Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Why You Should Always Test For Radon When Buying A House!

Thank goodness we learned something from buying our first house and decided to pay a few hundred dollars for radon testing this time around. As part of our new home’s inspection, we paid a local radon company to conduct a multi-day test to ensure that dangerous levels of radon aren’t present (for any locals who are wondering who we used, we went with Radon Ease, because they don’t remediate, they only test- so there’s nothing in it for them to find radon). Sure enough the readings came back above a 4… which means there were dangerous levels of radon present in the home – enough to call for professional remediation as the solution. But instead

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Assembling Our Edland Bed From Ikea

Last you saw our new bed Ed – aka, the Edland four-poster bed from Ikea – he looked like this (read more about how we chose him here). He has since been assembled – and even slept on for one night. And thanks to the Skorva steel support beam (also from Ikea, which is mentioned as a must-have along with the bed in the “good to know” section) Ed can, in fact, hold the weight of 30 dead people (aka: our incredibly heavy mattress) plus the weight of two DIY enthusiasts, their beefy chihuahua named Hamburger, and their baby girl (when she’s in there for a morning snack). Constructing the bed was a remarkably easy

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Fab Freebie: A Simplified New Year

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down for special discount and to see who won!*** If the words “simplify,” “organize,” “declutter” or “make more time for [blank]” will be showing up on your resolution list this year, boy do we have the giveaway for you. Simplify 101 provides all sorts of fun interactive tips and online workshops to help you achieve those goals, and this week a trio of you will win TWO free workshops. Our three winners can choose from any of the following workshops being held early next year: “Quick + Simple Clutter Control,” “How To Achieve Your Goals And Create A Life You Love,” “Organizing 101” and “It’s About

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Buying A Bed Frame From Ikea

After over two weeks of doing it, sleeping on the floor is officially getting old. So we bought a bed frame. Oh happy day! We had big plans for possibly building one (using one of Ana White’s amazing tutorials). And we debated just getting a cheapo-metal frame and laying slats of wood across it so we could rest our mattress on that (so we could DIY another upholstered headboard down the road). But in the end the four poster bed that caught our eye back when we whipped up this future bedroom mood board won out (click here for more mood board details). One of the issues is that our organic mattress (which you can

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Using A Silver Sharpie To Decorate Mugs

This is a weird DIY thing I tossed together three Monday nights ago in front of the TV in our old house. The first reason I’m calling it weird is because we no longer live there, so it’s funny that this post somehow got buried and now it’s getting published with our old walls and shelves in the background. And it’s pretty darn close to Christmas, but I figured it might be a fun little last minute gift idea for someone. Better late than never, right? Hence the idea of hitting publish on it (as opposed to delete). The second reason I’m calling it weird is that I totally didn’t use the right materials to

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How To Hang Your Shower Curtain Higher

By the time we unpacked our shower curtain last week, it had been 48 hours since either of us had showered. And those two days were filled with lifting heavy objects, if you catch our whiff drift. So hanging the shower curtain was a welcome step in our moving process. What was not so welcome? This result: You know we love hanging an extra long shower curtain all the way to the ceiling to add height to the room (the 95″ waffle curtain is from amazon.com and the 86″ fabric liner is from Bed Bath & Beyond by the way). But the trick doesn’t work so well when the tension rod you inherit is too

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How To Remove Bi-Fold Doors

Our new place sure has its share of bi-fold doors. Like this pair sectioning off the future dining room and the main hallway (see a floor plan here to get your bearings): And this nearby set that closes off the hallway that leads to most of the bedrooms (we removed one door to get the daybed through on moving day): Then in our bedroom we’ve got another big set closing off the bathroom sink area… …and a single bi-fold door right next to it closing off the walk-in closet. That doesn’t even include all of the bi-folds that close off the other three bedroom closets. So basically… yeah, there’s a lot of ’em. And unfortunately

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The Best Light Pink Paint Color For Nursery Walls

Alternate title: Breaking Out John’s Painting Belt It was like old times. For those who don’t get the painting belt reference, check this out for further explanation. Anyway, as we mentioned yesterday, we painted Clara’s nursery. And instead of cloning the exact space that she enjoyed in our old house, we took the move as an opportunity to switch up the wall color. We figure since we’re working with the same furniture and even the same light fixture and curtains (since I was too sentimental to leave them behind) we thought a new wall color would make things feel a little fresher- like the room is subtly evolving over time as opposed to being totally

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Fab Freebie: Skil-ly Weather

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** I won’t lie. When the folks at Skil wanted to offer up one of their tools this holiday season, we had trouble picking out the perfect prize for you guys. Then they offered to give away a four-tool-tastic combo pack so we didn’t have to make that call. Nice, right? So this week’s winner will be scoring all four tools pictured above, which are officially dubbed the 18V Lithium Ion Cordless 4-Tool Combo Pack. Which means the drill, circular saw, reciprocating saw, and flashlight all work off of the same rechargeable battery. So here’s how you can snag this last minute

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Decorating A New House For Christmas

We actually got our tree back up a few days ago amidst boxes and general chaos (here it is the first time when we set it up in the old house). We figured we’d never be 100% organized and unpacked before the holidays hit, but taking an hour to get into the spirit in our brand new house for our bean’s first Christmas was just what the doctor ordered. We found the perfect spot for our tree in the corner of the living room (right near the sliders that lead out into the sunroom and the doorway that connects to the kitchen). We also hung my beloved Pottery Barn wreath (a gift from John’s mom

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Inexpensive Holiday Gift Ideas

Here’s our last installment of our recent gift sleuthing spree (see part one here and part two here) and this time we paid Urban Outfitters a visit. It’s always full of cute, quirky, and downright hilarious gift ideas that are usually pretty affordable. Here’s what we found: These sparkly pillows were pretty luxe looking (and around $30, as opposed to something similar that we saw at Crate & Barrel for $99). This $22 book of “Other People’s Love Letters” reminded us of those Post Secret books (we love them, and actually own two volumes of ’em- they’re great for leaving in a guest room so visitors can entertain themselves). For the techie in your life,

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