Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for December 2009

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Ripping Up Carpet And Renovating A White Kitchen

When Barbara sent us her almost-too-good-to-be-true before and after photos we couldn’t wait to share the eye candy. Here’s her letter: I have been enjoying your blog and thought I would send over my most recent remodeling project. My parents bought a home that was built in the 70’s and gave me and my husband the project of remodeling it. Here are the before and after pictures of the kitchen. As you can see this home stayed in the 70’s until about a few months ago. Dark seemed to play a theme in the entire house. And wanna know what was hiding beneath all that brown carpet? Beautiful wood floors. We were so excited! Here

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Seriously?!

Yesterday we learned that Young House Love was named one of the World’s Best Design Blogs by The London Times when we shockingly noticed our name on their top fifty list. Insanely enough we came in at number twelve. As in, they think we’re the 12th best design blog in the world. Isn’t that kind of mind blowing? We’re still pinching ourselves. And we’re thrilled to be in good company with a slew of stateside and international blogs that we know and love (like Apartment Therapy, Desire To Inspire, Decor8, Design Sponge, Making It Lovely, Chez Larsson, SF Girl By Bay, and Brooklyn Limestone to name a few). Here’s a link to the page with

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How To Frost An Exterior Window

We’re back to share a quick and easy window-frosting tutorial as promised last week. We knew our basement windows were completely devoid of privacy and therefore could use a bit of cover, but we didn’t want to hang heavy blinds that we kept perpetually closed since that would definitely rob the room of tons of light. Enter the idea of window film. We actually used it to frost our original bathroom window after we moved in. Then we later replaced all of our windows and realized our private backyard didn’t provide a good view of the bathroom since it’s up so high, so we opted not to redo the frosting treatment afterwards. But the basement

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Making A Cardboard Snowflake Wreath

Let’s get wreath the program, shall we? Forgive the bad pun, I’m just a little (ok, a lot) hyper about our latest holiday project. You may remember Cardboard Safari from our recent Sponsor Shout-Out post. Well, they generously sent over two of their amazing white cardboard snowflake wreaths and we couldn’t wait to put them together. One of the most fun things about everything from Cardboard Safari is that it arrives flat in a box, and all the laser cut pieces of recycled cardboard can then be punched out by the lucky recipient and put together, like a highly entertaining 3-D puzzle for adults. It really is our idea of a good time. Especially since

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How To Demo Tile, Mortar, & Metal Mesh In Bathroom Walls

When we say we’re “tackling a room” it’s usually a figure of speech, but in this case it’s pretty close to being a literal description of our big bathroom demolition weekend (check out this post for more info on why we’re doing it and this post for our plan for the space). The biggest surprise from our weekend of knocking stuff out and gutting the room? Well, the bathroom sorta tackled back. Before we could be all “in with the new” we had to take care of that pesky “out with the old” part. Here’s what the bathroom looked like once we cleared all the simple stuff out (baskets, shower curtain, mirror, rug, etc). We told

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Some Quick Holiday Decor Ideas

We actually whipped up this fast and easy holiday decorating video before we finished our tree (which we shared last week), but because we’re sticklers for order around here, we thought tree-decorating-video-numero-dos made more sense following tree-decorating-video-numero-uno so we’re squeezing this baby in at the end. But good things come to those who wait, right? According that that cliché they do anyway. So without further ado, here’s a video* (with plenty of belly for those on bump watch) all about seasonally decorating every nook and cranny of your home on the cheap and in a snap. And the best part is that we used things we already had laying around (so we spent zero bucks

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Turning An Armoire Into A Fountain!

When Samantha over at one of our regular blog reads sent us an amazing armoire redo (just wait to see what she turned it into), we had to share her insanely inspired DIY undertaking. Here’s her letter: It’s probably too late in the year for an outdoor space before and after, but here’s our armoire-to-fountain makeover. The outside of the fountain is painted with weather-resistant paint. The inside tanks are coated with roofing sealant. The fountain pump is from Home Depot. It makes a wonderful refreshing sound that drowns out the traffic and (almost) the constant helicopters that hover overhead every evening. – Samantha That’s right. She turned her old pine armoire into a fountain! Here’s

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Making Bifold Doors Into A Screen To Hide A Water Heater

We know this was supposed to be the final chapter when it comes to our big basement makeover, but because we tackled two different DIY projects (making a screen to block off our fugly water heater and frosting the windows for 100% privacy that still lets in the light) we realized it would be crazy to try to squeeze all those step by step photos and instructions into one post… so we’re breaking it down to two. Just look at it as twice the fun. So without further ado, here’s how we made a custom screen to hide our eye-sore of a water heater with $18 worth of secondhand bi-fold doors and a quart of

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Our Holly Jolly Christmas Gift Guide

Just like last year’s roundup of budget-friendly holiday gifts, we’re back to share what tickled our fancy this year. So we set off to three mainstream stores that hopefully many of you have access to (if not there’s always online ordering) and snapped a few pics of our favorite non-fund-depleting finds. The best part is that many of them can be had for just a few dollars and nothing in our roundup is over the 20-something range. Plus some of these items can be adapted or DIYed so you can whip them up for even less at home. Doesn’t that put some seasonal spring in your step? So without further ado, here’s what made us

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Sourcing Tile, A Vanity, & Other Bathroom Accessories

As John mentioned on Monday, our full bathroom is in need of the full monty. Sure it’s great from afar… … but up close it’s a bit more, um, not great. Sadly, after over fifty years of use, the once wonderful black and white basketweave floor tiles are cracked, stained, and worn down beyond repair… … and the white tiled walls are in pretty scary shape (shattered in some areas and dingy and worn almost everywhere else). We’re all about saving what you can and working with whatcha got, but in this case we’re sorry to say that after a pretty serious cleaning and recaulking effort a few years back- which certainly tided us over

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Abbey’s Living Room Makeover With A Red Sofa

Oh happy day! Abbey sent us her lovely mood board after pictures and we couldn’t wait to share them. Her space is a great reminder that you don’t have to paint the walls a dramatically different color or spend big bucks replacing everything to get a majorly upgraded look. Sometimes just a few new pieces, a slightly more saturated wall tone, and some simple accessory switcheroos can make all the difference. Here’s her letter: I’m finally submitting my after pics of the family room makeover you helped me with this summer. I want to thank you sooo much for your design ideas. By adding in the chocolate furnishings and the rug it really helped provide

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How To Make Dried Orange Slice Ornaments

We’re back to share the second half of our tree-decorating adventure (sped up with a bit of festive music to get you into the spirit). We last left off with this video of us setting up our pre-lit artificial (faux? reusble?) tree only to discover that a strand of lights in the middle of the tree was out. But fixing it was as easy as listening for the buzzing bulb and replacing it with one of the extras they included along with our tree. Then it was time for the ornaments, and this year we decided to deviate from our usual white/glass/silver scheme (seen here). Maybe it was a weird citrus-pregnancy-craving-inspired decision, but out of

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