Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

| By | |

Adding Outdoor Storage

I’ll start this post with a confession: I resented our kitchen porch when we finished it last fall. Resent is a strong and, admittedly, strange word to use for a porch. But I’ll explain it later on in this post. The good news is that I no longer harbor any ill will toward it. In fact, it has become one of the spaces I’m most grateful to have in our smaller home. Especially after some functional additions that we’ve made to it over the last year since you saw it. I love this space so much, that I’m actually writing this post from it right now. Call it Method Blogging. I’m fully immersed in my

[ Read More ]

| By | |

DIY Built-In Bookshelves

Today’s tutorial for adding built-in bookshelves is a lot simpler than it looks. That means getting this classic look of floor-to-ceiling shelving around a doorway is something anyone can do. We planned these bookcases as part of our big kitchen remodel, and they may be my secret favorite part of the whole renovation. This wall did have a bookcase on it originally, as you can see in this before photo. But we demo’d and reframed it to be more open to the kitchen. In addition to the DIY building tutorial, we’ll also share all of the measurements so you can make sure to create the best shelf height and depth for books and decor. Tools

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Pack Light For Paris

Walking onto the plane carrying just a duffel and a purse for 7 days in two different areas of France (and a stop in Germany!) was my goal. And here I am standing at the airport, right after John dropped me off and took this shot. Yup. Just a purse and this duffel. I did it (with space to spare!). And because I’m nothing if not a minimal wardrobe hype woman (more on that here), please allow me to sensually tip your head back and shout directly into your mouth: “knowing how to maximize your options without dragging your entire closet with you is a real actual life hack.” So read on to see how

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Build Modern DIY Nightstands

Upgrading to a larger bed meant we needed to swap our big bedside tables out for something smaller. So we whipped up this super simple plan for DIY nightstands that *perfectly* fit the space. They require only one material (butcher block counters!) and minimal cuts, meaning it’s a building project anyone can do. By using a chunky material like butcher block, you not only get a modern look, but it also makes them super sturdy. You don’t have to do any fancy construction techniques like shelf supports or sliding drawers. Again, super simple! Why Build Custom Nightstands? To fit our new king-size bed in our room, we had to position it slightly off-center on this

[ Read More ]

| By | |

The Best Toilet (Yes, We Really Have A Favorite)

You know you’ve left your mark on the world when people quote you in the pages of Time magazine or you get interviewed by Oprah. But what does it mean if one of your top google results is “young house love toilet” (true story)? And up until now, searching that term on our blog didn’t really lead you anywhere helpful (Sherry talks a lot about our favorite toilet mostly on IG Stories). So if that’s the rabbit hole that led you to our blog and you typed in those infamous words, this post will now have you and all of your toilet-related queries covered. Our favorite toilet is the Kohler Memoirs Elongated Toilet (sometimes also

[ Read More ]

| By | |

We Downsized – And Here’s What We Kept

Settle in. This post is a DEEP DIVE. One of those long detailed dissection/reflection posts that feels like the blogging days of yore. So if you love those & wanna grab a cup of coffee and go on a little journey with us – today’s the day. We’re about to dive into: This whole post idea came to us when we were in our downstairs sitting area recently and we realized that a lot of the furniture hadn’t moved with us from our previous house in Richmond. The loveseat, the chairs, and the coffee table were all purchased after we moved here to fit precisely into this new smaller sitting area that we slowly figured

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Add Utility Closet Storage

Today we’re talking about the stock market! Just kidding. Exactly as the title suggests, we’re going to show you how we earned some really useful extra storage in our new kitchen by upgrading a formerly VERY PACKED utility closet. It used to basically just have a water heater and an HVAC system in it without much room for anything else, and now there’s, say it with me… so much room for activities. Ok, not for like cartwheels, but significantly more room to store stuff than before. Like maybe 500% more. Really. If you watched our drawer-by-drawer kitchen organization video, you already got a peek at what we have going on in there, but today we’re

[ Read More ]

| By | |

The Easiest DIY Headboard

We’ve made a bunch of headboards over the years and the method shown below is the all-time easiest and most customizable DIY headboard of them all. It doesn’t require any sewing, thread, buttons, or other technical upholstery knowledge. It’s so easy, we even made two headboards for this space. We are making a wraparound daybed-style headboard for our son’s room. It’s gonna turn his basic bed into a cozy nook for lounging, reading, and – of course, sleeping! Here’s what his room and bed looked like before. It’s pretty bare bones because we just moved in. Update: See how his room looks after 2 years of living here, including the installation of his gradient accent

[ Read More ]

| By | |

The Best Outdoor Solar Lights

Some people are surprised to hear that we illuminate our entire pool area using nothing but solar LED landscape lights. As in: the sun provides free evening ambiance with zero effort on our part. Nothing has to be plugged in. Our electric bill feels zero impact from softly illuminating this entire area of our house. So today I wanted to share the 3 solar products we use in case you want to give your own outdoor space a literal glow-up. Technically we have a porch light and in-pool lights too, all of which use traditional electricity, but we almost never turn them on. Honestly, they’re a little blinding and we like a soft glow that

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Organizing Our Small Ikea Kitchen

It’s time once again to throw open every cabinet, drawer, and door to show you how we organized our smaller kitchen, which we slowly renovated over the last two years (more on that slow but steady reno here). This post should be an especially fun one because you’ll see just how much we’ve improved the storage in this kitchen, which we shared in this post almost two years ago. And, as usual, we made a video walk-through of the whole thing too, which also explains a few future plans involving two outdoor cabinets that we plan to add to the nearby kitchen porch. So yeah… lots to cover. We’ll start with the video, because it’s

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Our Trip To Mexico With Kids… And A Dog!

Last week we vacationed in the Yucatán Peninsula region of Mexico with our two kids (ages 8 and 12) and yes, even our dog Penny came! This was our second time traveling internationally as a family, so we definitely don’t qualify as experienced world travelers or aspiring travel bloggers. But just like the last time we went abroad, we wanted to share the details for anyone who is considering something similar – especially if it’s your first time going to Mexico. So here are a bunch of answers to the most common questions we got. We’ll also cover where we went, what we ate, and how we navigated the logistics of bringing a pet with

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Rug Sizing Tips & Our Favorite “Magic Rug”

Rugs are hard. We get it. How do you know the right size and placement? Will it look good in your room? What if looks nothing like the photos online? If you have any of those thoughts, this post is for you. We’re going to dive into an especially magical rug that goes with basically any colored sofa/wall/room, but also talk generally about rug size and placement. Plus, we’ve listed a bunch of other favorite rugs, vetted by us (we bought them all with our own money & love them – no affiliation with any of ’em). The Magic Rug Let’s start with the magic rug. We bought this rug many years ago for one

[ Read More ]