Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Blast From The Past: Part 2

Is it painfully obvious that we’re trying to keep everyone entertained while holiday celebrations are distracting us from working on the house? We thought so. Now that you’ve seen my little space in the big city, it’s time to show John’s Apartment on New York City’s Upper West Side. It’s second in the series of videos I shot for Kitty, my BFF who lived in Iowa at the time. John actually edited this one down a little bit so you don’t get to see the living room. That’s because it was only a living room for a few days before they had walls built to create a third bedroom in order to accommodate a third

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Blast From The Past: Part 1

First things first – Merry Christmas everyone! We’re busy enjoying some quality family time, so here’s a pre-prepared post for everyone to enjoy in the meantime: The other day we set out to clean up our poor little iBook’s overloaded hard-drive. It quickly turned from a mass-file-deleting to a mass-let’s-reminisce-about-this-and- then-keep-it-for-the-memories. So, the bad news is that the hard-drive didn’t get much relief. The good news is that we found fun things to share. The best of our re-discoveries was a series of video clips. Between the many clips of puppy-sized Burger we actually found a few home-related ones. Our favorites being video tours of some of our old NYC apartments that Sherry had shot

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Spreading Holiday Cheer

As mentioned in our “acceptance speech,” we planned to give a portion of our prize money from RemodelingMySpace.com’s contest to a local housing charity. So when our check arrived on Saturday it was finally time to spread the love. And this time the love went to Richmond’s Better Housing Coalition. The Better Housing Coalition has been working in Richmond for 20 years to revitalize communities in our area, primarily by taking neglected homes in historic neighborhoods and turning them into affordable housing for low-income families. For instance, they do work in Union Hill, the neighborhood featured in the TLC special “Flip It Back” we reported on a few weeks ago. We’re still learning about the

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A Brown Area Rug From JC Penney

I am rarely excited by anything from JC Penney, but we just got the most amazing area rug for the living room. It has this great pattern (they call it “honeycomb”) and it’s real wool, which makes me feel like such a grown up. It was a steal for around $200 (the detail, the quality, and the coloring is totally reminiscent of a thousand dollar version I saw a while back- yessss). Plus since I ordered it online, I was able to use a promo code to score an additional 20% off AND free shipping (tip: google the name of the store along with the words “promo code” to save a bundle of cashola- in

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Our Guest Room Is Ready For Guests!

We got our second guest bedroom ready for its close up just in the nick of time (we’re hosting some family tonight). A few days ago we showed you the new daybed and reading corner, but now we get to share some pics with more personality thanks to a bunch of punchy accessories. Much to my surprise, John okayed two fuzzy leopard pillows (he’s not really crazy about animal prints in general… now that’s love). The addition of a woven basket of books, some furry leopard slippers, and a splash of turquoise (in the form of a throw on the chair and a book on the ottoman) made the room practically scream “be our guest”

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A Stainless Steel Hood In The Kitchen

After 15 painfully slow days of waiting impatiently, our kitchen remodel picked back up again this Monday with the arrival of our replacement corner cabinet. Which means that the installer could come over yesterday (right at 8am, no less) to put in the final cabinet (which had to be reordered from KraftMaid due to the fact that the first one was backwards). Mike The Install Guy also took care of a few other finishing touches while he was here: adding toe kicks & shoe molding, venting the hood up through the attic and attaching the last part of our hood- all little things but they made a world of difference (proving that the devil really

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Adding A Daybed To The Guest Room

The third bedroom (also known as our second guest bedroom) has finally come together. And not a minute too soon since we’re hosting a gaggle of guests on Friday night. As a reminder, this is the former dining room that we converted into a bedroom by closing off the doorway that connected it to the kitchen (we didn’t miss the dining space since we moved it into our jumbo living room). Lucky for us, the old dining room already had a closet, so other than ripping down the chair rail and switching out the light fixture it wasn’t much work at all (after the doorway was closed by a professional). Here’s a picture of the

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Classy Richmond vs Tacky Richmond

For the most part, Richmond is a classy city: historic architecture, cobblestone streets, Sunday brunches, etc, etc. Even during the holidays, historic downtown streets keep their Christmas decorations full of class- like this fancy little tree below. But I’d be lying if I told you that fancy downtown Christmas decor was the norm around Richmond these days. This is actually the time of year where other parts of the city are happy to embrace their tacky side. Hence our beloved and famous (infamous?) Tacky Light Tour. I can’t claim to be an expert on the Tacky Light Tour, but what I do know is that it’s basically a list of homes in the area boasting

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Our Dog-Turned-Reindeer Christmas Cards

As the wait for that last cabinet continues, we’ve found another way to keep ourselves busy: holiday cards. We’re not typically holiday card people, but with a Target coupon offering up some free photo greetings we couldn’t pass up the chance to spread some cheer. Here’s the pic. It stars Burger, who fell victim to our idle hands, over-active imaginations and some photoshop: In case we forget to say it later: Happy holidays to everyone from John, Sherry and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Chihuahua.

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Oh Christmas Tree

Our house has never looked more festive. We decked the halls (well, more like the living room, the den, and the front door) with all things sparkly and even though it was 82 degrees yesterday (!) it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Our silver themed tree came out really well, and a few strategically placed silver balls made other objects around the house feel totally Santa-ready. My favorite new ornament holder is a giant clam shell from Z Gallerie that John surprised me with for my last birthday. The different toned silver ornaments inside twinkle like oversized pearls- but glass balls also look great in vases, on platters, and even hung from fishing

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