Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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An Extremely Cheap & Easy Chair Makeover

We’re excited to share what we’re convinced is one of the thriftiest makeovers of the decade submitted by one of our very own readers. So without further ado, here’s Amy’s letter: You inspired me to finish at least one project I said I would do over my summer break from work. I inherited this antique chair from my great aunt a few years ago (it originally belonged to my great-grandmother). My mom remembers it over the years being many different colors with different fabrics, and when it was handed down to me it was a peach color with a crushed velvet seat (which wasn’t really my style). Luckily, two weeks ago I came across a

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How To Use Woven Items To Warm Up The House

It just occurred to us that we’ve introduced a woven item to nearly every room in our home. And we don’t play favorites. We love everything from jute rugs… … and seagrass carpets… …to textured baskets of all sizes. Even the bamboo blinds that appear in more than a few of our rooms have a textured woven feel, whether they’re framing a window… … or hiding the clutter in our laundry nook… Perhaps the reason we adore all things woven are the soft neutral tones that seem to work in every space. Maybe its the calm, spa feel that they bring- reminding us of an exotic bungalow in Fiji. Perhaps it’s the timelessness of the

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How To Upholster A Chair

We’re back with another handy dandy tutorial, and this time it’s an exciting lesson in chair covering. The main takeaway should be that this is a super simple way to completely reinvent a chair. Seriously. It’s a snap. So let’s get stapled, er started. The white fabric on this antique chair was a little yellowed and stained from years of use. So Emily (John’s frequently mentioned sister in law) and I hit up a local fabric store to grab something funky and fun to update this family hand-me-down of hers. After we scored two yards of sateen & chenille fabric with a fun and dramatic oversized damask pattern (for just $18!) we whipped out a

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A Charming Brick Home Tour In Richmond VA

Yup, we’re house crashing again- and this time we’re invading the home of a local celebrity of sorts. Lesley is the owner of Clementine, an über cool consignment shop in ever-popular Carytown (a street chock full of unique shops and eateries here in Richmond). And she and her husband Jeff graciously allowed us to snoop around their home and shoot some photos to share with you. Without further ado, their beautiful home. From the moment we arrived, the yellow door with hand painted house numbers caught our attention. Lesley just printed out the numbers and transfered them onto the door with a pencil rubbing and tracing technique, painted them there with a thin brush, and

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Adding A Seagrass Rug From World Market

You all know by now that we’re in love with our master bedroom. And after much trial-and-error we were convinced that we’d thought of every last thing to make it comfy cozy meets hotel chic. But the other day we looked down and realized there was something missing… …and thus begun a hunt for the perfect rug. Fortunately the search ended quickly when we found the most amazing thing (at the most amazing price) courtesy of World Market. In addition to their normal collection of global rugs, they offer a cool customizable option that we haven’t seen anywhere else. It’s basically seagrass rug by the foot. First you choose from three different grass colors (from

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Wedding Week: Making Our Own Food

All this wedding week chitchat must be making you hungry, so you’re cordially invited to sink your teeth into a few of our delectable wedding day dishes. Perhaps our most daring DIY feat was completely nixing the idea of a caterer in favor of taking on the entire wedding menu ourselves. I know we sound cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs, but there were a few major reasons behind our seemingly insane decision. A lot of catering companies require a separate prep area and our modest rancher just didn’t have the space. And we also thought strangers dressed in black peddling hors d’oeuvres in our backyard might be a little odd for our intimate affair. But most of all, we’re

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Fun Wedding Details To Add

Y’all ready for me to break down more details about our DIY backyard wedding? Good, because here comes more wedding week straight atcha… Any of you who’ve planned a wedding or other big event know you can score major points with your guests by thinking of the little things that suggest that you’ve thought of everything. And for us that included offering up complementary flip-flops for guests whose shoes were a bit too ambitious for a garden wedding. And of course Sherry wanted the dollar store flip flops to look as sweet as the sentiment, so she tied pairs of them with rustic twine and stuck ’em in a burlap basket for easy access. We

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Wedding Ideas: Favors, Decor, Table Settings, & Photostrips

And now for the juicy wedding week DIY decor that you’ve all been waiting for. From the moment people arrived, we wanted to make sure they felt comfortable and warmly welcomed. So we created a handy dandy little wooden welcome sign with a hand painted message for our guests. And thanks to the sandwich-board construction (two pieces of wood secured with simple hinges at the top), we were also able to paint a cute departure message which said “Thanks for sharing our special day, please grab a glowstick to light your way to the car” along with a galvanized bucket of white glow sticks to help people navigate our semi-dark street safely. And we made

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Our DIY Wedding Invitations & Save The Dates

Wedding week continues here at Young House Love with a look back at all the paper goods we designed for the event – from our summery invitation all the way to the customized thank you postcard. But let’s kick things off with the piece of paper that kicked things off in early 2007: the save-the-date. We wanted something simple yet meaningful so we took inspiration from one of our favorite traditions as a couple: taking pictures in a photobooth. I’ll admit that we didn’t want to waste lots of quarters trying to get the perfect photostrip, so we faked our own using a digital camera, photoshop, and some glossy photo paper. The result was a

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