Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Painting Cabinets And Using Grasscloth To Update Them

When Bethany sent her fantastically creative low cost kitchen makeover our way we had to share the eye candy. Here’s her letter: This spring my hubby and I got busy refreshing our tired kitchen. Our goal was to make changes that improved the look of the space without spending a million bucks. With a little paint, some new cabinet hardware, a new rug, and a light fixture and window treatment, our kitchen now has a whole new look! The best part was standing back at the end of the project and realizing that these small changes really made a big visual impact. I love my “new” kitchen, and the fact that we only spent around

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One Desk, Four Ways

Since we’re moving our work area into the new office / playroom / guest room (read more about that here and here) I figured I’d give my old work space one last hurrah in the form of a four-part makeover. Just for fun. From a potted plant to a scented candle, many people have different preferences when it comes to their home office must-haves. And of course everyone has a different organizational needs as well, so it’s always interesting to ponder what systems and approaches will work for people in both the form and the function department. So when I decided to have some fun adding different accessories to achieve a few different takes on

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A Cheerful Yellow and Wood Kitchen Makeover

When Bonnie sent us her charming kitchen before and after pictures we just had to share the goods. Here’s her letter: I’ve been enjoying YHL for the last year. My husband and I bought my grandparents home this past November and have had so much fun renovating it! We turned the place upside down and within about five weeks we got this outcome. We were on a really tight budget, so most everything is from Ikea, thrifted or made by us. We drew tons of inspiration from Young House Love and referred to your ‘how to’s’ quite often! My readers really enjoyed our kitchen before & afters, so I thought you might like to see

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Hanging Some White Faux Wood Blinds In The Bedroom

We first brought home a pair of white faux wood blinds back when were decorating the nursery (since a nice dark room sounded like a good idea when it came to encouraging some serious pee-wee shut eye). The ironic thing is that literally for years we’ve been dying to bring them into our very own bedroom. See, the window above the bed was never covered, and although the sun doesn’t rise on that side of the house we knew it could definitely stand to get darker with the help of some sort of rolling or slatted blind. Plus the other window in the room had the original plastic roller shade that came with the house

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An Affordable Kitchen Overhaul

When Rachel sent us her recently DIYed kitchen makeover we had to share the goods. Here’s her letter: To say that there are touches of YHL in our newly renovated kitchen/dining room would be an understatement. I “borrowed” many of your ideas! First we removed the upper half of the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room. And after the dated wallpaper came down we painted both rooms with a 5 gallon bucket of Valspar paint to cut costs. We removed the upper kitchen cabinet doors to create an “open” look while the lower doors are original (we sanded, primed, & repainted them). We also added new hinges & hardware. Then we installed a

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Finding An Affordable Sleeper Sofa

After recently revealing that John would be coming on as a full time blogger here on the home front (and mentioning that we had a full scale guest bedroom to office-slash-guest-bedroom-slash-playroom makeover in the cards) we’re back to spill more details about that space’s big switcheroo. Spoiler alert: we need a sleeper sofa, STAT. Let’s take a look back – waaaaay back – at what the room looked like when we moved in. It was actually a pretty blank slate to begin with, so replacing the ceiling fan with a flush mount fixture (like this- basic and cheap, but still an improvement) seemed to raise the ceiling about a foot. Then we just painted the

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How To Sand Down A Door So It Stops Sticking

Ever been trapped in the bathroom? We were. All the time. Every spring and summer, thanks to a bit of increased humidity, our full bathroom’s door used to swell just enough in the top left corner to keep the door from opening on the first pull. Or the second. Or the third. In fact it usually took some serious “door flapping” (grabbing the knob and rocking back and forth until it sprung free on the fifth or sixth tug) to get out of the bathroom every time we used it. And forget about our poor friends and family members who innocently ducked in there and then freaked out about a minute later when they thought

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Some Great Money Saving “Dad Advice”

John’s dad’s nickname is El Cheapo and he truly is one of our money management role models. It’s not like he wears shoes with holes in them or lives without creature comforts- he just saves for what is truly important to him (like a family-sized vehicle and even a vacation home for us to gather) and forgoes things that don’t mean as much to him (like fancy meals on the town and a room-sized flat screen TV). Of course deciding what matters to you and being frugal in other areas is truly a personal decision (so if a flat screen TV will give you more joy than a minivan you should certainly follow your heart

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Adding A New Runner And Molding To Stairs

When Rhoda sent her amazing DIY staircase makeover we had to share the goods. Here’s her letter: I wanted to pass along photos of my latest project, since y’all are such DIY loving people. I hated the carpet on our downstairs set of steps, so I ripped all the carpet up. Oooops, you can see from the pics what I had to work with… and these stairs were never meant to be shown to the public.  But, I slowly transformed them by adding TONS of molding (I just used my hand miter box and lots of paint- including porch and floor paint for the stair treads). Then I added a natural jute runner down the

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