Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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A Beach House Bedroom With Wallpaper And Board & Batten

BEHOLD! The new & improved middle bedroom at the beach house (*crowd goes wild, people do The Hype, battle rap horns sound, DJ Khaled shouts “DJ KAHLEDDDDD”, maybe Cardi B. is there with one of those t-shirt cannons?*). I hope you enjoyed that mental image as much as I did. ANYWAY, the beach house middle bedroom update is done, and I can’t get over how sweet the board & batten and the wallpaper look together – especially with the old heart pine floors and doors. Those are 115 years old, and the wallpaper and the wall treatment are brand new, but they feel so good together – especially in person. My biggest pet peeve with

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Ikea Pax Closet Makeover With Budget & Video Tour

This post is going to cover a lot of ground. Not only are we sharing before & after photos and a video tour about how we organized it all, we’re also spilling how much the whole thing cost, tossing out some closet planning tips to help you tackle an update yourself, and the details on how we made it all look built-in like a bonafide custom closet (with just $65 of wood!). First let’s get to the eyeball-related things: the before & afters. Also, please note how badly Burger wanted to be in this post. Photobombs out the wazoo. This little room of ours has come a long way. The photo below shows how we

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A Big Bathroom & Closet Update

We made some pretty exciting progress over the last few weeks that has earned us a much more functional space with a random but doable smattering of tasks left on our to-do list. We’re definitely rounding third base on this bathroom (that sounds weird, but you know what I mean – we’re getting extremely close to the end) and for that I’m straight up Carlton-dancing. Let me tell you, having a double sink for the first time in our lives (and my favorite toilet! and an actual closet system instead of a few old hanging bars!) is a huge upgrade. We’re thrilled, even if this feels like it has been a much longer renovation than

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How To Build Scrap Wood Storage… Out Of Scrap Wood

The scrap wood pile in our garage was getting out of hand, so creating some scrap wood storage was a top priority in our new shed. And, better yet, we wanted to use as much of our scrap wood to actually build it! So this post covers the steps we took to construct this easy and functional storage system for you collection of leftover lumber. It may not be the prettiest scrap wood storage on the Internet (and it’s a little hard to see with all of wood-on-wood tones), but it’s way better than the garage pile we started with! Step 1: Assess Your Scrap Wood Pile To build this organizer, we started by bringing

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Staining Your Wood Cabinets Darker

Updated January 2022 We weren’t happy with the color of our existing kitchen cabinets – too orange and dated looking! – so we wanted to give them a quick makeover for a darker, more contemporary look. We decided to stain them to maintain the wood grain appearance, but we worried that would require us to sand off all of the old finish. Yuck! Luckily, we knew of a product that would let us skip that messy and tiring step while still giving us the end results we wanted. You can see our results above, and read below for how we got there! What Stain Product Did You Use? We used Minwax Polyshades for this project,

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Painting Our Shed & Adding Window Boxes

This post is for everyone who has been asking for a shed update since we finally painted it to match our white house (it only took us a year!). While we were updating things, we switched out the lights and added window boxes because I can now be described as “extremely passionate about sheds.” Like if I was on match.com that would be in my bio somewhere. This is perhaps the largest personality change for me throughout adulthood. The idea that I like sheds is an extremely new revelation. Remember when I didn’t care about sheds – and maybe even hated them – especially when John wanted to use half of our beach house’s tiny

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#159: Are You A Maximizer Or A Satisficer?

Have you ever thought about your approach to making decisions? It turns out that humans tend to have two distinct styles (and they even have fancy psychological terms to go along with them). The funny revelation is that Sherry & I each exemplify a different one. So this week we’re sharing what we’ve learned about each type of decision maker, and how it can impact everything from how we choose items for our home to how we booked our first international family vacation. We’re also outlining five ways you can refresh a room without spending ANY money whatsoever. As in zero dollars (Sherry would add a “holla!” right here). Plus, the new kid-friendly kitchen activity

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How To Build A DIY Coffee Table

For everyone who has been asking for the details on our new coffee table (glimpses of it have made their way into my InstaStories over the last few months – and boy did you guys notice!), I’m finally writing up all the details. How many words can someone possibly share about the hunt for and the creation of a living room coffee table that checks every one of their oddly specific boxes, you ask? Well, settle in. I shall regale you with a tale of woe and triumph and there’s even a random not-sure-it-even-works alien joke worked in there for good measure. Plus I’ll show you exactly how to get this exact coffee table if

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How To Replace Fluorescent Lighting With A Pendant Fixture

Updated 2019 We just swapped out two old fluorescent light fixtures in our kitchen and they each required slightly different techniques becausfe – surprise! – one of the didn’t have a fixture box in the ceiling behind it. Yep, just wires coming out of the drywall! So we’ll show you two ways to replace your fluorescent lighting with a more udpated pendant or flush mount fixture. Removing A Large Fluorescent Light Fixture First we replaced the big fluorescent light near our stove. It was incredibly simple to do so we’ve outlined a step-by-step process below: Step 1: Turn Off The Power Whenever you’re working with a light fixture, it’s always good to turn off the

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#158: Holiday Decorating Around The World

After hundreds of submissions from Australia to South Africa, we’ve rounded up some fascinating (and extremely charming) ways that you guys dress up your homes all around the world to celebrate a variety of holidays. We loved hearing about everything from colorful Diwali decorations in India to elaborate Nativity scenes in Colombia, along with a wide range of tales about who brings the gifts (Santa isn’t the only game in town!). And we realized there’s one common theme that ties pretty much every holiday together across the globe! Plus we’re sharing the painful wrench that was thrown into our bathroom progress, and why we need to have a word with Taylor Swift. Oh and the

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2019 Holiday Gift Guides

As is the tradition, I’m always the last blogger in blogland to get a gift guide up (did I mention we just got our tree up two days ago?!), but I love searching for fun gift ideas all over the interwebs (including tons of small businesses & handmade items) and smashing them all into one big post for you guys! And this is that post, so let’s get down to business. There’s stuff for grown ups, finds for kids, and a ton of budget friendly ideas that are under $25, and even $15! Hope you find something you love for someone you love… even if that someone is you (I’m totally asking Santa for a

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