Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Window Shopping: PB Outlet & Mary Jo’s

Woot, I finally got through the 200+ photos I took at two of my favorite on-the-road-to-Atlanta-and-back shopping stops: The Pottery Barn Outlet (in Gaffney, SC) and Mary Jo’s Cloth Shop (right outside of Charlotte, NC). So here are all the things I loved the most (and yes, I actually got something, which I’ll call out at the end of this post). So fasten your window shopping seat belts, we have a lot of ground to cover. First let’s start at the PB Outlet. Does the building beckon you in too, or is it just me? Since we had Clara and Burger with us for the Haven trip, John very selflessly offered to stay outside and

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A Sweet Blue Boy’s Nursery Makeover With Bunk Beds

Sherry and I were totally charmed by this room that Anna made over for her two boys. Partially because we don’t have a son (well, we do have a furry one, but he doesn’t have his own room) – so it’s always fun to see decor for the other chromosome combo. And also because she squeezed lots of cool ideas and details in a room that could’ve easily been overlooked. So keep your eyes peeled for a chalkboard closet, a cozy desk space, and some stylish storage. Here’s Anna’s email: I just finished making over my two sons’ room and I wanted to share. Here’s what the room used to look like (on a messy

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Building Deck Posts, Notches, & Frogs

With my deck holes dug and officially blessed by the county inspection office it was now time to – well – fill them in. There must be some irony in there somewhere, right? As I had done when setting my fence posts last year, I started off by putting a couple of inches of rocks in the bottom for drainage since the deck experts in our area unanimously recommended it under the concrete that we’ll be pouring to hold the posts in place (we dug the holes at least 21″ deep, so that by adding 2-3 inches of gravel at the bottom, they still met the 18″ required depth for our county). Imagine my surprise

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House Crashing: Breezy & Bright

Who’s ready for another house crashing adventure? This is a house in Roswell, Georgia that we dropped in on – and it’s a beaut. Julie, the owner, is also one of the ladies behind Milk & Honey Home, and it’s so inspiring to see how she pairs colors and patterns in her own home (while squeezing in some great budget-friendly ideas). We’re so thankful that she let us snoop around and share the pics! So without further ado… let’s barge in and make ourselves at home. The foyer just beyond the front door was spectacular. I mean, isn’t this like living in a magical jewelry box or something? I was immediately smitten. She got the

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Exploring The Georgia Aquarium

Ack! We’ve been home from Atlanta for over two weeks and I just realized we never shared our other animal-filled adventure in ATL. This one was more of the aquatic variety… Yep, in addition to the zoo, the Bowers took us to the Georgia Aquarium. And it was AMAZING. I haven’t been to lots of aquariums in my day so maybe I’m just easily impressed, but there was just so much to see and so many things for the kids to do that we walked around with our mouths agape for a good three or four hours. You saw a few of these photos in this Young House Love post but we’ve added a bunch

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How To Make Scrap Wood Picture Frames

As Sherry mentioned in her Pinterest Challenge post this morning, we DIYed some easy wood frames for her homemade artwork. We did it partially because, well, we’re cheap. And partially because we wanted to see how truly simple we could keep this project. So we challenged ourselves to try to spend zero dollars and just use things that we had around, which basically ended up being: leftover scrap wood wood glue a staple gun a hammer sandpaper a miter saw (but a miter box and a hand saw would work too) duct tape spray paint (the kind with primer built in) Here’s how it all went down. We started off on the right foot by

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Making Acrylic Art

It’s Tuesday the 10th… so it’s time to share this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). Cue the choir of glue-gun-wielding angels! I actually tried my hand at painting, just because I thought it would be fun to get back into. Other than this painting that I did a while back, I haven’t painted much beyond walls, accessories, and furniture for the last decade or so. Are my Pinterest challenge paintings going to land me an art opening anytime soon? Not on your life. Haha. But it was so much fun and I found spots for

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Add Something Old To Every Room

You know how a bunch of designers have been saying things like “every room should have something old in it”? Or have I been the only one noticing that lately? Sort of like how they say “every room should have something black in it” (but other than oil rubbed bronze curtain rods or dark mocha wood, virtually nothing in any of our rooms is black – although 95% of my shirts are black, so maybe that counts?). Either way, it’s official. I’m on the “something old” train. It all happened when I was browsing craigslist (searching the words “dresser” and “sideboard” and “buffet” every week or so, if you’re wondering about my craigslist technique) since

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A Wood Truck That Holds Crayons

Here’s the story of the little two dollar Goodwill truck that I got Clara in Georgia (mentioned in this video yesterday). This is what it looked like when I snatched it up: Perfectly charming and vintage-ish, but a little less “Clara” than it could have been. So I thought it would be fun to get Clara involved in a little makeover. Yes, Clara would be the ultimate truck graffiti artist, but first I applied one coat of blue paint, just to set the stage for her scribbles (the entire project was free thanks to using a little test pot of paint leftover from this old art project last year). The color is Embellished Blue by

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A Living Room With Benjamin Moore’s Wythe Blue

It’s no secret that we’re suckers for a dark room turned light and bright. And during the summer months, we’re especially keen on the beach-y, coastal vibe that Jessica achieved with the help of our pal Rhoda. So check out her letter below: We finally finished our family room makeover. I feel like I’ve been working on this room forever. The colors in the room before were traditional and on the darker side. The old furniture was a set we bought many years ago and was in a much smaller room (so it looked a bit lost). I decided to change the look from traditional to a cottage-y pottery barn style. This was a joint

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Goodwill Goods, Grimaces, and Giddiness

If you have read our blog for the past year or so, there’s one thing you know. Goodwill + Katie B + me (+ John with video camera) = all kinds of ridiculousness. This time we literally ran around the store supermarket-sweep-style and tossed things that we thought were cool into our cart. Then in the name of keeping it real, we made a one-take-only video about everything that we found. No cuts. No corrections. John just pressed record and we jabbered on. So much so that we had to break up the video across both of our blogs since we went on (and on). You can check out the first half of it over

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June Superlatives: Northern & Southern Fun

Since it’s a holiday here in the US (America’s birthday, no less!) we’re spending the day with our family, but we thought we’d take a minute to look back on the month of June (once again we’re late with our little recap – sorry guys!). But in an attempt to TOTALLY REDEEM OURSELVES (name that movie), we’ve also linked to a bunch of Fourth of July related posts of yore for ya (here, here, and here) and we snuck a few never before seen things into this recap – like a new family portrait that the lovely and talented Katie B snapped for us while we were in Atlanta (how is no one crying?!). If

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