Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Replacing An Exterior Light

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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Hanging A 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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A Curvy Armchair For The Kitchen

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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The Process Of Building A Deck

When we last left off in our deck saga, our hero (that’s me in this case) was avoiding battling the heat as he tediously valiantly drilled in screws across the middle of our deck. Since that chapter of this drawn out harrowing tale, John The Weary Daring continued this mind-numbing history-making task. Since that’s about as exciting as I can fake my latest day of deck work, I’m just going to skip to this part where you can see the middle of the deck all laid down and screwed into place. Let’s just say I was glad the deck was finally more solid surface than it was holes for me to fall into. I could

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A White Kitchen With Green Glass Mosaic Backsplash Tile

We loved Stacy’s kitchen makeover, not only because it’s beautiful (and a huuuuuuge improvement over the original) but also because we thought it was a great example of balance. Stacy found out where she could eke out the most savings and took her time figuring out what she could do herself (and where she needed a little help). And the fact that her new kitchen appraised for… well, we’ll just let her tell you the story: Hi John and Sherry, I waited about a year after I bought this house before I started re-doing the kitchen. It gave me time to save up, live with the space to see what it needed, and figure out

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Organizing Our Closet Shelves With Bins

That’s right. I pulled a Benita Larsson. For anyone who doesn’t know her, she’s the mastermind organizer over at Chez Larsson and I adore how simple, functional, and beautiful her Swedish home/lifestyle is. So this quick little closet update totally reminds me of her clean/organized/wish-I-was-that-on-top-of-things house that I adore. Benita, among nine other super secret guest bloggers, actually pulls a little cameo appearance in our book, but that’s a whole different story (speaking of which, a million and one thanks to everyone who was insanely sweet and made me happy-cry repeatedly after our little book announcement yesterday). But let’s cut to the chase. This is just a simple tale about some simple white bins. See,

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We’re One Trimester Away From…

… birthing this book baby of ours! Seriously, somebody get us to Lamaze class. Yup, it’s coming in early November (our official “due date” is the 6th, although it varies slightly depending on where you look). Excuse me while I practice my deep breathing (hee, hee, hoooooo, hee, hee, hoooooo). Perhaps the craziest part about it is that this might be the longest baby gestation ever recorded – over three whole years! Seriously. Labor of love could not apply more. So for everyone who has been asking about pre-order details, you can click on any of the logos below to pre-order from any of these affiliates. And of course don’t forget the local guys –

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How To Spray Paint A Frame

Please sing this to the tune of The Brady Bunch Theme Song. Here’s the story… of two cheap black framies… … found at Target and then spray painted bright white… … then they both looked pretty sleek… like twin brothers… … they make me want to twirl. Ok, that didn’t quite work out like I hoped. But I’m sure you got the crux of the story. I grabbed two inexpensive black frames at Target (they didn’t come in white and I think they were $21), sprayed them with the same built-in-primer-plus-spray-paint that I always use (Rustoleum Universal in Satin White), let them dry, and then framed some prints (like the one I mentioned here) which

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The First Stages Of Building A Deck

What party? The decking party, that’s what. Never been to a party where people put decking down? Then you have not lived, my friend. But come to think of it, my party didn’t have any guests so maybe I’m the one who should reconsider my definition. Anyways – let’s talk deck boards, since I gave you this sneak peek of my progress last week: As you may be able to tell from that photo, we bit the bullet and went for the “zippered” seam pattern that we saw at our local art museum. But before we talk about planning for that, we actually had two commonly asked questions on our last post, which were: What

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Fab Freebie: Ready, Eames, Fire

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** This giveaway hit our 10,000 entry cap just a few hours before usual closing time, so random.org had its work cut out for it picking a winner. They selected… Kelsey (who thinks “an Eames chair is the foundation to a good collection”). Congrats on your new foundation piece! Who wants to win an Eames chair this week? Better yet – who wants to win several Eames chairs this week? Well, one of you is going to, because the folks at the Herman Miller Store are gonna hook you up with $2,000 worth of product! That’s enough to choose practically anything from their catalog of iconic

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