Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for November 2011

| By | | 247 Comments

How To Hang Cement Backer Board For A Wall Full Of Tile

As exhilarating as demolition can be, there’s always that nagging voice in the back of your head reminding you that you’re going to have to replace whatever you’re demolishing. Bummer, right? Well, we didn’t let ourselves wallow in that realization too long and dove right into reconstructing the kitchen. Actually, between demoing the tiles and the plywood we actually snuck out to The Tile Shop (in my sister’s borrowed SUV) to buy cement board so we’d have all of our supplies ready as soon as demo was done. The cement board (1/4″ thick Permabase Ultrabacker to be exact) was about $10 per 3ft x 5ft sheet after the 10% discount code that they offer everyone

[ Read More ]

| By | | 539 Comments

Hanging A Gallery Frame Wall In The Nursery

Some nursery tweak-age has occurred. And because we’re currently working away on the kitchen (stay tuned for those deets tomorrow morning if all goes well), we figured that we owed you the whole gallery-frame-change rundown (along with some well overdue what’s-in-that-frame answers). We’ve always loved the idea of expanding Clara’s art wall as she grows with more and more frames, so here’s how it looked before: And here’s what we have going on now that we’ve added a few more frames to the mix (and shifted the placement of a few of the existing ones): And for those who have been wondering, here’s a quick rundown of the things that we’ve framed (you can find

[ Read More ]

| By | | 475 Comments

How We Got A Book Agent, Wrote A Proposal, & Landed A Book Deal

We promised you guys a post all about the whole book-deal process back in March (when we spilled the beans about our upcoming book here). And the only reason I can think of that it has taken us this long to write is because we’ve been so busy actually writing our 260+ page book behind the scenes along with juggling the bambino and the blog and all of the projects that go along with those things. Haha. So forgive us for the delay. Many of you guys expressed an interest in how it all went down (a few years ago we never would have known how to navigate the waters of book proposals and agents

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,326 Comments

Fab Freebie: Moo Moo Moo!

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Our trio of winners this week (thanks as always to random.org for the selections) are… Lila @ sweet and lovely crafts (who wants triple the hours in a day), Molly (who wishes for 3 times the energy, time and money to take on more projects she reads about here)  and Emily B (who’d like her yard & house tripled in size). Congrats you three! We started doing giveaways just about 3 years ago, and our 3rd giveaway on December 1, 2008 was with a fun printing company called MOO. The prize was valued about $20 and fewer than 300 people entered. Now MOO

[ Read More ]

| By | | 279 Comments

How To Demo Old Backsplash Tile & Plywood

In case all of that turkey and stuffing made you forget, allow me to remind you that our kitchen was looking something this after the upper cabinets came down: Since the clock was ticking on our new counters (in around 2 weeks we should no longer be sink-less and counter-less), we had to get the walls prepped for the new backsplash. Not that the backsplash would be going up before the counters (we’ll get a snugger fit if we install it afterwards, plus we don’t want it getting damaged during the whole counter install), but because wall prep = demo (aka: a mess) we didn’t want to worry about scratching our new counters if they

[ Read More ]

| By | | 93 Comments

Gobble Gobble

We have about a million things to be thankful for, and you guys are at the top of our list. Thanks for caring to drop in and see what’s going on at our house. Speaking of which, in case you were wondering… this recently happened: After eating lunch the other day, but before cleaning up the table, Burger snuck into the dining room, climbed up to the table with the help of a chair (!) and snatched half of a baguette that remained uneaten. Knowing he’d be in trouble for it, he immediately sprinted into the closet to devour that hunk o’ carbs in record time. I followed him in – half to make sure

[ Read More ]

| By | | 203 Comments

White Corian Counter Templating

Not sure if many people are reading today (due to the impending turkey-related holiday) but we wanted to stop in with a quick kitchen update. We officially got our counters templated (aka: measured so they can be fabricated and installed within the next hopefully two weeks). And this finally means our sinkless days are finally numbered. Huzzah! For anyone who missed the counter discussion, here’s what we’re getting. When they came out to template we did learn that we would need reinforcement to support the 12″ overhang on two sides of the peninsula, so they quoted us $300 to build in some steel rods when they fabricate the counter or offered up the DIY option

[ Read More ]

| By | | 100 Comments

Adding Built-In Shelves Above A Media Cabinet

Is there anything better than a beautiful, functional, and DIY-ed piece of furniture? Arguably yes (a free car full of money?), but not much. So we loved getting Kim & Scott’s email about the built-in media wall that they constructed with a couple of friends. Not only was it custom built to perfectly fit the space, it saved them at least $450 (many similar units go for $750+ and theirs was $252 to build). Here’s Kim and Scott’s letter: We started out with a very green accent wall, and over time we began to layer in a few new pieces to the living room (a shaggy rug, a Craigslist coffee table, etc). After said changes,

[ Read More ]

| By | | 109 Comments

Thanksgiving Table Setting Ideas

I’m a last minute gal, what can I say? I’ve been having some fun with a few quick n’ random turkey-day table settings, so I thought I’d share ’em (with 48 whole hours before Thanksgiving to spare). I usually do a bunch of Christmas ones (as seen here) but something about the new doorway between the kitchen and the dining table has me itching to play around with pretty table settings a little early this year. Well, I did do some Thanksgiving table stuff last year and the year before, so I guess it’s becoming a tradition to just use what I have and see what I can come up with. Maybe they’ll help one or

[ Read More ]

| By | | 332 Comments

How To Remove Old Wood Kitchen Cabinets

Our cabinets are like Chumbawumba… they get knocked down. Well, they weren’t actually knocked down as much as they were “carefully removed” (since we plan to reuse various things like the doors for the new peninsula cabinets and then donate the rest). The room was feeling pretty wood-riddled when we moved in last December… … so we were excited to un-wood-riddle-it for good. As we mentioned here and here, we’ll be adding a wall of counter-to-ceiling penny tile… … along with a bit of open shelving (on either side of the range hood that we’ll be building in). Oh and to avoid having the open shelves/dust & grease chat again, just check out this post

[ Read More ]

| By | | 403 Comments

A Few Thrift Store Finds

I have been meaning to update you guys on four thrifty purchases (well, technically there are nine of them, because I got six of one thing) so let’s get into it. First we have this gilded pineapple vase that I found for $4 at Goodwill. Can you guess what I love most about it? Yup, the hex pattern all over the body of the vase. Even though it’s clearly pineapple influenced, it felt so “bees” to me (more on why we love bees here). And the antique gold finish is really pretty in person. Not too bright and shiny – it feels timeworn and authentic. And see those three jars around them? They were sent

[ Read More ]

| By | | 84 Comments

Using Brackets To Makeover A Kitchen Island

This email from Laurel-Dawn sounded like a common situation. You find yourself in a cookie cutter home, dying to put your own personal spin on the house so it doesn’t look exactly the same way that the builder left it. Well Laurel-Dawn and her husband definitely turned a common kitchen into something spectacular. Here’s her letter: “I live in a super simple home. It’s what my mom calls a “tract home” which I personally hate, but I guess it’s true. I live in one of those neighborhoods where all of the houses look the same and it’s hard to put a personal stamp on things. I dream of someday updating a home with a lot

[ Read More ]