Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for July 2013

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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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Designing A Showhouse Model Home

Yup, Sherry and I have started work on another new house. But before you gasp – we’re not moving into this one… and it isn’t technically ours. Heck, it’s not even built yet. In fact, the lot currently looks like this: Some of you may remember this Mega House Crashing that we did last year where we toured 8 custom show homes – each constructed by a different builder and decorated by a different interior designer – as part of an event called Richmond Homearama. Well, their 2014 event is now in the works and they’ve asked us to design one of the homes! Cue the girlish shrieking (not from me, I promise my shrieking is

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Fab Freebie: I Sense A Refresh

As we mentioned on Friday, we have an almost unbelievably shallow kitchen sink. So when Kohler offered us a new sink and faucet, it pained us a little to say no… but you know we love to pay things forward to you guys! Which is why we’re thrilled to announce that someone’s about to win any KOHLER sink of their choosing (yes, any!) AND a new KOHLER Sensate Touchless faucet (so you’ll be able to turn your water on and off by just passing your hand – or bowl or spatula – under the faucet’s sensor). They’re even offering a free consultation with a KOHLER interior design to help you pick the perfect sink &

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Painting A Bathroom Vanity

Let’s talk about vanity, shall we? Specifically the sink vanity that we last left off as primed in this post. This is one of those real-life stories where we painstakingly stared at about fifty swatches before carefully choosing a pretty kelly green tone that we thought would be awesome. A fun pop of color in a white room (sort of like this). So off to the store we went and grabbed a quart of Baby Fern by Benjamin Moore in their semi-gloss Natura paint. And after one coat – even though we gave it two in the hope that the second one would work a miracle – we knew… Baaaaaaad call. Seriously, at one point Clara

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Breaking Down The New Pad

It’s Friday! Let’s get mathy up in here. By now you know I’m a card carrying facts & figures nerd (here’s Exhibit A and Exhibit B) so when Sherry and I started to notice some unique stats about our new house my throat basically erupted with “LEMMEDOSOMEINFOGRAPHICSPLEEEEEASE.” Whether she actually was keen on the idea or was just worried that disagreeing would turn me into some beastly werewolf-statistician, this post was born. We always end up loving random time capsule posts like this the most in hindsight (it’s fun to look back at things we probably would have forgotten otherwise, like this, this, this, this, and this). So in the name of some headed-into-the-weekend fun

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