Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Never Forget

Thanks for the encouragement from this morning’s post to choke out my rambling September 11th story guys. As hard as it is to tell, I feel like it’s something I’ll want to look back on – especially when Clara’s older and I’m trying to explain the enormity of that day. It was a terrible day, but such a life-changing one too, and it definitely shaped who I am. And as much as I love having thousands of DIY posts in our archives, sometimes it’s those rare personal posts (like this one or this one or this one) that make me the happiest that I dumped all the jumbled words out of my head and onto

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Window Shopping At The Art Of Simple In Seaside

I’m currently hanging and shooting the canopy that I made for over Clara’s bed (ahh! it just might be cute!) so I’ll be back with those photos and the whole rundown for you tomorrow. I was actually thinking about writing about September 11th today. I lived in NYC at the time, and it was one of the most life-changing days that I’ve ever experienced, but for some reason, even 12 years later, I just can’t put words together about it. So I’m sending out lots of NYC pride and love to everyone affected by such a horrible day and trying to drum up the courage to talk about it (I’m reminding myself how healing it

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Painting The Ceiling Pink In Our Daughter’s Room

We did it! We can put three big ol’ check marks next to “paint the walls” and “paint the closet” and “paint the ceiling” in Clara’s room. It was definitely a bit of a painting marathon, but how sweet is the soft pink up there on the ceiling? It’s Pink Cadillac by Benjamin Moore in their eggshell finish. In some of these photos it’s pretty subtle, but in person it’s soft-but-noticeable – so while it’s not the entire room’s focal point, it’s a fun layered detail in the room. We thought clean white walls would complement the fun ceiling color without fighting too much with all of the color and pattern in things like the

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Fab Freebie: Fall For Coupons

Coupons.com covers the gamut – from digital, printable, social, mobile, and loyalty card program discounts for spots like Target, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and lots more. In addition to wanting to help you save some green, right now they’re also celebrating the change of seasons and diving into fall decorating (sometimes all it takes is swapping out a piece or two to transition the mood in your home). So they’re kick-starting that change with a $300 e-gift card to Sears, which you’ll be able to stretch with the dozens of Sears discounts that Coupons.com offers.   Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually

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Prepping A Vaulted Ceiling For Wood Planks

If those three things don’t sound like a great time, then I don’t know what does. Amiright? Anyway, we’ve shared a few peeks at the ceiling progress in our sunroom, but have yet to explain how we got there. Hold on to your hats and break out your graphing calculators! Just kidding about the calculators, because we actually left the engineering part of this job to a professional. The pro we referenced in this post was the builder we’re working with on the show home. He offered to pop by to give us his expert opinion, which boiled down to “those cross beams aren’t supporting the roof, they just created the framing for attaching the

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How To Hang A Gallery Of Frames Around A TV

First things first. Weren’t we talking about how foxes might be the new “it” animal (as in, move over birds and giraffes)? Well, I think this video might be proof that we’re all on to something. Now that that’s out of the way, on to our regularly scheduled program… Sherry and I have always been fans of the idea of hanging art around a TV just to soften the big black rectangle that it creates on the wall. And since we have quite the collection of frames to wade through (128 to be exact) it wasn’t exactly a speedy selection process. But after more noodling than I care to admit, we officially hung this house’s

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Three Months In

Dude, we’ve been here over three months! On one hand it feels like we’ve lived here forever, and on the other hand it feels like we just moved in last week (wasn’t it last week?!). We’re definitely surprised by how much we’ve knocked out since moving in (new flooring upstairs, a bunch of exterior upgrades, a half bathroom and a foyer facelift, some fresh paint in the bedroom, and a freshly lofted sunroom) yet some of the completely untouched rooms have us itching to bounce around to them soon. But enough chatter, let’s get to the photos. Here’s a time capsule of how our house looks three months in: – The Front – We’ve had

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A Beautiful DIY Secret Garden

Something has us gravitating towards outdoor spaces lately. Maybe it’s being mid-makeover on our freshly lofted sunroom? Maybe it’s wishful thinking that summer isn’t ending? Whatever it is, we loving Stacy’s transformation of her backyard into a quaint and cozy green space. Here’s her letter: There were several books from my childhood that affected my view on life and how I wanted my home to be when I grew up. One of them was a book titled Mandy, and another was The Secret Garden. I have always wanted a space that was all mine. A space that maybe didn’t function as anything other than a retreat and a place to image and dream. Welcome to my secret

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How To Turn A Coat Closet Into Toy Storage

The closet next to our front door was an obvious place for our coat closet when we first moved in. But since our definition of “coat closet” seems to include random stuff like cleaning supplies (vacuum, dust buster, etc) as well as miscellaneous files and bags, we quickly realized that it was smarter for us to use the deeper closet under the stairs for that stuff instead. It’s slightly closer to the garage anyways, so it’s actually a more convenient spot for daily coat access (not that I’m ready to admit summer’s over yet). But that left this lonely guy next to the door without a job to do. And what’s the opposite of having

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Painting Our Bedroom A Rich Blue Paint Color

Nope, we’re not cooking in the bedroom, that’s the name of our new paint color… You’ve actually seen it already in this post about the color palette that we’re leaning towards for this house and we’re so dang happy with it. It was between Sparrow, Knoxville Gray, Sea Star, and Black Pepper for our master, and when we held up the swatches it took the lead for having depth along with a cool faded feeling. It feels fresh, yet also could be one of those “historical colors” which we think is the sweet spot for our house. Since it’s a large room full of light furnishings and crisp white trim and doors, we thought it

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Craigslisting & Selling Old Home Items & Furniture

After a few “settling in” months we’re going through that phase I like to affectionately call the What We Really Need (And Don’t) Phase. Essentially, like most folks before a move, we tend to do our best to craigslist or donate or yard sale the things we know we no longer need or use (so we don’t waste time/energy moving it only to store it and never use it again in the new house). But we do end up moving all of the stuff that we loved and used in our last house, even if we’re unsure where it’ll go in the new house. Then after a few months of actually being in the space

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Deciding Between Painting Or Tiling A Concrete Floor

Last you saw our sunroom, it looked like this: Well, now it’s looking a little something like this: Forgive the poor iPhone pic, but it’s the only one I snapped (just to text to my parents, actually) before Richmond turned into rain city yesterday. But you get the point, we’ve made some good progress lofting the ceiling (with the help of a professional framer who came out this week to make sure our roof wouldn’t collapse). But we’ll get into the story of the ceiling next week once the electrician has come and turned the (now loose) wires into junction boxes for two fans. Today we’re talking about a floor plan. As in, a plan

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