Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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How To Install Hardwood Flooring

At this point you’ve probably seen our finished and furnished bonus room above our garage, but let’s take a quick joyride back in the DeLorean to talk about how we installed the oak hardwood flooring in there. When we mentioned it oh-so-briefly in our first post about the space, we also promised to share more how-to details, since it was our first time doing a traditional nail-in installation (we previously did a floating hardwood installation). It wasn’t terribly difficult, but it did have its challenges. So for anyone else who might be taking on the task, here’s a rundown of what we did and how we did it. Choosing Our Floors First off, why hardwoods? Originally we had planned to do wall-to-wall

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#3: Why Decluttering Makes Your Head Hurt

Well, you’ve found ’em: the show notes for Episode #3 of Young House Love Has A Podcast. In this week’s episode, Designer Sarah Richardson shares one of her biggest makeover mistakes, which prompts us to reflect upon a design fail that we’ve made not once, but twice! We also dive into how we attempt to keep our house in order, and dig up some research about why decluttering can make your head hurt. Plus, you’ll hear how our mornings have gotten greener, what has changed about our frame game, and we’ll test our knowledge about a popular design show’s slew of spinoffs. You can find this episode on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and TuneIn Radio – or play it

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Holy Cats, We Have A Podcast!

Well, we’re upping the nerd factor around here and giving podcasting a go. The name? Young House Love Has A Podcast. I’ll give everyone a moment to let that process. I know it’s a tricky one. So much nuance. Listen on iTunes | Google Play | TuneIn Radio | Pocket Casts | Stitcher  You can check out our latest episode (a new one pops up every Monday) and all of the previous episodes that we have released (we’ve officially released over 50!). If you’re already a podcast listener, just head over to iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn Radio, Pocket Casts, or Stitcher to subscribe and download all of our episodes. And if you’re new to podcasts, here’s how to listen in (it might sound complicated but it’s completely free and just takes a

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#2: Design TV Secrets With HGTV’s Sabrina Soto

Well, you’ve found ’em: the show notes for Episode #2 of Young House Love Has A Podcast. On this week’s episode, designer and TV host Sabrina Soto opens up about what she loves, hates, and has cried over in her 9 years of making design television. Plus, we hear how motherhood has changed her style and what it’s really like behind the scenes of the Home Shopping Network. We’ll also share what’s new with us, play another rousing round of “What’s Not”, and shout out a surprisingly resilient plant that we use both inside and out. You can find this week’s show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and TuneIn Radio – or play it below! Then use this page to check out

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#1: What Rich People Have In Their Houses

Well, you’ve found ’em: the show notes for the first episode of Young House Love Has A Podcast. In this episode, we discuss what the internet thinks are found in “rich households” and talk about some easy ways we can all make our own homes feel a little fancier without breaking the bank. We also give you an update on what’s new with us, find out what paint colors you might use to make a sandwich, and foreshadow a potential toilet paper related injury. You can find our show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and TuneIn Radio – or play it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos that we referenced.   What’s New

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Our Bonus Room Makeover

Hallelujah – the sun is back on the East Coast! So when it finally reappeared after weeks of rain, we broke out the camera and took some photos of our finally finished bonus room (well, “finished” is a loose term, since I don’t think we’re ever actually done tweaking things). We’re happy to report that we crammed in a decent amount of fun, function, and a big ol’ spot to sit down and never get back up again. The couch in here is truly a vortex that’s impossible to resist. But I digress… If you missed what got us to this point (and are wondering where the heck this room is), you can catch up on

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A Planet & Rocket Themed Bedroom For A Little Boy

We’re sort of at a loss for how to write this post. We could approach it as your typical makeover post, complete with befores, afters, and a budget breakdown. But the room we’re sharing with you today isn’t about how dramatically it changed, how quickly it happened, or how affordable the transformation was. It’s about something much more important than any design or DIY could ever be. Which is maybe why we fear we won’t find the right words to tell you about it. But here it goes anyway. A family in our community experienced the unthinkable: their son Mason passed away very suddenly last month. He was 4. He loved preschool and superheroes. His

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How To Hide TV Wires In The Wall

While our recently-finished bonus room upstairs was never intended to be a dedicated “media room” or “theater room,” we always knew it’d make a great spot for special family movie nights. But in adding a television, we didn’t want to create Cordfest 2016, and have always wanted to try mounting a TV on the wall. So we thought we’d break down the 4 steps that we took to hang our TV, eliminate every visible cord, and hide the cable box. All-in-all, these four steps cost us less than $75 and none took more than an hour to execute (a couple only took a few minutes). They were: Mounting the TV to the wall (we used this $18 mounting hardware from Amazon) Installing an in-wall cord system

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Switchin’ Things Up

One of the most common questions we get asked these days is what we’re up to (specifically, what we’re doing for work). We covered a lot of that back in this post, but in a nutshell it’s a combination of stuff we did before we started blogging (copywriting, ad consulting) and some newer skills that we learned while blogging (like product design and helping a local builder design his spec houses). Perhaps you saw this Instagram photo of the herringbone backsplash we chose for a recent kitchen we worked on. It was hard to get that shot because Sherry kept reaching in and whispering sweet nothings to it. True story. But this check-in isn’t about all

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Finishing The Bonus Room Over Our Garage

Who remembers our old furniture and pillow hoarding room at the end of the hall that we used to call “the storage room”? You may recall that we stole a bit of its square footage to create our laundry room), which conveniently left us with a more rectangular shaped room and easier access via the new glass door that we installed at the end of the hallway. And if you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you already know that it has been undergoing a bit of a transformation lately… First, some background. We knew this room would someday become a great bonus space for us. Many of our neighbors’ homes had their above-the-garage area finished from the get-go,

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Simple & Inexpensive Holiday Decorating Ideas

Crank up “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” and chug some eggnog, because we’re about to share some festive photos up in hurrrr. First up, the tree. You guys might remember that we set it up in the office the first year that we lived here. As much as we loved the effect of the lights reflecting in the bay window, we’re glad we experimented with a different spot for it (after putting my desk there last year) because we like the new location even better. As we learned last year, Christmas morning feels cozier when you’re opening presents in a living room rather than a home office. I mean, just look at how comfortable this dog is. We’re

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Easy DIY Wainscoting For Your Hallway

Our upstairs hallway recently got the wainscot treatment, and it’s kind of like the debonair older cousin to the DIY board & batten from our last house. Kind of a board & batten meets picture-frame molding look. Let’s just say, if our hallways were the Lindsay Lohans from The Parent Trap, this one would be the fancier-sounding English one (who I sometimes imagine grew up to live a less chaotic life than the American one). The Easy Approach To Installing DIY Wainscoting This DIY project began as one of those no-brainer tasks that we didn’t expect to spread much beyond the confines of a weekend. We planned to just repeat the board & batten look from our last house.

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