Young House Love

DIY Home Decorating Projects, Tutorials, & Shenanigans

Archives for August 2012

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Budget Blooms: Tulips, Take Three

Things I’m great at: making up words to songs when I don’t know them, eating Oreos, dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld. Things I’m bad at: loading the dishwasher, remembering to get haircuts more than once every few years, and apparently doing monthly budget bloom posts. I used to do them once a month for over a year, but then I fell off, struggled to get back on it six months ago with one measly post in February, and just never got it together in any sort of regular pattern. So here’s a random Budget Blooms post after over half a year of absence in that department. Won’t you forgive me? In return I played around

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Multiplying Egg Chairs…

I’m back as promised with: an egg chair update (since I just tossed pillows on it but promised to share the rest of the details once we figured out a real seat and all that jazz) three new egg chairs that we recently brought home I guess we should skip right ahead to those huh? Don’t worry, our living room doesn’t look like an egg chair family reunion. They’re of the dollhouse variety (you can read more on Clara’s DIY dollhouse here): When a super sweet reader (thanks Nicole!) told me CB2 had them on clearance for 50 cents each (wahooo!) I couldn’t resist. They’re actually Christmas ornaments (hence the super sale price so far

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Fab Freebie: Get Your Fixture Fix

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And the random person getting their fixture fix this week is… Anne L (who simply described the problem in her bathroom as: “Pink carpet in bathroom?! Nasty!”) Congrats Anne! Got a bathroom that could use a new faucet? Or new showerhead? Or new just about every fixture? Well then you’re in luck. The generous folks at Moen are dishing out an ENTIRE suite of bathroom fixtures in your choice of three of their most popular collections: the modern 90 Degree, the sexy Voss or the classic Boardwalk. You’ll get: Two bathroom faucets A rainshower showerhead and matching tub spout One 18-inch towel bar

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How To Turn A Basket Into A Pendant Light

This is the story of making an old basket into a pendant light using just this $10 thrift store basket that we found along with two other simple supplies. Here she is all wired up and hung in front of the fireplace. But allow me to further illuminate the basket to light conversion process. Har-har. The first step was heading over to a local lighting outlet (The Decorating Outlet) to check out any existing pendant lights that they were selling cheaply (that way we could convert one into a pendant for our big basket shade). While we were there we saw this awesomesauce basket pendant that was selling for $322 (originally $460). Wowsers. Feeling inspired,

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Window Shopping: High Bridges & Green Fronts

We took a little day trip last weekend to a nearby town called Farmville. It’s about an hour away from Richmond and, as the name suggests, involves driving deep into rural Central Virginia. The reason for our adventure was actual to do a family bike ride on a new rails-to-trails park that opened up around Farmville called High Bridge Trail State Park. For those of you who catch our Instagram pics on Facebook or Twitter, you saw a picture of that very (very, very) high bridge already. But coercing Sherry into riding her bike over this steel and wood skyway was my main thrill of the day. And hers was something else entirely. She was

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Summer Lovin’

**Psst- We know most Fridays we just post once, but every month on sponsor shout out day we double up. So we’ll be back in a few hours with a post that you can actually get a sneak preview of in two of the squares below (along with a hint about Monday’s giveaway). It’s time for our monthly showing of thanks to our sponsors (the folks who help make the other 30+ posts possible) and since summertime is soon coming to a close, we’re using this month’s roundup to squeeze a few more sunny drops out of the season. As usual, they’re not items we’ve been gifted (here’s our no-swag policy) but we did round

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Reader Redesign: The White Stuff

Should all brick fireplaces be painted? No way. We always tell anyone who’s on the fence not to touch that brush. But if you’re 100% sure you prefer the look of painted brick, then it can be a great way to bring an airy and light vibe to a room (we sold our first house in two weeks with two painted brick fireplaces so it didn’t seem to be a resale deterrent at all). This makeover from Jamie and Ehren is all about crisping up a space – both with white fireplace paint and some darker blue paint worked in there for contrast on those awesome built-ins. Here’s their letter: Hey YoungHouseLovers! Your blog inspired

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Replacing An Exterior Light With An Oversized Lantern

Let’s talk more about things that were too tiny. But instead of yesterday’s mini-mirror, this time we’re taking things outside. To the carport to be exact. See that tiny little lantern hanging from the ceiling? Yeah…. she’s not looking so hot. Rust? Check. Cracked glass? Check. Teeny tiny dollhouse-ish scale? Check. So we’ve been keeping an eye out for a larger light since we moved in back in late 2010. You name it, and we’ve looked there (at stores like Home Depot, online, on Craigslist, at local outlets and secondhand stores like The Habitat For Humanity ReStore, etc). Ideally we wanted a big chunky clean lined lantern in a rich dark oil-rubbed bronze finish and

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Trading Our Too-Small Mirror Over The Mantel

We’re reaching the point in our house where we’re finally trying to slowly upgrade the “we’ll-just-put-this-here- for-now-since-we-just-moved-in” phenomenon that happens when you unpack and just toss things anywhere (yes, we are just getting to this phase after over a year and a half of living here, haha). So we finally decided to address this old mirror that used to hang in our first house’s den, which we then popped above our fireplace mantel with a tiny finishing nail the first week we moved in. Why do we need to address it? Because it gotz to go. Why does it gotz to go? Because it’s way too small! Comically small. Here’s an older shot of it

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Listy McListerson: Updated

Warning: this post contains more words than a handful of housewives can sling around in one of those two hour reunion episodes. So feel free to skim it or read it in three sentence intervals over the next five years. These posts actually came about when people asked how we organize all the stuff we have on our to-do list. We explained that we basically just have one long run-on document, and when folks kept asking us to share it (and update it as we went along), it sounded like our idea of a good time. So it’s high time that we actually updated it (sorry to everyone who has been asking for this for

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There’s A New Chair-riff In Town

Chairs are definitely one of those high/low things for us. In the low category we have our $30 thrift store egg chair… … our $32 stools from a school supply website… … and our $35 secondhand office chairs just to name a few. And then in the “high” category (although I guess that’s all relative since some folks might spend more) we’ve also invested in a few of the chairs. Like the $230 leather chair from Target that we have in our office (which used to live in the master bedroom of our first house)… … the $199 armchair in the corner of our bedroom from Joss & Main… … the two $118 Dolce lounge

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Fab Freebie: Let’s Be Honest

*** This giveaway is closed – see who won below!*** The randomly-selected-and-very-lucky lady in this week’s giveaways is… BeccaK (who wishes “I could trust the lube & oil folks when I go for an oil change – is a radiator flush REALLY necessary?”) I’m with ya on that one Becca. Congrats! As much as we love a good looking home, we also like ours to be as good for the Bean and the Burger as possible. So this week we’re dishing out $500 worth of products from The Honest Company to keep your casa clean and green. You may know this family-friendly company thanks of their familiar-faced co-founder, the lovely Jessica Alba. And when you

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