Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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How To Install Penny Tile

We did it. We tiled the entire back wall of our kitchen in a counter-to-ceiling backsplash move that we like to call Project Crazy, and we lived to tell the tale. We still have to grout, add a big ol’ industrial range hood and chunky open shelves (those will just be screwed right through the tile with a special drill bit) but when we squint we can almost picture it… As for the top seam where the tile meets the ceiling, there’s crown molding that runs around the entire room (although we removed some of it on the window wall) so we’ll be adding that back around the whole room so the top of the

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Rearranging The Nursery

Last weekend I rearranged Clara’s nursery. Again. And I owe you guys the details (a few of you even noticed things had moved around here and requested an update), so whoop, here it is. Let’s dive right into the moving madness. Heck, free use-what-you-have rearranging isn’t that bad, is it? No heavy breathing required. From you, at least (I did my fair share of creepy mouth breathing while pushing things around). It actually was only a few simple switches, but the room still looked tore up from the floor up for a little while: As usual, Clara was in there “helping Mommy dec-rate.” Decorate only has two syllables according to the bean. I love that

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How To Print Kid Drawings On Fabric

Okay, okay – so we’re taking a breather from our usual kitchen-related reader redesigns to share a super cool project on a smaller scale. Well, if you call a project that involves 120 hand-drawn monsters a “small” undertaking. Now I’ve got your curiosity piqued, eh? I’ll let Jen explain: My son Daniel is a prolific artist and I wanted to showcase some of his sketches and decided that I would do so on a duvet cover. He designs his own Pokemon, complete wtih names, types, and evolutions and he chose those for the project. Here are his design sheets: I photographed each chosen design. Then in Photoshop I erased all extra marks around the edge,

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Painting And Reupholstering A Stool

This is another post that John wanted me to name Stool Boom (here’s why John likes that name). Anyway, a while back I redid a stool that wasn’t ours. It just showed up in the mail and I spruced it up. More on the mysterious mail thing in a minute. First here’s how I got ‘er done. This is a terrible before shot, but picture an old beat up periwinkle blue stool with nails and holes and a rotting wood top: The first thing I did was get all the old nails out with the back of a hammer: Then I primed it and painted it a rich navy color (I just grabbed a $3 test

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Tips For Adding A Penny Tile Backsplash

Monday’s backsplash post kinda dove straight into the middle of the project, so we thought while we were back to share our progress we should rewind a smidge to explain a bit more about the process for anyone else out there who wants to tackle something similar. First we had to prep the room. So everything came off the counters. Then down went the rosin paper (from Home Depot). It was recommended by our counter installation guy when we mentioned we were doing a backsplash. It’s basically like brown construction paper, but with an added moisture barrier that keeps any thinset drips from seeping through. We covered each of the counters with cardboard (for extra

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Making Burlap Fabric Mats For Frames

Since lots of folks have asked for close up photos and more of an explanation about our little art switcheroo above the sofa, here it is. It’s such an easy project that anyone can do (probably for under $5 if you have the frames and some small photos or prints that you love (images from greeting cards or postcards could even work). So we figured we’d share the goods while we work on our backsplash (those goods will be up tomorrow am!). Our frames above the sofa started out with colorful paper in them ($5 worth of craft paper from Michael’s to be exact). That added some fun oomph for a while, but the beauty

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Fab Freebie: Boxing Match

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org has done it again and crowned an oh-so-randomly selected winner. That lucky person is… Doris Johnson (who can’t contain her love for her puppy, Finn. She even included a link to his picture!). Congrat Doris… and Finn! It’s no secret that storage boxes and trays are pretty much our jam when it comes to organizing. And this week someone will be taking home the motherlode thanks to Rubbermaid’s new Bento series. Beyond just being pretty chic looking, the boxes have flexible dividers inside that pop out if you need to corral smaller items within and the trays – and also

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How To Cut Penny Tile

Oh man, backsplash-ing is 50% scary and 50% suuuuuper excitiiiiiiiiinnnnnggg! Sorry, got carried away there. Maybe it’s 90% super exciting and 10% eeeks. Anyway, we began wrestling with it a few days ago and it’s taking a bit longer than expected (we spent nearly three hours just figuring out how to cut it, prepping our work space, and mixing up thinset before ever getting started). But by the end of the day (after Clara had gone to bed) we had accomplished this: Isn’t it awesome? Well, at least the beginning of awesome. I keep doing awkward things like stroking it and saying “oh yeah” and then blushing and backing away slowly. There’s plenty about the

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A Few Mail-Friendly Christmas Gifts

It’s time for: Secret Santa: Revealed. That makes me laugh because I imagine some man with a deep serious voice introducing a show with that name after Dateline or something. Anyway, since a bunch of you have asked for the Secret Santa dirt (and I couldn’t wait to spill who I had and to learn who had me!) here it is: I had… (drumroll? anyone? can I at least some table slapping or something?)… House Of Smiths! It was so much fun to pack up two little surprise care packages for her. The first one included two decorative frames from Michael’s that I personalized with some paint in the name of some Christmas cheer (they

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How We Take Better Blogging Photos

We’re not the best photographers, but we are trying to get better as we go. And that’s why we find ourselves doing things like this in the middle of homespun photoshoots. See how neon blue it looks behind me in that picture? That’s because when shooting our artificially-lit kitchen, any natural light looks like that. Usually not a problem, except when some window light shines through and makes a subtle blue splash on the freshly painted cabinets that we’re trying to take pictures of. Sherry doesn’t always notice these things, but they drive me crazy. See the blue-ish light reflecting off the doors and the side of the peninsula? It’s taunting me. So with the

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Opening Up A Closed In Kitchen

Since we’re clearly in a kitchen state of mind, we had to share Kacie and her husband Kyle’s makeover. With the help of their parents, they took advantage of their home’s open floor plan and created a sweet and much-more-functional spot to fry up some eggs in the morning. Here’s Kacie’s email: My husband and I just finished our first remodel! When we moved into our house one year ago we knew we were going to redo the kitchen and the flooring. The kitchen was completely closed in and all of the cabinets were poorly placed – there was only one usable drawer! I absolutely love to cook and this was not a cook’s kitchen:

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How To Make DIY Blackout Curtains

File this under “A Lazy Mom’s Trick To Get More Sleep.” I made no-sew, mind-numbingly-easy, shortcut, DIY blackout curtains. Enough adjectives for you? I’m an over-explainer. Anyway, this isn’t the professional way, it’s the cheater way. Haha. First the why. Although the faux wood blinds on Clara’s bedroom window provided a decent amount of light-blockage, I knew blackout fabric would make the room pitch black in the middle of the day (which means it might help with the just-one-forty-five-minute-nap that we’ve been getting these days). To JoAnn fabrics I flew, and purchased 5.5 yards of blackout fabric (which sort of felt like the white fabric on roller-blinds). Thanks to a 50% coupon I got it

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