Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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August Superlatives

It’s that time again! When we take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff, just because we’re over-sharers. This month felt especially busy for us, with everything from painting, organizing, building, rearranging, crafting, art-making, upholstering, light-fixture-ing, coding, ORBing (yes, it’s a category of its own), and breaking stuff. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives, because we’re strange birds. Most Illuminating: Clipping 320 clothespins in place to create our laundry room’s clothespin chandelier for our first ever Pinterest Challenge. Oh and

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Whew. Comment Explosion.

Who knew a half-baked banquette idea could bring on the chatter like that? Over 800 comments within a few hours time? Insanity. We’re loving all of the ideas and suggestions that you guys are throwing into the pot and promise to keep you posted every step of the way! There are definitely a lot more things to consider and nothing’s set in stone, so I think we’ll probably change our plan by the minute. But you know we’ll gab incessantly about it to anyone who’s willing to listen as we go. In the meantime, since I should be painting office cabinets (but haven’t had a second to tear myself away from the blog), I thought

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Kitchen Brain Dump

True to form, we’re all over the place over here. After switching up the ol’ blog design (and figuring out why the header was MIA for 20% of you – here’s hoping it’s back) we’ve also been plugging away at our $6 cabinet makeover but aren’t quite done with the painting/building-up process (here’s hoping we’ll have photos and lots o’ words to share early next week). But crazily enough, in the meantime we’ve also been doing some yard work, a random bedroom project, and have even started brainstorming the next phase of the kitchen. Hence this brain dump. We’re still saving our pennies for things like new appliances to begin the next step of our

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Our Blog Makeover

Yup, after months of working on a little behind the scenes blog makeover (not kidding, this stuff literally takes us months) we’ve FINALLY let ‘er rip. Like any project, there were unexpected delays: mysterious coding glitches, inexplicable site crashes (thanks for your patience on those, btw), an earthquake and even a hurricane to round things out. But before we let another excuse get in our way, we decided to just go for it. It’s not 100% done. It may crash the site again. There could be a blizzard next week. Who knows. It’s actually surprising to us that we haven’t done this sooner. We’ve had the same exact blog look/background/layout since the spring of 2008

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A Fall Themed Baby Shower

Alternate punny title: Leaf it to me. Oh yeah, there’s nothing like a little corniness on a Tuesday afternoon. I blame it on being downright giddy to have power again. Ohthankgoodness. Anyway, this weekend before the chaos that was Irene I actually helped with a little bridal shower for our cousin Megan who is getting hitched this fall. John’s mom hosted the sweet informal gathering at her place, and each one of the daughters (and in this case, me the daughter-in-law) were asked to bring a few things. I was in charge of a bowl of candy, and a little bit of table decor. Nothing too crazy, just a few small touches to hopefully get

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How To Prep Cabinets For Paint

We were humming along on our way to updating our $6 cabinets with some primer and glossy white paint until the whole hurricane thing took out our power (update: miracle of all miracles, it’s back on, and we’ve never loved electricity more). So the three day outage robbed us of our cabinet mojo since John has some building to do (which necessitates the use of a few electric tools like drills and saws) before we paint and reassemble everything in the office. Thankfully we did get to tackle all of the prepping and priming before the outage, and took about a million photos of the process (who’s surprised?). So we figured that part of the

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Fab Freebie: Sign Me Up

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org, our trio of winners are…Kristen (who just signed up for Pinterest and is already addicted, but hasn’t had the guts to do anything yet), Victoria DeVaugh-Geiss (who just signed her up for a gym with her husband) and Robyn (who sadly just signed up for unemployment after having been laid off). If you’re name isn’t here, don’t forget you can still get $10 off your Signs by Andrea order with code YHL10 through September 12th. Weathered old wood? Check. Simple clean lettering. Check. Personalized and hand-made? Double check. Signs by Andrea hit a lot of our favorite decorating notes, which

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Hurricane Irene Damage

As many of  you know, Hurricane Irene swept up the east coast on Saturday afternoon and evening, bringing lots of wind and rain along with it. Sadly, our neighborhood didn’t fare very well with high wind gusts slamming a bunch of giant trees down on power lines, roads, and even homes. Thankfully, our house was spared. But many of our neighbors and friends weren’t so lucky. It broke our hearts to look out from our patio to see that a tree in our neighbor’s yard had fallen onto their home (it easily could have hit ours if it fell in the other direction). Thankfully although they were both home with their two dogs at the

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The 8 Month Difference…

After yesterdays first house vs. current house comparison, this comment from Jess definitely got our wheels turning: “I think its an unfair comparison to put 8 months of work at the current place up against 4 + years at the old. You should have compared current photos from this house to what your old house looked like 8 months after you moved in there!!” Well, that’s probably not quite fair either, since we’ve definitely learned a ton in the last five years of homeownership (and also spend a lot more time doing house stuff these days since this DIY diary of ours is our job)… but we’re game! It’s Friday. But oh boy is this

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Comparing Our First House To Our Current House

Last Friday on this post we got this comment and thought it sounded like a good time: “I love your videos and it’s crazy to see the difference in YHL style from the first house to this house! If you wanted to do a side-by-side of rooms past and present, I wouldn’t hate it :)” – Sarah I decided I wouldn’t hate it either. So here we go. It’s a battle to the death. First house vs. current house. Cue the dramatic music and picture me in a Gladiator outfit. Of course it’s kind of an unfair fight since we’ve been in this house for eight months and it took us four and a half

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How To Reupholster A Rocking Chair With Fabric And Nailheads

Ok I’m back with part two of the madness that is Me vs. Rocker. But remember my disclaimer from yesterday’s post that this entire process was much like when aliens took over my body and I made a quilt for Clara, which is to say: I went rogue. I took in all the advice from you guys along with some google tips and some suggestions from a reupholstering-fiend friend of mine… and just played it by ear and did what seemed to work as I went along. I mean, it’s not a family heirloom, it’s a $25 craigslist find. But enough chatter, heeeeere we go. Although there was a sneak peek pic of the almost-finished

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How To Redo A Rocking Chair With Spray Paint And Fabric

That’s right. I broke out the word dastardly. And I know we should be hard at work on our office cabinets, but that’s a big job (aka: a weekend job – maybe even a two-weekend job) and I have been giving this rocker the stink eye since November (yes, even before we moved). For anyone who can’t even remember that far back (me), here’s a recap: I originally picked it up off of Craigslist for $25 because I really liked the simple lines of it. Then it sat untouched for over nine months until this weekend. Why? Well, no sooner had I gotten it home than I realized I had no earthly idea how to

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