Young House Love

“Not funny.” That’s what I said when a tree branch across the street fell and took out our power yesterday, a mere two minutes before Richard-the-mason and his crew arrived. Luckily, widening a brick wall is mostly manual work – and chipping out bricks and cinder blocks isn’t contingent upon electricity. When the power hummed back on about an hour later, the crew hardly noticed (picture me jumping for joy in the background while they continued to chip and hammer away). By the end of the day, the brick doorway was finally widened to a glorious 5 foot opening…and the house didn’t fall down in the process! Check out the end result of a project

HOODWINKED! As in, we did the hoodwinking. After months of having our eye on a stainless steel chimney hood for above the stove in our new kitchen, the $1579 price tag was still hard to swallow. And then something that can only be described as a miracle happened. We found one for $350. It turns out that a high-end European brand wanted to break into the US market, so they offered their swank chimney hood exclusively to Home Depot at a staggering $350 price. Home Depot gladly accepted and within weeks it had sold out. But not before we snagged one! And get this- according to the salesman, the company is so known for its

When the cabinets came out on Wednesday, we uncovered some buried treasure. Well, if you consider things stuck under 50-year old cabinets to be “buried” and tattered old papers to be “treasure.” Here’s what we found: Coupon for 5¢ off 2 bars of Princess Dial soap (“the soap with moisturizing cream right in it”) Coupon for 12¢ off two cans of Campbell’s Soup for One (expires 4/30/81 – I was less than 7 months from birth!) Coupon for 15¢ off 2 packages of Soft-weve toilet paper A dentist appointment reminder card for Mrs. Floyd Pollay for April 28, 1971 at 2pm A Beginner Bible Story dated Nov 1958 A Storytime pamphlet called “God’s Helpers” dated

We created a temporary dust free zone thanks to a plastic tarp and a bit of painter’s tape. Renovation dust can get everywhere so it’s definitely worth your while to protect what you can!

We love Lowe’s. We find tons of great things there – low prices, good customer service, nice product selection, etc. I can think of only two times Lowe’s failed us and Home Depot came to our rescue: 1. vinyl floor tile options 2. a special sized toilet tank for our tiny half-bath Now there’s a third: kitchen design. While browsing cabinet options one night, we stumbled into conversation with a girl in Lowe’s kitchen design department. She was really nice and similar in age and life stage to us (just got married, was renovating her first home) so we connected immediately. She listened to everything we liked, was really encouraging and supportive of all of