Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for November 2010

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Fab Freebie: Love Is Blinds

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Sure, we’d all love to gaze out of our home’s windows at some breathtakingly beautiful vista. But in reality, some windows are portals to the back of the neighbor’s fence, an unwelcome glare, or even the view of a man walking around in his tighty-whities all night because he doesn’t realize his curtains are sheer (true story from my New York City days – yup, just like the naked guy from Friends). All the more reason to appreciate window coverings, like these beauties from Next Day Blinds: This week Next Day Blinds is shucking out $200 to one lucky lad

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How Showings Worked When We Sold Our House By Owner

We showed our house a total of 16 times. So eventually we got to be old pros at it. At first we had no idea what we were doing. I mean of course we: cleaned the house like mad (vacuumed, dusted, etc) picked up all dog and baby toys turned on all the lights so everything looked bright and welcoming baked something yummy beforehand (so it would smell as good as it looked) removed the cutting board and the dishtowel from the counter in the kitchen so there was more granite on display removed the bath mat in the full bathroom (to show off more of the stone floor tile) polished all the faucets and

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The Process Of Selling Our House By Owner & Buying A New House

To the tune of Katy Perry’s “Hot N’ Cold”… WE’VE BOUGHT AND WE’VE SOLD! Well not really, but we’re headed in that direction. As of 5:57 pm yesterday evening we got word that the the last of our negotiations with some potential buyers of our house have gone through, so the contract on our home is officially “pending.” Which means that the contract that we’ve got in on our sweet new house (yes, we fiiiinally found one) should move right along as well (since it was contingent on selling ours first). In fact if all goes well, in a little over a month we’ll be moving from our current house directly into our new casa.

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A Hunting Lodge Chic Home Mood Board

We have no idea what our future living room will actually look like, but today this is what I’m loving: Soft gray walls (like Benjamin Moore’s Light Pewter) with crisp glossy white trim A huge comfy sectional (with washable covers- score) in a gray-brown hue. The fact that this baby is $848 has me permasmiling. Some sort of woven round ottomans (like these) that can be moved around for casual texture that can double as extra seating in a pinch. This sleek TV stand in high gloss gray from Ikea (we figure a room that’s big enough for a large sectional will probably dwarf our current TV stand, so we might need to go a

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How We Picked A Yellow-Green Front Door Color

Mmm, pickles. That will make sense in a minute. But first we’ll show you what John’s sister Emily’s front entryway has looked like for the past three years that she’s lived in her amazing casa (which you can virtually tour here). And here’s the after, thanks to a new color on the door and some semi-transparent stain on the deck that leads to it (oh yeah and some pumpkins). Here’s how we landed on the door color and the stain hue. First I came over with a bunch of paint swatches and we held them up to the door to see what would work with the smoky gray color of the house. We easily narrowed

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An Old Ikea Coffee Table Hack

Every once in a while someone asks us where we found the table in the sunroom and it reminds us that we owe you some details. We actually DIYed it a few years back with a $7.99 lack table from Ikea and the old tabletop that came with the inexpensive thrift store pedestal that we bought to create this table in the corner of the very same room (see how we removed the original square tabletop and replaced it with a larger round top from Lowe’s right here). And since that original square tabletop was then up for grabs we decided to put it to good use as the new top for our lack table.

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House Hunting: Large Foreclosure

Everyone else who’s house hunting these days is probably seeing a lot of foreclosures for sale like we are. We’ll admit we were torn about whether or not we wanted to consider them. It’s one thing to buy a home from a willing seller, but to take a home that someone else didn’t want to lose seems so sad. Especially given all of the recent issues coming to light about houses being foreclosed on when they shouldn’t have been. But we decided to tour this one, even though it was a little outside of our comfort zone, just to see what it looked like inside (since the outside was pretty charming indeed). THE STATS: Age:

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A Historic Meets Modern House Tour

When our good friend Noah Scalin (who happens to be a published author slash skull enthusiast) recommended that we check out his mom and dad’s amazing house in Richmond’s hip downtown district called The Fan, we were intrigued. And when we got there we couldn’t snap pictures fast enough. Chuck and Mim are both well known fine artists who used to live in NYC before relocating to their charming 100 year old Richmond home. And their love of metropolitan loft-like living is obvious even in their historic casa. Let’s have a virtual look around, shall we? Here’s the lovely exterior… … and the entryway (complete with custom tile work commissioned by a fellow artist that

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