Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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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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How To Install House Uplighting

This is a project we did over the summer and kept meaning to Instagram, but it refused to be contained by the limits of one shot just like the writers of The Walking Dead refuse to care about our VERY REAL FEELINGS about very fictional characters. But I digress. So here we are, swinging by like we mentioned we might randomly do in our update post/podcast. We had filed this idea away for waaaay down the line (thinking it would be cost and time intensive), but turns out it was actually neither. In fact, as the sun set on the very same day that we started, we got to enjoy the finished product. We’ve always gawked lustily at

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Hello? Is This Thing On?

Well, last week marked a year since we took our big blog break. We didn’t really know what to expect would happen after stepping away from the blog last fall, and we certainly didn’t expect all of the love, support, and interest you guys have continued to show us over the last year. So before anything else, let us just say thank you and bow down and do the “not worthy” hand motions. Truly, you guys are the best. There have been so many questions about what we’ve been doing these days, and we’ve been mulling over the best way to share one big what-the-heck-we’ve-been-up-to update. Sherry suggested a Real Housewives-style freeze frame with update text next to

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The Time Of Our Lives

Update: Aaaand less than 12 hours later we’re back with an update on the bottom of the post for ya. Smooth, right? Hey there! Long time no see. The break has been great. Admittedly a little weird, but really reinvigorating. So we’re immensely thankful not only for your support and kind comments, but also for helping put words to some of the things that we had been feeling for some time. And while the last month hasn’t been enough time to fill in all of the blanks about our future (heck, when are life’s blanks ever clearly filled in?) it has made one thing pretty obvious to us: after seven awesome years of sharing our

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Feeeeeelings

This post was 3,000 words long. They all felt overly complicated and heavy and weird. I clicked delete. Then I just typed what we’re really feeling, complete with things we’ve never said out loud and even a few things we’ve never fully admitted to ourselves before. The truth is that we love you guys. Like for real. Even for the tough love. We know you say it because you care (or hopefully you did at some point), and we want you to know we care right back. We want to do a good job. We want to do this with joy and excitement. We want to inspire you. We know this is an incredible way

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Our Laundry Room Makeover

The laundry room’s finished! And we could kiss Lesley for her idea of carving out a new dedicated laundry room. It’s like it was always there! (Plus a new glass door at the end of a formerly dark hallway with light streaming in = angels singing sound effect to us). When we last checked in, things were looking a little unfinished, but it’s amazing what that last 10% can do for a room. Our first steps were to add the missing filler, baseboard, toe kick, and crown that we had accounted for when we installed the cabinets (to bridge those gaps on the side, top, and bottom). Then it was on to adding the missing

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Fab Freebie: It’s Curtains For You

Update: We hoped to have a Thursday post for you guys but this week didn’t go as planned. So sorry! Update #2: We’d love your thoughts on this thread that popped up on this post. What are your opinions about smaller posts when we can’t write something juicy? Skip them and just own that we can’t post that day with a little update like this one, or would you rather see something small instead of nothing (like a quick organizing update, a Reader Redesign, a dilemma we’re debating, etc)? Thanks for the feedback! Curtains can make the room. And pillows, well, you can never have too many (at least according to my pillow obsessed wife).

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How To Hang A Door

Hope you guys had an awesome Labor Day. We split time between family and house projects which is pretty much our sweet spot. This week is going to be especially hairy thanks to having book stuff nearly every day, but we did manage to eke out a few things to share and hope to be back to normal next week (might not be as on top of comments until then either). But back to my jamb. Or should I say my jambs? They don’t have casings yet, the leftover doorknobs will be upgraded to these backplated-versions, and one door still needs to be painted like whoa – but boy does it feel good to have

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DIY Waterfall Counter

That’s right. You can call me T-Boz. Let’s talk about our new shelf in the laundry room, which is sporting a sweet arm band waterfall edge and some light natural stain. It was a simple DIY project involving some wood and some stain/sealer for a butcher block like effect. We deviated from our usual mocha stain choice because we were inspired by a few rooms we’ve seen with light cabinets and tile mixed with with natural wood to add some texture and warmth. Here’s a wider shot for you. Ignore the missing filler/crown/toe kick/baseboard/hardware situation. We’re also chasing that stuff (you know, along with the waterfalls). But first we have to talk about installing our

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Fab Freebie: Wave Fair-well To Summer

I have mixed feelings about the back to school season, but at least it brings some good sales with it. In fact Wayfair is giving away a $500 gift card to one of you guys – so you can take advantage of their Back to School sale, stock-up on items for next summer season, or grab just about any other decor, furniture, tools, and accessories under the sun. Oh sun… how I will miss thee… Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available to residents of the United States, Canada, UK, Australia & Germany. Click To

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Teddy’s Birth Story

To everyone who has been asking about Teddy’s birth story, thanks for your patience. I like to let those things simmer a little while before I write about them (Clara’s took me almost a year thanks to all of the mixed emotions I had going on) but Teddy’s birth was a lot less scary and a lot more straightforward. Thank goodness! After going through such a traumatic first birth, nothing sounded better to me than a completely routine, scheduled, no-surprises-at-all delivery this time around – which it mostly was, for which I’m SO GRATEFUL. There were still a few surprises, but the primary challenge of this birth (and the whole pregnancy process) was fending off

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