Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Beginning Our Laundry Room Renovation

There’s nothing like having a newborn to make you appreciate having a nice spot to do laundry. Ours functions just fine, but I’d say it still falls a bit short of “nice” in the looks department. So we’ve decided it’s major overhaul time. Things have made minor progress since the beginning. Blue trim was painted. Old blue bi-fold doors came off. Flooring was replaced. Hallway walls were painted. And, oh yeah, we unexpectedly had to buy new appliances. I actually bothered to spray those bi-folds white back when we painted the trim and doors upstairs and they’ve been living in the storage room ever since. Once every few months Sherry and I talk about re-hanging

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Writing Our Second Book

We’ve been mentioning our second book off-and-on for several months now, usually followed by promises to give you some details soon, so we’re finally fulfilling that promise. How did you get a second book deal? Our original deal with our publisher, Artisan Books, was for two books, so we’ve known since signing on with them in 2011 that we’d be doing a follow-up to our first book, which came out in November of 2012 (more on that whole experience here). When will this one come out? Right now we’re working towards a fall of 2015 release – although that depends on lots of factors (many beyond our control) so it’s not set in stone yet.

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Fab Freebie: Earn Your Stripes

Well, more like win your stripes, since Dash & Albert is offering up a $500 gift card to one lucky winner. We’ve been fans of their stylish and logic-defying ability to combine softness and beauty with indoor & outdoor durability, having used them in our own home (remember this patriotically-titled post about our stair runner?) as well as in our showhouse. They’ve got lots of classic patterns and on-trend colors that reach beyond rugs to items like pillows, ottomans, poufs, and even bags. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available to residents of the United

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Adding Overhead Lighting & Extra Outlets

Yes, that’s an electric slide reference. And I’d bet money that it’s cracking my mom up while my brother is rolling his eyes and vowing never to read this blog again. Let’s talk about electrical updates, like hanging a new capiz chandelier in the bedroom, and putting our heads together to gain a few bonus outlets and cut down on drywall holes while running electrical wiring. After last week’s post about our four new outdoor sconces, we mentioned we had some other wiring work done inside at the same time, so here’s the rundown on everything we added, where it went, and how much it all cost. We’ll start with the prettiest result so far

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Hanging A Collection Of Frames All Over The Wall

Our master bedroom has moved leaps and bounds over the last few days in terms of not looking like a big empty room with a bed in it. And by leaps and bounds, I mean frames and curtains. And more frames. Plus a few more frames after that.   Before we started putting a bunch of holes in our walls, this is what the room looked like (and what it has pretty much looked like since we painted it nine months ago). It was in desperate need of curtains at the very least, but we’re not done with those yet, so just ignore those and let’s talk about the frames.   We had long talked

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Adding Outdoor Sconces To Our Back Porch

There’s something illuminating going on in our sunroom. And I’m not talking about the fireflies Clara is constantly trying to catch and befriend (she told me the other day that she wants one to live in her room FOREVER). Befriend? Imprison? Potato, potahto. Yep, our sunroom – er, veranda if you’re nasty fancy – is finally sporting some lighting, courtesy of the new fixtures that we added to the posts in the four corners of the room. Our original plan last summer had been to install light kits on the two fans in the room, but we never found fan lights we liked… and then we slowly warmed up to the idea of sconces around

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Fab Freebie: Art Meets Science

It’s not every day that you get an email from the country’s largest science museum, which is why my nerd-dar went off the charts after the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago reached out to offer up $350 towards some museum-worthy art. They’ve launched a photography shop offering dozens of museum images as fine art prints and wrapped canvases. The images cover everything from historic pictures and illustrations (some of my faves being old trade catalogs, like the “Types of Screws” chart below) to photos of museum exhibits and artifacts, like their iconic baby chicks, colorful architectural prints, or old timey bicycles. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second

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How Our Ardex Concrete Counters Are Holding Up

You guys have been curious about everything from how our concrete counters are wearing and how our refinished foyer grout is holding up to how our new blogging schedule is working for us. And since we’re not always great at updating you guys (blogging tends to follow an “on to the next thing!” pattern), here’s a big ol’ rundown, which marks the third one in this series (here’s our first one and our second one so you can check out if we covered other topics you’ve wondered about there). Our Ardex-concrete counters: These guys have largely been awesome, and our sealer choice has made them even more durable than we expected. For example, we thought we’d

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How To Add Pull Out Basket Drawers In The Kitchen

Remember how we had a trash compactor in our kitchen? Remember how we removed it waaaaay back in March? Well, we have officially filled the void with some slide out baskets. Only took us three months. Not that the hole it left wasn’t super attractive and crazy functional. I mean, if incorporating a “great Clara hiding spot” into our kitchen was the goal (and I put that in quotes because Clara’s hiding spots are frequently preceded by “I’m going to go hide in the [insert one of four usual locations here]”). So yeah, it’s time this hole worked a little harder. We debated a few options – like putting a trash or recycling bin there

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Picking The Best Egg Chair For The Back Porch

Since I’m Genetically One-Quarter Egg Chair… (John described me that way in this post, and it made me laugh because let’s face it, it’s true). I’m also one-quarter dog fur (it’s always all over me) and one-quarter ceramic animal (no further explanation required). How quickly this post got off track. Anyway, now that we have a sofa and a coffee table on our back porch, the next thing on our list was a little more seating to round out that side of the room in the form of a comfy chair. Our first option was just to buy the $749 chair that matches our sofa. We liked that it would definitely tie into the color/look of

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Fab Freebie: Shine Bright Like A Diamond

How does $500 towards new lighting for anyone in the world sound? We’ve added four new additions to our lighting collection at Shades of Light, so we figured a giveaway was a fun way to introduce them to you guys. Nearly a year and a half ago when we launched our first collection with them (more on that here), we knew we wanted a cool flush mount light (you know, to fight the good fight against boob lights everywhere), which was solved with the Diamond Ceiling Light. And our yearning for a geometric table lamp was remedied with the Metal Strap Lamp Base. We also added another larger scale hanging option to the mix (these

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Our House’s Original Owners

One of our favorite posts in our entire archive is this one about hearing from our first house’s original owners. It was so much fun to see photos of their family in our house back in the 60’s, and we studied every inch of each picture and relished every detail that they shared in their letter. We were also friendly with the people who sold us our second house, so although we never heard from the original owners, it was really great to know the sellers who had lived there for 22 years! So we always hoped to hear from the original owners of our current house. For a while… nothing. And then it happened!

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