Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Fab Freebie: Tektonic Movements

We’re still at the beach but somebody’s about to rock your DIY-lovin’ world. The makers of TEKTON tools are giving one of you a “Complete Toolbox Makeover” in the form of a giant collection of their most popular tools worth over $1,000! It includes 46 different tools and tool sets – meaning that everything from a sleek fiberglass hammer and an awesome 10-in-1 pocket tool to an 135-piece wrench and screwdriver set could be coming your way. I couldn’t even cram half of what you’ll be getting in my measly little mood board below. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up

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Road Trip In Progress…

True to our 2011 resolution, which inspired us to sneak off to Maui last year, this year we’ve road tripped down to Destin, Florida so we can soak up some rays and recharge our drill DIY batteries. Turns out even if you love painting and sanding and stripping wallpaper, it’s nice to step away from the primer and the sawdust to reboot for a week with your family. And since we had already driven down to Atlanta last week for the Haven Conference, we figured why stop there when the beautiful gulf coast was a half-day drive away… Destin was our destination of choice because our good friends the Bowers have said such great things

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An Outdoor Tour Of Our New House

As is the tradition, each year we like to take a video camera and walk around the house to capture what’s been done outside (and what’s still desperately waiting to be tackled – which is almost everything at our new house). You can see last year’s here, and the one from 2011 here. And by “we take a video camera” I mean “John takes a video camera” because I’ve been banned from holding any sort of recording device since I tend to Blair Witch everyone (yup, it’s a verb when I do it). Enough jibber jabber. Let’s walk around the house together: Hopefully that little video answers the “what’s going on outside?” questions from you

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How To Change A Bathroom Faucet

Check out this ladykiller in the half bathroom: It’s not especially offensive looking, but it leaks. And with a single knob I’m always worried that Clara will accidentally turn it to scalding hot when she’s washing her hands. So we hit up our Habitat ReStore hoping for a cheap find. Sherry lunged for joy (you need to see that in person by the way) when she spotted this $12 find in the pile… only to learn that it was inexplicably missing one handle (we dug around for 20 minutes looking for it to no avail). Just wasn’t meant to be. So we settled for this $34 find at Home Depot, which was pretty much the

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Listy VonListerson: Updated

These posts came about when people asked how we organize all the stuff that we have on our to-do list and we explained that we basically have one long run-on document that we update as we go. Back in May when we first shared this list, we didn’t get to cross anything off. But now that it has been a few months, some requests for an updated version rolled in and I was all “No, please dont make me cross things off!” Just kidding. I was all “Lemme at it! Ohmanohman I love crossing things off!” Picture the dog’s reaction in those Beggin’ strips commercials. And guess how many lines I got to make?  43. Which

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House Crashing: A Cozy & Creative Townhouse

We know you guys love seeing a wide range of homes when it comes to House Crashing, so when Katrina invited us over to run around her townhouse and snap some photos to share with you guys, we jumped at the chance. She’s a super creative momma who lives right here in Richmond with a lot of awesome found/collected items mixed with things that she has DIYed herself. And here she is now, with her adorable son Luke and her husband Nate. When you enter the townhouse, there’s a gorgeous cozy wall color (Gauntlet Gray by Sherwin Williams) that envelops you, along with the rich wood floors that her hubby installed himself on all three

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How To Install A Nest Learning Thermostat

Everywhere we turn these days there are things that need updating. Some just for aesthetic reasons. Some for functional. Some for both. Enter our old timey, first floor thermostat in our office. We figured with our new furnace system it’d be a good time to update this to something more energy efficient. We made the swap to a programmable thermostat in our first house, so this time around the tech geek in me begged Sherry to let us take this upgrade a step further – especially since so many of you have commented about loving your Nest. To my surprise, she agreed. And that’s how I found myself holding one of these babies. But let

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Painting Our Foyer Edgecomb Gray

The deed is done. Behold, our freshly painted foyer: It feels about a foot taller and at least two feet wider than it did before. Ah, the power of paint. This shot’s probably the most accurate when it comes to color. It’s definitely one of those soft neutrals that shifts throughout the day, but I’d say it’s one part sand and one part greige. Not too cool and not too warm. And pretty darn beautiful with white trim. As for choosing the color, we mentioned a bunch of swatches we were loving in this post, and shared this little makeshift palette: Can you guess who ended up in the foyer? Good ol’ Edgecomb Gray. The

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How To Remove A Dated Vanity Backsplash

Happy Friday, y’all! We’re painting the foyer today (pics on Monday – woop woop!) but I realized that I forgot to share two bathroom related happenings. And one’s a giant oops moment, so this should be fun. First of all, it’s fitting that this thing is called a vanity because I did a little surgery and removed its love handle. It’s hard to see in some of the more recent photos of the bathroom, but this one shows it loud and proud: That slab of counter against the right wall just felt imbalanced to us, and it’s actually a pretty simple DIY project to remove it. So if you have a side-splash thing that you’re

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How To Run A New Cable Wire

One thing we were excited about doing differently in this house vs. the last one is having a TV in our master bedroom. And while we did briefly have a TV in our last master, we never hooked it up to a DVD player or bothered to get a second cable box. Heck, I’m not sure it even got plugged in. We’ve never been gung ho about having a bedroom TV (and we realize it can be a hot topic) but as two people who struggle to snap out of blog mode at night, we thought it would help fight the temptation to work on our laptops (which happens all the time downstairs on the

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Sharing Some Love & Some Art

This week would have been my Aunt Kay’s birthday so it was kind of hard for me since she passed away last year (she lived with me growing up and was sort of like my second mom). She was such a happy and colorful person, and she loved to paint and draw, in fact it was her minor in college. So I decided to do a little watercolor painting with Clara in her honor. I know every mother probably thinks this, but my kid is an artist. Somebody get this girl a beret. The watercolor set came from Target (it was a total impulse buy when I saw it on an end cap – I just

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Upcycling A Secondhand Bathroom Light

But before we get to that: an armadillo in the bathroom. Let’s talk about it. Everyone needs one, right? I mean, we can argue that a lot of decorating “rules” are personal preference and yada yada, but seriously, can we all agree that a bathroom is not complete without a golden armadillo? That’s a print we bought from this craft fair from an awesome local artist named Rachel that I finally got around to framing and hanging up. I especially love it in the burlap-y/grasscloth-ish frame (an old Pottery Barn Outlet find) hanging above the framed instagram photo of Clara holding a naked doll (felt kinda bathroom-esque). The linen-like fabric behind the instagram photo looks

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