Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Fab Freebie: Home Depot Gift Card & Tools

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org’s trusty randomness, we’ve got our winner and it is… Gretchen B (whose husband is “a mastermind with wood. He can make almost anything, at times he has surprised himself at what he canters up.”). That sounds familiar. Congrats Gretchen! Sorry this post is a few minutes late (380 pages of book proofing = crazytown). But Happy Almost Father’s Day everyone! To help us celebrate, Home Depot is giving away an $100 man card, er, gift card so one lucky reader gets a fast and easy way to show their handy hubby/dad/uncle/brother/grandpa/neighbor how much they care… or how much they really

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How To Gather Materials To Build A Deck

Good news: we made progress on deck building. Huzzah! Bad news: we didn’t make as much as we’d hoped. Harumph. I’m kind of having flashbacks to our bathroom remodel project back in 2009, when we’d schedule a long weekend with my dad to hopefully complete the whole thing but found ourselves just having started tiling by the end of the last day with him. But that’s just how real DIY life tends to go. So let’s rewind to the middle of last week when we got all of our materials delivered from our local 84 Lumber store (totaling about $1,000 including delivery and screws/metal hardware/concrete for footers/etc). That all went smoothly, especially when we realized

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Sweet & Personal Gift Ideas

Woot! Yesterday we OFFICIALLY BROKE GROUND ON THE BIG DECK PROJECT! Although breaking ground is a bit of an overstatement since we are not even close to digging post holes yet – we’re still working on getting our ledger board up (those are the support beams that run along both sides of the house to start the deck frame). Let’s just say that cutting and drilling into brick – especially brick that makes up the side of your house – is not for the faint of heart. So we still have a long way to go, but we’ll be back on Monday to share our progress! Until then here’s an Instagram sneak peek that I

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A Boy’s Bedroom With A Wood Plank Ceiling & Checkered Curtains

Since we don’t have any excuse to decorate a little boy’s room, we live vicariously through friends and readers. Which is one of the reasons we’re excited to share Kat and Mitch’s awesome transformation of their son Ryder’s room. They not only did a bang-up job on the whole thing (and took on lots of DIY projects to keep it affordable) it was all inspired by a free bed they found. Here’s Kat’s letter: We just finished my son’s room and we’re so proud of how it turned out. First things first, this is what this room looked like prior… well several years ago anyway when Ryder was a baby. What made us decide it

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Adding Bright Red Adirondack Chairs To Our Side Patio

Enough about our colorful stools… …and on to our newest set of colorful chairs. Oh yes, we’re officially on a bold-colored seating kick. Remember we already have these $35 thrift store guys that we gussied up with green paint and fresh upholstery in the office? And this zero dolla (holla!) hand-me-down highchair for Clara that we happied up with some sunny yellow paint? Apparently it’s nothing but the best brightest for our buns. And this might be kind of shocker, but this time… we’ve gone red! A pretty tomato red, to be exact. And it looks pretty darn tasty with the blue hydrangeas around the paver patio that we DIYed last May. When we shared

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How To Spray Paint Metal Stools

Well, after reading every last one of the 750+ suggestions you guys left on this post (no doubt about it – there are definitely a million ways we could have gone with these guys!) and putting lots of thought into pretty much every possibility under the sun, we ended up going with our very first instinct. A chipper turquoise-y-teal tone. So here’s the rundown of how we transformed these basic $32 stools from an online supply store. The funny thing is that there were probably the most votes for blue from you guys too (closely followed by yellow). Although there were definitely suggestions for a ton of other options (four different colors, tones like orange/coral/purple/pink, upholstered

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May Superlatives: Ninja Turtles & Hairy Sherry

As our freshly painted stools dry in the sunroom (woot! pics tomorrow!) we thought we’d finally catch up on the May superlatives that we owe you (sorry to those who have been asking about them!). So here’s a look back at all the stuff that we check off in May. We even tossed in some never-before-seen stuff for kicks. You can check out all of our superlatives dating back to January of 2011 right here (it’s over a year of projects crammed into 16 posts). Plus, since I got to play model a lot this month (hair model, permit-getting model, etc) I threw in a new shot of me sporting next season’s hottest look at the

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A Rug For The Kitchen

Our new kitchen rug has arrived! Yes, it was actually something we ordered online, which is somewhat nerve-wracking since finding a rug for this spot has proven difficult so far (although we have had success with online rug orders before). But based on what we learned from our little rug fashion show, we were pretty confident that we’d figured out the winning formula. At least we were hopeful… The “winning” rug was actually from Urban Outfitters. The color, pattern, and price were all great – so we thought we’d give it a shot. With a spring discount code they were running, it came to just $69 with shipping – which is obviously a lot cheaper

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Fab Freebie: The Cutting Edge

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** We’ve got two names to announce as the random winners this week and they are… Eileen Marie (who lives on the edge by teaching on the “mean streets of Chicago”) and Kristin M (who is the mom to a “crazy 2 year old” – which is a life on the edge that we can relate to). Congrats ladies! And for everyone else, Cutting Edge Stencils added a 20% discount code – YHL20 –  that’s good through Sunday. Sweet! Who wants to jump on the wall stencil bandwagon with us (remember when Sherry spent 14 hours stenciling our office last October? Well how

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Demoing Out A Balcony To Build A Deck

Deck plans completed? Check. Permit acquired? Check. Materials scheduled to arrive this week? Check. But one thing still stands in the way of this project moving forward: the old rotting balcony. We attacked this assignment very methodically. I laid out a bunch of tools (crowbar, sledgehammer, power drill). I lugged over my ladder (for easy climbing up and over the side). I had music playing (see the ceramic pig on the windowsill?). I had Sherry on standby (she was inside watching Clara but ready to lend a hand/take pics at a moments notice). You know, the works. I figured it’d be a very careful process of prying off boards and observing how this previous structure

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Seeding Some Bare Dirt Spots To Grow Grass

Back on this hosta post I left a not-so-subtle indication that we were planting some fresh grass ’round these parts. Though as pretty as superimposed text looks in that area (not), we’ve been working on getting the real thing for a while now and it’s finally (mostly) photo-ready. But let’s head back to the beginning, which is actually one step before the photo above… when it still looked like this: Yep, we still had some weird liriope lingering to the right of the brick path, so we dug that up (to the point where it was even with the stone border on the other side) and called this area ready for grass seed. Here’s the

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Adding Stainless Steel Counters To The Kitchen

Today we’re working away on demo-ing out the old balcony where the new deck is going to go (since Mother Nature rained us out yesterday) so we hope to have more photos to share of our progress soon (Monday at the latest if all goes well!).   In the meantime, we thought this awesome budget-friendly kitchen idea was such a smart solution. We never really considered stainless steel counters, but after seeing Linn and her husband make it look so easy (and affordable) we’re definitely into it. Here’s Linn’s note: I wanted to share a DIY tip for countertops which isn’t really that common, but it’s a great idea if you’re on a budget and

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