Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for May 2008

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Five Moving Tips To Make Things Easier

This weekend we helped John’s sister and brother-in-law move into their fabulous new home (that they just happened to design themselves) and along with some obligatory back pain we took away some pretty fail-safe moving advice. And now that we’re in the know, we figured we’d share the wealth. After a picture of their breathtaking new kitchen of course: Moving Tip #1: Clean top to bottom. When you’re cleaning something in your new home (like the kitchen cabinets before you load in all your dishes, or a closet before you add the linens), it only makes sense to start from the top. This way any spare dirt or dust that doesn’t stick to your rag

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Digging In A Slate Path That Leads To Our Front Door

It’s been so long that I betcha forgot about our front walkway project, didn’t you? You can get a full refresher here, but the gist is that we ripped up our shoddy old path and used leftover slate to piece together a bigger and better walkway to our front door. It was a weekend full of work and we left off with the simple task of digging all the slate into the ground. Here’s a pic to jog your memory (before the big dig): That simple task of digging in 48 pieces of stone turned into a four-day back-breaking adventure, all in hopes of engineering a wobble-free perfectly-graded welcoming walkway to our house. Which is

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A Little Anniversary Love

Dear house, We remember moving in exactly two years ago like it was yesterday. And boy were we head over heels for you from the start. God knows why when we look back at the first exterior picture that we took… But you had us at hello. Even when you greeted us with that crazy shelf divider in the living room complete with a stained glass square and a faux stone linoleum landing. And who wouldn’t have been charmed by that dated dining room wallpaper and the ancient kitchen cabinetry that shouted “Paul Bunyan wuz here”? Sure the master bedroom was kinda nondescript, but we were positively over the moon about our first pale blue-gray

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Decorating A Coffee Table

Always one to spice it up around the house, I wasted no time giving our living room’s $30-thrift-store-find-of-a-coffee-table a lighter look for the warmer weather. Here’s the old bookish, low-profile version: And here’s the new lighter, more reflective version: I like exposing more of the glass tabletop for a simpler (and easier to dust) silhouette. And two stacks of books on the bottom shelf really balance the oversized vase that might otherwise look too big for the table. For a finishing touch, the sculptural white shell ball and antler candlestick add some interesting lines without overwhelming. And I even got to have some fun with a knife to pull the whole thing together… When I

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Adding A Firepit To Your Home

This is the most amazingly easy way to add a little fun to your yard (no matter how small) and spruce up your space in mere minutes. Two chairs + a metal firepit = the best seats in the house. Check out our new set-up. And you don’t even need to have grass. You can set ’em down on pavers, concrete, a deck, a patio, or even a clearing in the woods. So carve out a corner and surround a firepit with as many chairs as you’d like. Firepits have never been more affordable- take home this basic version for $69.99 or adopt this copper beauty on sale for $119. Then it’s time for a

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Hanging A Capiz Chandelier In The Bedroom

Warning: what you are about to read will probably make you $59.99 poorer but 59.99% giddier. The gorgeous capiz chandelier that we have in our bedroom generates its fair share of compliments and “where’d you get that?!” remarks. Which is actually no surprise since we discovered it when Domino magazine raved about how fantastic it was (with a fantastic price to match- just $99). But thanks to a recent West Elm sale, our beloved capiz beauty is now available for an almost inconceivable $59.99. Be still my beating heart. And not only does it come in the luminescent white color that we adore, it’s also offered in this gorgeous sand color that they call “mocha.”

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Extra! Extra! Read All About It.

Guess whose mugs graced the new Home & Garden section in Richmond’s local paper this morning? I know. We couldn’t believe it either. Last week we were just sitting around minding our business when, totally out of the blue, The Richmond Times-Dispatch contacted us. They wanted our help relaunching their newly expanded Home & Garden section by featuring our DIY table project in their new column appropriately named “I Did It Myself.” Needless to say, we were ecstatic. To read the online version, click here. And if you’re visiting us thanks to the article- howdy! We have lots of exciting before and afters and tons of archived DIY projects and mini-makeovers, so feel free to

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Digging Up Old Slate To Make A New Leveled Path

The front of our house continues to transform (goodbye scalloped porch, hello red door), and this weekend we worked up the energy to tackle the jacked up front walk. Why? Because this is the jagged and trip-inducing path that we inherited with the house. Talk about an ankle sprain waiting to happen: We like a rustic cottage-y path, but ours was narrow, wobbly and not quite the inviting introduction to our front door that we envisioned. Plus, the previous owner had a thing for ornamental grass and wooden borders that were seriously cramping our style. So this weekend we dug it up to make way for a bigger and better version. Here’s what it looked

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Trimming Back Some Overgrown Azaleas

As you last saw a few weeks ago, we removed our shoddy screen door and painted the door behind it a brilliant lipstick red. Then we ripped down the scalloped header with vigor and shared the victorious results. But Project Pimp My Porch is far from complete. We still need to relay the front walkway, because it looks bad (really bad). But while we work up the energy to tear up the jagged slate and create a wider and more level pathway, I took it upon myself to get going on some much needed front landscaping. See, after azaleas look spectacular for three long weeks in April, they’re immediately supposed to be cut back when

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