Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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#146: What It Was Really Like Renting Out The Duplex

We survived our first summer as Airbnb hosts to 23 different families over the course of the last three months – and, more importantly, so did the duplex itself! But our first rental season wasn’t without hiccups, high anxiety moments, and surprisingly frequent learning opportunities. So this week we’re taking you behind the scenes of a jam-packed few months of learning the hospitality ropes while juggling guests and (more literally) a very full jug of laundry detergent. Sherry also celebrates the end of a long “personal renovation” and we share how something simple led us to rethink our approach to cooking dinner. What’s New I know Sherry’s enduring Invisalign saga has been the topic of

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Updating Old Kitchen Cabinets With New Inset Doors

I’ve been so excited to show you Teresa and Andrew’s kitchen makeover. They’re some of our closest friends who live right around the corner from us, and ever since we filmed this bookcase styling time-lapse video in their living room, I’ve been not-so-patiently waiting for their new appliances to arrive so we could share a big ol’ virtual kitchen tour with you guys. Not only do they have amazing style, they also made SO MANY budget-friendly choices in this kitchen and I really hope they help to demonstrate that you can often work with a lot more than you might think (you don’t always have to scrap everything and start over!). And you can save

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The Real History Of The Pink House (There’s A Twist!)

This all started because we wanted one of those cool “Historic District” plaques on our beach house. Spoiler, we got it…and one for the duplex too! But the process turned us into amateur sleuths, history-buffs-in-training, and (more predictably) people who paint their front door a new color while they’re at it. So here’s the story, along with a mini porch update, and some tips & advice for uncovering the history of your home too. Ever since we bought our beach house three years ago (yes, three!) we’ve been jealous of admired the official “Cape Charles Historic District” plaque on our neighbor’s house (the blue one between the duplex and the pink house in the photo

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DIY Shiplap Wall Plank Treatment ($31 total!)

Many moons ago we promised to share the DIY play-by-play for this shiplap-esque, paneled wall treatment because it’s ridiculously easy and GLORIOUSLY BUDGET CONSCIOUS. As in, it cost less than two boxes of my favorite light bulbs. Or dinner at Chipotle. Yes, those are my units of measure. But the point is: it was only $31! I mentioned in our backsplash post a while back that we opted for a different treatment on the stove wall in each of the duplex kitchens because it felt too chaotic to continue our patterned tile on two walls, so we chose something subtle yet wipeable AND easy to maintain (you can see the both duplex kitchen reveals here). Also cheap

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Organizing Our Beach House Shed

Earlier this summer we shared how we made over our beach house backyard in one giant post that covered the entire year-long process of taking it from a gnarly jungle to compact-yet-relaxing little oasis. It’s a very small space, so we worked really hard to squeeze lots of function out of it – more on that here – and back when we shared that post, many of you asked for photos of the inside of our pink shed along with details about what we store there. So today all of your shed-poking-around dreams are about to come true. When we shared that backyard before & after fest, I confessed that the inside of the shed

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Our DIY “Stained Glass” Window

We had a totally different post planned for today, but then a super fun/random project fell into our laps on Monday night. We weren’t sure how things would turn out (we were kinda making up a DIY technique as we went along), but to say that we’re pleasantly surprised is a giant understatement. This might be my favorite under $10 project in the history of my life. And it could easily be repeated with any window you find at a thrift store, architectural salvage shop, or even at your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. SAVE ALL THE GORGEOUS OLD WINDOWS, GUYS! Or you could just wander the streets hoping to be in the right place

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Our Second Dollhouse Makeover

Since you guys have been asking how this large scale (but also, small scale – ha!) renovation has been going, I thought I’d share our second dollhouse progress. And if you missed our first tiny house makeover, you can check it out here. Yes, this dollhouse totally reminds all of us of our own house, which has been especially fun. And our nine-year-old daughter has been acting as the general contractor, the interior designer, and the architect, which has also been a blast. From helping with painting and art to choosing colors, arranging the furniture and brainstorming future project ideas – she has been at the helm… WHICH HAS BEEN SO ENJOYABLE FOR MY HOUSE-LOVING

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Our Kids Room For Real Simple’s Idea House

Earlier this month we took the whole family (dog included!) up to Brooklyn for a few days to put together the space we’ve be designing for this year’s Real Simple Idea House over the past five or so months. I realize there’s a lot to unpack in that sentence (especially if you missed our podcast episode or Instagram stories about it) so we’ll catch you up right here and show you the *almost* finished space. And explain what’s still left to be done before their big photoshoot for the magazine and tell you about how some last-minute curveballs actually made the room better. And tell you what they do with everything in the house once

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Before & Afters Of Our Beach House: Upstairs

Many moons ago John shared the beach house before & after photos from downstairs (tons of never before seen angles!) right here in this post. And it has taken us a while (how has it been eight months?!) to get the upstairs before & afters all together so you can see all of those comparisons, and browse the entire second floor of our project, which we are thrilled came together (it was looking ROUGH at the start). So let’s pop upstairs & look around, shall we? Because the transformations were just as big up there… UPSTAIRS HALL & OFFICE Here’s the upstairs hall as you face the front room that we converted into a mini

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How To Paint Decorative Oars For Beach House Decor

When we shared the duplex backyard makeovers last month, I promised more details about how we made the decorative oars that hang on each shed. So today I’ve got a detailed tutorial for you (including how NOT to screw up your attempts to make them outdoor friendly) along with a few other “hacks” you guys asked about. The oars actually were not part of our original plans. But after the sheds were built we nixed our plans to run electricity to them (for cost reasons – and because they really don’t need it). But the empty space where we’d planned to hang a light above the door needed… something. That something became oars after a

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A Video Tour Of The Duplex

Finally… we have a full video tour of both sides of the duplex! A ton of people have asked for this (or asked if they missed it) and, well, today is the day. If nothing else, I recommend watching it to see the ecstatic relief on my face at the end that WE. ARE. DONE! Also I talk through a bunch of our changes and choices throughout the reno, and share some of our favorite decisions that upgraded the house in the biggest ways. The video is also just good for seeing how each room flows together, checking out what’s different from side to side, and basically “walking through” the entire project with us. Just

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Our Beach House Backyard Makeover

Just when you thought we were done with backyards (we shared the duplex backyards last week) we’re back with yet another… backyard! And this beach house backyard has been a long time coming, and it started out in an incredibly lackluster state – so we’re excited to show you what we did back there. It might be one of our favorite updates to date – especially since this backyard is really small but it all feels super functional and useful for our family – we’re out there all the time! And it’s about 1000% better than where we started. There’s a lot to see because we squeezed in SO MUCH into a relatively small space.

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