Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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How To Make An Advent Calendar

We’re still working away on the kitchen, so we’ll have update post #561 for you soon (kidding, it’s probably more like #19 or something – but still). This week we’re hoping to share lots of major progress (new counters and a working sink again – finally!). In the meantime, it’s about time we got into the holiday spirit. There’s just something special about spending our first real Christmas in our new house that makes us want to go all out. We moved on the 13th of December last year, so we were technically here for last year’s holiday season, but we were living out of boxes and Clara was too young to really get excited

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November Superlatives

So yeah… it’s suddenly December? Guess that means it’s time to take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff to keep things spicy. This month we were all over the place as usual, from doing some exterior, nursery, office, ornament, and place-setting stuff to a bunch of kitchen things. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives (you know, just for giggles). Oddest Couple: Little ol’ Sherry and this tall built-in that we made to give our fridge a more finished look

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Making A White Kitchen With Simply White Cabinets

Lately lots of the submissions that we’ve been getting are kitchen related, and you know we’re in the kitchen mindset these days… so we’re happy to share. Jasmine & Sam’s remodel wooed us with their use of white on white with tons of texture and a sleek clean feeling. And when it comes to function, we’re really impressed by how the addition of more upper cabinets and details like molding and trim elevated (both literally and figuratively) the entire room. Here’s Jasmine and Sam’s email: Hey guys! My family and I just had our one year anniversary in our new house and I thought to send you some pics of our new kitchen. We actually

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How To Turn Family Sketches Into Art

Dude, my dad is an artist. I mean not by trade (he’s a super-genius math teacher), but both he and my mother sketched and drew for fun during my childhood (in turn art was my favorite subject in school and off I went to get a bachelor of fine arts in NYC). I remember being in complete awe about how my mom drew horses and ladies while I loved how my dad drew all sorts of abstract shapes that filled a page with lines and dots and squares. Sort of like this. So about a week ago I was standing in the frame hallway thinking about my dad and his awesome drawings and realized that

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How To Hang Cement Backer Board For A Wall Full Of Tile

As exhilarating as demolition can be, there’s always that nagging voice in the back of your head reminding you that you’re going to have to replace whatever you’re demolishing. Bummer, right? Well, we didn’t let ourselves wallow in that realization too long and dove right into reconstructing the kitchen. Actually, between demoing the tiles and the plywood we actually snuck out to The Tile Shop (in my sister’s borrowed SUV) to buy cement board so we’d have all of our supplies ready as soon as demo was done. The cement board (1/4″ thick Permabase Ultrabacker to be exact) was about $10 per 3ft x 5ft sheet after the 10% discount code that they offer everyone

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Hanging A Gallery Frame Wall In The Nursery

Some nursery tweak-age has occurred. And because we’re currently working away on the kitchen (stay tuned for those deets tomorrow morning if all goes well), we figured that we owed you the whole gallery-frame-change rundown (along with some well overdue what’s-in-that-frame answers). We’ve always loved the idea of expanding Clara’s art wall as she grows with more and more frames, so here’s how it looked before: And here’s what we have going on now that we’ve added a few more frames to the mix (and shifted the placement of a few of the existing ones): And for those who have been wondering, here’s a quick rundown of the things that we’ve framed (you can find

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How We Got A Book Agent, Wrote A Proposal, & Landed A Book Deal

We promised you guys a post all about the whole book-deal process back in March (when we spilled the beans about our upcoming book here). And the only reason I can think of that it has taken us this long to write is because we’ve been so busy actually writing our 260+ page book behind the scenes along with juggling the bambino and the blog and all of the projects that go along with those things. Haha. So forgive us for the delay. Many of you guys expressed an interest in how it all went down (a few years ago we never would have known how to navigate the waters of book proposals and agents

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Fab Freebie: Moo Moo Moo!

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Our trio of winners this week (thanks as always to random.org for the selections) are… Lila @ sweet and lovely crafts (who wants triple the hours in a day), Molly (who wishes for 3 times the energy, time and money to take on more projects she reads about here)  and Emily B (who’d like her yard & house tripled in size). Congrats you three! We started doing giveaways just about 3 years ago, and our 3rd giveaway on December 1, 2008 was with a fun printing company called MOO. The prize was valued about $20 and fewer than 300 people entered. Now MOO

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How To Demo Old Backsplash Tile & Plywood

In case all of that turkey and stuffing made you forget, allow me to remind you that our kitchen was looking something this after the upper cabinets came down: Since the clock was ticking on our new counters (in around 2 weeks we should no longer be sink-less and counter-less), we had to get the walls prepped for the new backsplash. Not that the backsplash would be going up before the counters (we’ll get a snugger fit if we install it afterwards, plus we don’t want it getting damaged during the whole counter install), but because wall prep = demo (aka: a mess) we didn’t want to worry about scratching our new counters if they

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Gobble Gobble

We have about a million things to be thankful for, and you guys are at the top of our list. Thanks for caring to drop in and see what’s going on at our house. Speaking of which, in case you were wondering… this recently happened: After eating lunch the other day, but before cleaning up the table, Burger snuck into the dining room, climbed up to the table with the help of a chair (!) and snatched half of a baguette that remained uneaten. Knowing he’d be in trouble for it, he immediately sprinted into the closet to devour that hunk o’ carbs in record time. I followed him in – half to make sure

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White Corian Counter Templating

Not sure if many people are reading today (due to the impending turkey-related holiday) but we wanted to stop in with a quick kitchen update. We officially got our counters templated (aka: measured so they can be fabricated and installed within the next hopefully two weeks). And this finally means our sinkless days are finally numbered. Huzzah! For anyone who missed the counter discussion, here’s what we’re getting. When they came out to template we did learn that we would need reinforcement to support the 12″ overhang on two sides of the peninsula, so they quoted us $300 to build in some steel rods when they fabricate the counter or offered up the DIY option

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Adding Built-In Shelves Above A Media Cabinet

Is there anything better than a beautiful, functional, and DIY-ed piece of furniture? Arguably yes (a free car full of money?), but not much. So we loved getting Kim & Scott’s email about the built-in media wall that they constructed with a couple of friends. Not only was it custom built to perfectly fit the space, it saved them at least $450 (many similar units go for $750+ and theirs was $252 to build). Here’s Kim and Scott’s letter: We started out with a very green accent wall, and over time we began to layer in a few new pieces to the living room (a shaggy rug, a Craigslist coffee table, etc). After said changes,

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