Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for June 2010

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Space Planning 101: Five Ways To Plan A Room Layout

Q: I need help with space planning! Just your tip in the comment section of Ania’s design dilemma to “let the room breathe” made me realize that I’m so guilty of filling ever available inch of wall space. I need to edit some rooms! I’d love to get a post on space planning and room flow somewhere down the line! – Threadbndr A: This is such a good question, and a topic that we’ve been meaning to tackle for ages. First we’ll include the comment that Threadbndr is referring to in her question above. Someone asked what we thought Ania should stick in the bottom right corner of the room (between the desk, #10, and

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Making A Silver Wall Stencil That Looks Like Wallpaper

When one of our favorite paint prodigies sent over photos of her recent transformation we couldn’t wait to share them. Here’s her letter: Hi guys! I just wanted to send you this recent project I did because I thought the colors and style screamed “Young House Love.” I came up with the pattern and design on my own- then I made a custom stencil to achieve the pattern. I was really happy with the end result (which looks like wallpaper, but with WAY less hassle!). Hope you like it! – Kristen Here’s the room before Kristen worked her magic: And here’s the room after Kristen’s amazing paint project: Didn’t she do a fantastic job? We

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Making An Ikea Bookcase Look Built In

We mentioned a few times that we wanted to get a bookcase for the office/guest room/playroom since they’re so great for storing things, displaying things, and adding some architecture and height. We thought a bit about placement and quickly realized that the area to the left of the uncentered window on the far wall of the room would be the best place for a bookcase, so we headed off to Ikea with the measurements of that wall on a little scrap of paper in my purse. And in a few short hours we found ourselves assembling our $69 Billy bookcase: We actually checked out a few other Ikea options (like the Expedit and the Lack

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12 Ways To Protect Your Home And Make It Safer

What’s the use of DIYing yourself silly and upgrading every inch of your house if you’re not going to protect it from bad guys and natural disasters? And there are so many simple ways that you can do just that. So here’s how we do our best to protect our precious home sweet home. 1. Opt for a safe deposit box. Ever since I was a young child and we got robbed (the bad guys stole all my Christmas money and a necklace that was handed down to me from my grandma) my mom has ingrained in me that you’ll never be sorry that you have a safe deposit box. It’s just a small fee

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Three Easy Ways To Figure Out Your Style

One of the most common questions that we hear nearly every day is “how do I know what style really appeals to me? I seem to like a few conflicting things and I just can’t seem to make a decision with any confidence.” Well, here are three ways to get over decorator’s block quickly and relatively painlessly. Tip #1. Gather inspiration images and see what they all have in common. We’ve mentioned that we keep our favorite rooms organized in a nice thick plastic-sleeve-riddled binder (read more about that here). And this anthology of sorts was really paramount when it came to pinning down our style and learning what we love. It’s amazing how an

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A Lovely In LA House Tour

When Jaime of Prudent Baby sent us photos of her gorgeous Los Angeles home to woo us out her way for a House Crashing adventure we were so there. Except for the whole newborn thing. So we decided to virtually crash her pad instead. Here’s the charming exterior- isn’t it sweet? And look, here are the lovely homeowners now: Jaime, her husband Carleton and their sweet daughter Scarlet. But enough fresh air, let’s get inside. Check out the adorable homemade silhouettes of the family (including the dog) hanging by the door. And the stunning distressed wood chest by the window was scored for $35 at a flea market. Just beyond that space is a small

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A Bright Yellow-Green Office Makeover

When Erica sent her awesome office overhaul our way we had to share the before and after photos. Here’s her letter: I love to read your blog and see what creative ways you come up with to save money. I recently fixed up my home office on a tight budget. Of course you can find more info about the room on my blog, but the L-shaped desk is made out of two hollow core doors (only 25 bucks each!), two table legs, and a bookshelf. The paint color is Valspar “Plum Passion.” Both chairs were thrift store finds and all the art from the art wall was completely free, it all consists of things I

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Making A Ceiling Light With A Diffuser From A Lamp Shade

We did it! We DIYed an awesomely oversized light fixture for the office and we only spent… wait for it… $32 from soup to nuts. Which is pretty darn exciting considering it reminds us a lot of this pricey $412 version. Gotta love saving $380 with a homemade solution. Here she is in all of her glowing glory: But let’s back up. Here’s the basic fixture that we started with to serve as something of a before shot (although you all know there’s no longer a bed in there since we upgraded to a sleeper sofa and built a DIY desk). And now that we’ve easily been spending over 40 hours a week in this

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Organizing Our New Kitchen’s Cabinets

We’re back to share how we fared when it came to our big cabinet clean-out which we announced late last week and tackled this weekend (hopefully along with a bunch of you guys at home). Remember our pathetic starting point? Of course you do. Those two chaotic double cabinets (where we store every single edible item in our kitchen, except for the stuff in the fridge) were pretty hard to forget: But now we’ll reveal what they look like after a few hours of weekend weeding out and reworking: First we followed the 100% empty rule and cleared out both cabinets and placed everything on the counter so we could evaluate what we had, pair

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