful and playful illustrations can be personalized with monograms, anniversary dates, or even your full family tree. PRIZE: A

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Using Side Tables As Night Stands

Okay, make that two night stands. Though technically they’re just the living room side tables… … that were displaced by the arrival of Karl. So even though they’re not technically nightstands, we love our Target tables (from the Victoria Hagan collection, purchased a few years back) and those seeded glass lamps (from the now sadly non-existent Nate Berkus collection at Linens N’ Things) too much to let them go unused. So they’ve now found a new home in the master bedroom. At least for now. Not only do they start to balance the room more, they’re a huge help in the function department. Sherry’s poor short arms couldn’t take storing her cell phone and magazines

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5 Places To Eat, Shop, And See In Richmond, VA

Today’s a cool day – it’s marks our 5th anniversary of living in Richmond. On this date in 2006, Sherry and I woke up on an air mattress in my Upper West Side apartment (she had already moved all of her stuff out of her Soho studio and turned in the keys) to greet my dad, who had driven up in the mini-van that would move us and all of our worldly belongings (hence the air mattress – we had sold our mattresses) to the River City. Seven hours and one stop at Ikea later we arrived at our new apartment in Richmond – unemployed, unwed, and uncontrollably excited about the life ahead of us.

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The Guest Bath: Meh, But Functional.

How’s that for a title? Haha. We’re about 20% there with this room, but we’re sharing these pics in the name of the work-in-progress reality that is our new house. We definitely think some paint on the walls (we’re flip-flopping between soft gray and mocha) will tie things together and better integrate items like the shower curtain and the bathmat along with the sweet vintage yellow tile. And of course bringing in better art, fun window treatments (maybe a bright roman shade?), changing out the light fixture, and implementing other tweaks down the road will hopefully take it from “meh” to “how you doin’?” The good news is that it works and it’s clean. You

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