Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Archives for August 2013

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Craigslisting & Selling Old Home Items & Furniture

After a few “settling in” months we’re going through that phase I like to affectionately call the What We Really Need (And Don’t) Phase. Essentially, like most folks before a move, we tend to do our best to craigslist or donate or yard sale the things we know we no longer need or use (so we don’t waste time/energy moving it only to store it and never use it again in the new house). But we do end up moving all of the stuff that we loved and used in our last house, even if we’re unsure where it’ll go in the new house. Then after a few months of actually being in the space

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Deciding Between Painting Or Tiling A Concrete Floor

Last you saw our sunroom, it looked like this: Well, now it’s looking a little something like this: Forgive the poor iPhone pic, but it’s the only one I snapped (just to text to my parents, actually) before Richmond turned into rain city yesterday. But you get the point, we’ve made some good progress lofting the ceiling (with the help of a professional framer who came out this week to make sure our roof wouldn’t collapse). But we’ll get into the story of the ceiling next week once the electrician has come and turned the (now loose) wires into junction boxes for two fans. Today we’re talking about a floor plan. As in, a plan

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How To Decorate More Confidently

Happy hump-day afternoon, y’all! I made you guys a little something. I realized that while many of our posts are tutorials or projects or planning or shopping related (how we built this, what fill-in-the-blank we found on craigslist, how we painted that, etc) only around 2% of them have touched on the heart of the whole DIY thing: just doing you and having the faith/courage/conviction/confidence to go for it when it comes to creating a home that you love. So if you’re feeling stuck or second guessing yourself (goodness knows we do that!) these simple words from people far wiser than ourselves might be all that you need to pull the cord and go for

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House Crashing: Perky & Personal

When Julia invited us to crash her house, which she describes as a typical cookie cutter Pennsylvania house on the outside (she’s not allowed to change much, even the color of the front door), we fell in love the moment she virtually let us inside. Here’s Julia now. She lives here with her husband Jarrid, her 10 year old son, her six year old daughter, and her three kitties. Their house definitely feels like a nice mix of quirky and fun with elegant and classic choices. Soft neutral walls with white molding are mixed with a cardboard deer head and a pretty crystal chandelier. You can see her living room peeking out down the hallway

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Hanging A Moravian Star Light In The Foyer

Dude, things just got real in the foyer. We found this light at the local lighting outlet here in Richmond called The Decorating Outlet for $135 (down from $455 at Shades of Light, just because it had been returned). I had always pictured something big and architectural in there – most likely in an oil-rubbed bronze finish because there are a bunch of ORB doorknobs going on in the foyer and I thought it would look nice. Thankfully John was game too since the guy’s down with geometry and shapes and stuff. UPDATE: Here’s an incredibly similar moravian star pendant on Amazon since the Shades of Light version is currently out of stock.  Boom. The foyer

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Fab Freebie: Can I Quote You On That?

This week WallQuotes is hooking up TWO of you with a little wall makeover. In addition to $150 towards anything on their site, you’ll also get $50 to your favorite paint store. So while you’re adding some new color to your space, you can also add some personality with WallQuotes’ easy-to-apply vinyl decals. They’ve got pre-designed quotes for a range of rooms and occasions, plus you can design your own. We also love their graphic skylines, monograms, and wrought-iron inspired headboards. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaways is available worldwide! And for anyone who misses

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How To Tear Down An Old Ceiling

Oh what a feeling… dancing on the ceiling. Which is much easier when your ceiling is on the floor. But let’s rewind to a time when our sunroom ceiling was more ceiling-like. We’ve mentioned we wanted to try vaulting the ceiling in here to make it feel even more open (here’s a link to some of our inspiration). We’ve never vaulted a ceiling before but we figured this was a pretty low-risk spot to finally give it a go. We realized from the start that we might need to hire a pro for part of the job since structural ramifications like “the roof could cave in” is one of those failing answers to our “what’s

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Easy DIY Bouquets

Happy Friday, y’all! What is it about sunroom ceiling demo that gets me all hyper and clammy? Yes, that’s continuing today (we’re still opening things up and waiting on some expert advice) but I promise we’ll have an official update for you guys on Monday! And now, just for good measure, more exclamation points!!!! In the meantime, I figured after a big week of sunroom demo, whitewashing, sunroom rebuilding, and more sunroom demo, it was high time for a budget blooms post. We used to do these every month, and then I fell off last year. And then I got back on the wagon and fell off again later last year. But I’m baaaaaaack! Not

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Framing Out And Caulking Exterior Doorways

As exciting as it was to remove the sliding glass doors from our sunroom, it left a very unexciting task (by comparison) next on our list. Removing all of the metal door frames left lots of exposed raw wood along the edges of each opening. Not only did it look unpolished, but it was recipe for rot (that recipe being rain water + raw wood = rot). So we jumped on this to-do right away. When we got our house painted, this room had a lot of rot repair on the outside so we’re hyper-vigilant to the issue right now. So instead of filling those areas with wood, I splurged on PVC (i.e. plastic) since

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A Cute Play Kitchen With Light-Up Burners

Clara has had her play kitchen for over a year and a half and she still plays with it nearly everyday, which is practically a toy miracle considering how quickly other items are dismissed. So play kitchens have a special place in our hearts. And this one is extra special because, well, Casey and Phil had a ton of fun making their own – and brought lots of new ideas to the table. They don’t have a blog, but they outlined their process here for you guys: Much like you guys, my husband Phil and I decided to build our daughter Zoey a play kitchen for Christmas. I sketched it out to mimic our kitchen

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Easy Ways To Save Money

It’s been way too long since our last Save It post (like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one to name a few), so the other night I was thinking about a few things that we just don’t buy, and how going without those things probably adds up to saving a decent amount of cash-money. And it doesn’t feel particularly martyr-ish of us – it’s normal and easy after years of living this way. So it feels less like “going without” and more like “streamlining and simplifying.” We’ve mentioned a few of these things over the years, but I realized there were others that I never really thought about

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How To Whitewash A Brick Fireplace

Did you know you can give your whitewash your brick fireplace with paint you already have around the house? We were able to give our fireplace wall a fresh look in under a day and with no money spent! We don’t mind unpainted, exposed brick, but in all of our houses it’s been an unattractive orangey-brown brick – not that pretty rustic red brick you find in New York apartments. So in previous homes we’ve straight-up painted those walls because we LOVE the look and texture of painted brick. But after seeing a few whitewashed brick walls over on Pinterest and reading a few tutorials online, we decided to give whitewashing a spin this time. We

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