Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Broken Up About My Broken Ceramic Dog

All The King’s Horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put my faceless ceramic pooch together again. Well, maybe they could, but they weren’t around. So I tried to do it myself, using only a mother’s love (and some super glue). And because I’m a freak about fumes I did it on the back patio while Clara was napping (baby monitor in hand). Pretty much immediately things got wonky. Womp-womp. Nothing matched up and it looked all crazy and jagged. I think the fact that some shards were just too small to keep & reglue threw everything off. And somehow there was a huge chunk from the top of my beloved pup’s head that was

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A Tiny House Painting As A Moving Gift

Something big happened last week: my parents sold the house I grew up in. They’ve been planning to do this for a while, so it’s not a shock or anything. It’s also not as depressing as it could be since they’re selling it so they can move to Richmond (right now they’re about 2 hours away in Northern Virginia). My parents are both retired and have been planning to downsize for a while now. They picked Richmond for a bunch of reasons, including that four of their five grandchildren live here. So all in all, we’re really happy about the news. But there’s still something major about the closing of this particular chapter, so allow

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Fab Freebie: The Devil’s In The Details

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Thanks to the devilish randomization that is random.org, our two winners are… Steph (who was just talking to a colleague about the two tattoos she has…for now) and Alason (who’s thinks her little butterfly tattoo on her back makes people assume she’s a bad girl). Congrats ladies! Since you guys seemed to enjoy last week’s spring cleaning related giveaway, how about another? Your house can’t possibly be all cleaned up yet can it? This one comes from the folks over at Dirt Devil who are gonna hook two of you up with a tattoo. But you’re not going to disappoint the

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Buying Wood And Building A Console Table

First things first. Thanks for being such great sports about our little April Fool’s Day prank (seen here). Sherry was giggling the entire time she made that crazy nautical themed doggie mood board (at one point Katie Bower called and I actually heard a laugh-snort or two as she shared her little “project”). And it’s safe to say that every single comment – ranging from those of you who fell for it and those of you who knew it was a joke from the first sentence – made her day. Which made mine. Happy wife = happy life. In fact things were so copacetic around here that I was inspired to start my next big

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Playroom Plans

You guys already know that our playroom is looking kinda rough these days (thanks to this whole house update post from last week): But we’ve decided that once we clear it out, it’ll actually suit our family better as a less traditional space. Burger is a beloved member of our family, so we think he deserves his own little area. And since Clara plays pretty much all over the house (in the office, the living room, the kitchen, and her room – depending wherever we are with her) we won’t really need an official “playroom” until baby number two comes along (and we turn the playroom into a bedroom). And I’ll spoil the surprise for

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March Superlatives

Note: This is a retroactive post that I cobbled together in December of 2011 so I could make this page full of monthly recaps for the entire year (our first in our new house!). Yup, I’m just a bit type A. So here’s what we tackled throughout the month of March – high school yearbook style. Most Archeological: Digging around in the dirt next to our driveway to find all sorts of things (and eventually cleaning things up after the treasure hunt ended). Most Likely To Result In A Crack Joke: Hanging a ceiling medallion in Clara’s room (to solve a cracked drywall situation). Most Times Square-esque: Our new chandelier from Ikea, which we hung

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Limbing Up Trees So You Can See The House Again

Alternate post title: Trees: 0. Sherry: 2. You might not remember what our first house looked like when we bought it so I’ll remind you: And this is what it looked like five hours after John left and I went crazy with a clipper (surprise!): Three cheers for being able to see the house. And we gained a view of the neighborhood from our front windows. You know, instead of the view of a dense “tree fence.” So much better. Plus it was free and gave me a nice little arm workout. Of course that house’s curb appeal was a pretty constant four and a half year evolution (these things take time) so when we

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Thrifting in Huntington West Virginia

A few weeks back we packed up the car, went over a few rivers, and through a bunch of woods to go see my 89-year-old grandmother (aka Granny) in Huntington, WV. It was primarily a weekend of eating and baby holding (is there anything better?) because we were joined by my parents, my cousin Erin, and her 2-month-old son Finn. But we managed to squeeze in a few side adventures that we thought you all might enjoy… which we would’ve shared sooner if most of the pictures weren’t stuck in photo purgatory on our old point-and-shoot camera (we finally found the camera cord that we lost during the move this weekend). Here’s the obligatory “Clara

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How To Customize Ikea Furniture Legs With Paint

That’s right, Karl‘s legs are pale no more. After some thought we decided to give all 12 of our sectional’s cheap looking birch legs a coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint to deepen them and give them a subtle sheen and dimension that brown paint just wouldn’t offer. It was pretty easy except it necessitated a bit of Karl disassembly. Poor guy. But once we got all of those legs off it was as simple as sanding each of them with low grit paper by hand (I used 60 grit stuff I had around). Although the legs looked pale and stain-less, they actually had some sort of clear finish on them (here’s one before sanding):

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Fab Freebie: Get Your Soapbox On

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – check back soon to see who won!*** Good news – everyone can get 10% off Mrs. Jones Soapbox products using code YHL10! Even better news (for two of you), random.org has chosen our winners as… Jenna (who can’t wait to clean up and declutter her office) and Erica (who’s excited to clean her garage of all the winter cobwebs, salt and dirt). Congrats! Spring is (mostly) in the air, so we figured this week’s freebie will excite anyone who is setting out to do some spring cleaning and doesn’t want to disturb the fresh spring air with the scent of chemical cleaners. Since we’re not ones to

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Getting Cheap Dining Chairs From Craigslist

We finally scored some chairs for the dining room, thanks to this craiglist ad emailed to us by our friend Sandra (muchas gracias!). You’re probably thinking: what are they thinking?! Parsons chairs? Yup, that’s exactly what we’ve wanted since day one. Thirty bucks? Yeah baby. Weird green and blue swirly pattern? Um… no comment. But since the price was right (we actually bargained them down to $25 per chair, coming to $200 total for all 8) and the shape/lines were right (they’re solid and very well-made) we figured it was time to pounce (with some reassurance from a few online tutorials about dyeing fabric, making slipcovers, or reupholstering parsons chairs). So in the end we

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Monster Eyeballs

Three cheers for a $12 fifteen minute project that makes us giggle. Because sometimes you just gotta laugh. We switched out the old knobs on our dining room built-ins. The first step is to put on your safety goggles and protective gloves. Kidding. The first step is to unscrew the old ones and the second step is to screw in the new ones. So easy. Here’s a little in-progress action shot for ya: And here are the new ones all “installed”: But back to the whole monster eyeballs thing. When I fell in love with these greeny-yellow knobs at Hobby Lobby (for $1.50 a pop thanks to a 50% off sale), it never crossed my

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