Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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House Crashing: Swanky Panky

We made some pretty awesome progress on the deck this weekend – even with a big water main break right in front of our house, which resulted in gallons of water rushing down the road until we discovered it and phoned it in. The result? Five men working for around seven hours (with our street’s water turned off) to fix it via a giant hole that they dug in the corner of our yard/the road. Yikes! But they got ‘er done, and the neighborhood rejoiced (running water is totally one of those things you take for granted until it’s gone –  like electricity and Oreos). So all is right with the world again (the water’s

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Shopping Ikea’s New Stuff

Dude, my last trip to Ikea made me weak in the knees (especially since they rolled out a bunch of new stuff) so I took a bunch of photos for ya. Not for compensation or anything – these sprees are just for fun. So here’s a little virtual store tour for ya. Let’s get down to bid-ness. Check out this gorgeous chair. I want him. Bad. This guy is the Storsele and it’s $119. The black lacquer-ish finish had me at hello. There were also these beauties: Hogsten ($89.99) & Storsele in yellow ($119.99). Doesn’t that sound like a fancy store that sells… ties? Or cigars? Welcome to Hogsten & Storsele. It has a nice

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July Superlatives: Trips, Trucks & Toads

Ack. It’s August. Which means it’s almost September which means summer’s almost over which means it’s practically Christmas. Insert panic attack here. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I still can’t believe it’s August. So it always helps us keep the ol’ momentum up and avoid burning out by slowing time down for a second to take an appreciative look back on all of our happenings from last month along with some bonus never-before-seen stuff. It may not stop the Earth from rotating (only Superman can do that, silly) but it definitely inspires us to keep plugging away! Plus it makes browsing our archives a lot easier (you can read back through January of 2011 right

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Outdoor Deck Furniture & Accessories

A bunch of folks have asked for a little deck mood board, just to see what we’re imagining when this beast of a project is actually complete (oh man, that might make our year). Of course since money is tight and we have yet to finish furnishing the patio that we built last year, we won’t have this thing thrown together overnight (which means any or all of the items on this board could sell out before we get to snag them all – wah!) but here’s what I’m loving today, just so you guys can start to picture it… 1. This fun indoor/outdoor pillow from World Market is really pretty, dontcha think? And at

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A Series Of Unfortunate Events

First there was a fortunate event. We found a giant piece of art in a pretty wood frame selling for $20 at a yard sale in our neighborhood. And when I say giant, I mean giant. It’s over 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. The only issue with it was there was a small dent in the frame, which is totally not a big deal for us, so we went for it. John wasn’t really a huge fan of the painting itself, but we figured you couldn’t even get a canvas this big and build a wood frame around it for $20, so it was a good deal if only for the “base” that

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What We Registered For When We Got Married

Q: Hey guys!! I find that I often look to you all on things DIY related, but more often than not, on things life related. I would love to hear items in or around your house that you are so glad you own because it helps with the day to day. I really enjoyed reading about how you saved money with Clara (what items you skipped out on or decided to go back and buy) and how you saved money with your wedding. I am getting married next June and it would be super helpful to hear what things my fiance and I should register for (and what we shouldn’t). You guys are my favorite!

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How To Build The Base Of A Deck

“Can’t we just lay some decking already?!” That quote’s an homage to this kitchen post from last December about all of the little annoying prep steps we had to squeeze in before we could get down to painting cabinets – and I feel like we just hit the same stage in the deck project. Which means we’re making progress, but we’re impatient little DIYers. After getting all of the joists set in place we were soooo excited to finally lay down the decking… until I realized I had a bunch of nitty gritty details to take care of first. Womp womp. But not to worry, you’ll actually see decking going down at the end of

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Fab Freebie: All That’s Fit To Print

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** And our random winner is… Robyn R (who’s in luck because her fantasy printer prints photos – which she says would save her so much money). Looks like your dream is about to come true, Robyn. Congrats! Having a wireless printer is one of our favorite tricks to keeping our office looking put together (well, if you ignore the messy stacks of paper on our desk). So we jumped at Epson’s offer to give away one of their most versatile new models – the $499 Epson Stylus Photo R2000. It’s built for creative types, not just because its 8-ink process shoots out glossy archival prints

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How To Paint An Old Egg Chair

I have officially hatched my evil egg chair plan (mwah-hah-hah). Sorry, couldn’t resist an ovum-related pun. Anyway the $30 thrift store can’t-believe-it’s-mine egg chair that I mentioned late last week got cleaned up, first with a nice liquid deglosser wipe down, and then with some spray primer + spray paint. About ten minutes after I snapped this grody before photo with the old cushion on it in our sunroom… … I had him out in the yard ready for a little somethin-somethin. Although the orangey-wood tone above doesn’t actually look bad in the picture, in person he just looked dated and a bit dilapidated (thanks to the caning that was missing on both sides of

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A Green & Gray Living Room

It all started when I was going back through old posts looking for a link to something when I came across this old forgot-about-it mood board of yore. It was made about a month before we moved into our second house (back in 2010) and featured this board with the words “we have no idea what our future living room will actually look like, but today this is what I’m loving.” I thought it was pretty funny that 20 months later, after completely forgetting about making it, we have lots of gray and green going on, and even specifically have a big gray sectional, a green rug, and the exact same zebra pillows (scored about

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Updating A Bathroom With Marble Tile & Beadboard

When we opened this reader email, our first thought was that someone had stolen photos of our guest bathroom and just adjusted the color to turn our yellow tiles green. Seriously, how similar are they (our yellow guest bathroom is here on our house tour page)? But it turns out Susanne was just lucky enough to have a real-life green-tiled bathroom of her very own. Here’s her letter. Hi John & Sherry! We just completed a total DIY renovation of our 1956 en-suite bath. Prior to the renovation, the bathroom looked a lot like your yellow bathroom…. lovely green tile up to your eyeballs (well, your eyeballs when you’re 5’2″). Three different patterns of green

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Buying A Thrift Store Egg Chair

I have been obsessed with egg chairs for at least a decade since seeing this hanging one in Domino magazine back in college and this guy from Marie Claire Maison (their French house-related magazine) who has also been in my desktop inspiration folder for at least five years. So as you can imagine, every time I’m in a thrift store I’m on the eternal egg chair hunt. I dream of hanging one in our sunroom next to the daybed for Clara (or me) to swing around in without killing ourselves. Not sure if we can handle it, but the universe has taken some safety measures and insured that every time I look I have no

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