Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Ten Tips For Smoother Travel

* We’re sending lots of love to everyone in Boston (our cousins were at the marathon but are thankfully safe). Back in October we hardly would have called ourselves traveling experts. Honestly we only took a flight once every few years (we went to Alaska for our honeymoon in 2007 and didn’t get back on a plane for a family vacation again until 2012 when we went to Hawaii for our five year anniversary). But thanks to our book tour, we’ve been on lots of flights. 29 of them in four months to be exact. So while we still can’t quite claim expert traveler status yet, here are a few things we learned about planes

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Fab Freebie: Finnishing Touches

*** This giveaway is now closed – see who won below! *** And our randomly selected winner of $500 to FinnStyle is… Erika (who just finished with all four of her kids having the stomach flu and is praying it never comes back). Congrats on your prize! Nope, that’s not a typo up there, the double-N is for FinnStyle – whose site is full of sleek, bold, and colorful pieces that are commonly associated with Scandinavian designers (everything from home accessories and bedding to dinnerware and clothing). And if you’re like us, what pops out most are the iconic Marimekko pieces that populate much of the site. So if you ever wanted to get your

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How To Box Out Curvy Porch Columns

And I’m calling this bad boy done. Commence the rejoicing! And to recap why we wanted to box those columns in: the carport has 4 columns that are already chunky and square, so up until this point the house had a split personality with 3 curvy columns in the mix boxed in square columns are more true to a mid-century ranch, so we wanted to get back to that (many other ranches in our neighborhood have ’em already) Back to finishing things up. After getting this far within one afternoon we had high expectations for how quickly the finishing touches would go. I mean, how long could finishing one column, caulking the seams, and painting

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A Graphic Mid Century Living Room Makeover

When Katie sent us pictures of her living room makeover, we couldn’t get over the difference between the before and the after. Here’s her letter: Hi guys! I just wanted to share my living room redesign with you. When we first laid eyes on our house, the living room (well the whole house) was definitely not our style. So among a few other major events since we moved (like having baby boy #3 last summer) it felt great to paint the room, switch out the lighting, and find some great pieces via Craigslist and garage sales. The drapes are from [my son] Isaac’s nursery with some pom pom trim added. I’m also loving my new canvas (from Surface

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Adding Bamboo Blinds To The Office

Notice anything different when you peek into the office from the dining room? Hint: check out the window region. We got these guys at Home Depot for $22 each (they’re 35″ bamboo blinds with the name Miranda on them if that helps identify ’em in the store) with the hopes that they would finish off the windows in the office and tie into the thick wooden desktop and the jute rug that we have in there. In our first house we had bamboo blinds in a bunch of rooms and always planned to bring them into this house as well (we mention them a lot in our Listy McListerson posts like this one) – just

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Removing Scalloped Porch Trim & Fixing Porch Columns

We’ve been talking about streamlining (buh-bye scallop) and beefing up the porch (namely those columns) ever since we moved in back in 2010. And it’s finally warming up enough for us to tackle an outdoor project after a long winter – seriously, we were still getting snow a few weeks ago. Most of the ranches in our neighborhood either have chunky square columns or a more traditional colonial style. We prefer the former, but inherited the latter. Along with a curved scallop header that isn’t exactly our style either. Our first house had an issue with a scalloped header too, which Sherry tackled back in 2008 (one of her most exhausting projects to date –

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How To Make Wooden Play Money For Kids

Clara really seems to be into the concept of money lately. Not so much for using it to pay bills, but using it to count, stack, and stash in her pockets/purse. I’ve been digging up quarters and handing them over left and right (she’s thankfully well past the putting-things-in-her-mouth stage) but they always get lost. So I have one question: is there a vortex in our house that eats socks and loose change? Is Burger secretly saving up to buy a jar of peanut butter? Seriously, it’s a mystery. So instead of being fifteen bucks down after a few weeks of play, I figured I might as well attempt a little DIY alternative. Ok, and

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Eighteen Tips For Working Smarter, Not Harder

I’ve received a bunch of comment requests for an update on how we’re doing when it comes to finding the ever-elusive work/life balance that we’ve publicly proclaimed that we want to get a handle on this year (we never aspired to work nights, weekends, and even on vacation – and we only have ourselves to blame). So we thought it was a fun subject to tackle while we’re working away on the front porch (can’t wait to share an update for you guys tomorrow!). The scallops are a-tumbling down and the columns are getting boxed in. But back to the whole work/life balance battle. The first step in the not-working-every-second-of-every-day thing for us was definitely

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Fab Freebie: Sharing The Love

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** Over the last few days, the special referral account we set up has grown from $100 to over $300. And we’re about to turn it over to our winner… Crystal Anderson (who says she needs wall art “like no one’s business.”) Congrats! Last spring we curated a sale on Joss & Main, and we were psyched when they invited us back again this year – and agreed to a special perk for you guys (more on that in a sec). Getting the opportunity to reopen a little virtual decor store of sorts over there is always fun, and although we didn’t set the prices ourselves,

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How To Hang A Shelf Over The TV

Ding dong, the bare spot above the TV is dead. Remember how it used to look like this for a few years? And then we graduated to a bigger tv and kept an eye out for the right media cabinet for another year or so. And then we finally got here with the help of a $59 cabinet that we found at a thrift store… Whew. So glad it’s NNM (nekkid no more). Don’t mind that power strip on the ground, I’ve since shoved it behind the media cabinet to hide it. Dang it feels good to be a gangsta have a shelf there. We actually debated a bunch of options for above the TV

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Art For Under $50

Ok, not the whole world, but a good smattering of it. For those of you who watched our house tour video yesterday, you’ve seen a shot of these babies in action (and by these babies, I mean eight freshly framed prints that we hung in our hallway above the board & batten that we added). But here are some close ups with all the how-we-did-it deets. It was a really easy project actually. First, we bought an awesome calendar at Anthropologie on sale after the new year for $13 (gotta love how calendars go half price the second that January begins) but we had zero intention of using it in the traditional sense since we

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At Long Last, An Updated House Tour Video

It’s been over half a year since we shared our last video house tour, and since a bunch of you’ve been requesting an update, we finally cleaned the whole house shoved everything into our closets and made an all-one-take video. At first it seemed like we didn’t have that many new things to report, but then we realized that there were tons of changes since our previous tour (a freshly redone hall bathroom, a storage-room-turned-playroom, new lighting in the living room and dining room, lots of sunroom updates, a new fireplace facade and a fresh color in the kitchen, hallway board & batten, etc). So without further ado, let’s walk around the house together. I’ll

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