Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Finding Wallpaper For The Nursery

I know it sounds kinda crazy, but after painstakingly removing five different wallpapers from this house… we’re considering putting some up. I think I even passively mentioned it in this post about the nursery mobile. Ever since we imagined the idea of these built-ins, we pictured making the space between the two of them sort sort of accent – either with a color or pattern or treatment of some sort (in our first post we even mentioned a planked wall). Those ideas fizzled a little bit after completing the built-ins and realizing they had a lot of stuff on them (so we didn’t want to clutter up that space between them above the crib too).

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Picking The Paint, Light Fixtures, Doorknobs, & Vanities For The Showhouse

I’m thinking we should post pictures of blue ceilings more often on Instagram, at least judging by the reaction we got to this pic from the Homearama Showhouse on Monday. Then again, it may have just been thanks to Sherry’s dancing girl emojis. As those high-steppin’ cartoon ladies indicated, we’re pretty psyched about how things are shaping up over there. The bold “Skydive” color that we chose for the office ceiling (by Benjamin Moore) came out better than we imagined, and we even got to use one of our favorite lights that we designed last year. But although there has been TONS of progress since our last update two weeks ago, it’s unfortunately not the

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How To Paint A Hallway Fast

Just when you thought we were all painted out on Monday, I’m back with another painting update. With this bun of ours arriving in five short weeks, it’s lighting a “paint all the things!” fire under my rear. I know that being laid up with a c-section will mean staring at all of the not-done things on the ol’ to-do list, so humming through a few of them before the little man is here will hopefully put my nesting slash home-making mind at ease. So we set our sights on the upstairs hallway. It connects so many rooms (the nursery, our room, the hall bath, Clara’s room, the guest room, the laundry, etc) that we

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Fab Freebie: Art For U

With over 6,000 original pieces to peruse and $500 to spend, UGallery is going to help someone upgrade their walls in a major way this week. Browsing so many artists and works is easier thanks to being able to filter by medium, price, color, size, and style – plus they ship everything for free and will even let you try things out at home for seven days to make sure your selected piece really works in your space. It’s sort of like dating your art before you put a ring on it. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this

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2 Free Floor Planning Apps

Let’s talk about Apps And Zerts, shall we? (Yes, that was a Tom Haverford reference, so you might want to grab your super water and sandoozles before we get into the nitty gritty) As I was trying out some new floor-planning apps to write last week’s post about our office floor plans, I took some screen shots and photos to share with you guys, and then that post felt full of enough graphics and words without them so I thought “eh, I’ll just skip that stuff.” Well, no less than a few dozen of you asked for more info on how our floor plans were made – and lo, this post was born. Like a phoenix

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How To Paint Trim With A Paint Sprayer

Whilst discussing office plans last week, a few of your comments about the blue trim situation in that room were the push that we needed. We were fooling ourselves to think we should paint all that trim by hand (we’re talking baseboards, crown molding, and five windows totaling 66 individual panes). So we decided to bite the bullet, break out the paint sprayer, tape everything off, cross our fingers and toes that we didn’t get any bleed-through on those wood floors, and say hasta la vista to some more blue trim this weekend. We had painted all of the upstairs trim with the sprayer before we moved in and before the new floors went down,

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Things We’ll Keep And Change For Baby #2

This being our second trip to the baby rodeo hopefully means that we’re a bit wiser going in. We can cherry-pick from what worked well with Clara while trying to improve on some newborn and baby items, products, and methods that might need fine tuning. Of course every kid is different and what worked for baby #1 may not apply for #2 – so we’re just waiting for those curve balls to come flying towards us – but since you guys have been asking, here are five things we’re planning to redo (as in do again or use again) and five things that we’ll do new. And because they pair up nicely, we’ll look at

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How To Make An Easy Baby Quilt

Here’s the story of how I made a cute little quilt for our baby boy on the way. A few years ago I chronicled how my not-nearly-a-seamstress buns were compelled possessed to make a quilt for the bean. And here I am a few years later (after a tornado of thread and a surprisingly successful sewing machine date) with another homemade quilt – this time for our little man. I don’t think I would have been so into making him a quilt if Clara hadn’t grown so attached to hers. She not only has slept with it pretty much every night since I finished it… … but she brings it in the car for road

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Home Office Floor Plans

It seems our excitement for the plans that we’ve been cooking up for the showhouse office has spilled over to our own office. Well, that and the fact that ours is looking pretty sad lately, having recently pilfered both its armchair and Expedit for the nursery. It doesn’t help that our chalkboard still says “Merry Christmas” on it. So basically, yeah, this office screams “I’ve got my ish together.” We’re excited to be thinking about the office because it’s one of our favorite full-of-raw-potential spaces in the house (so much space! so much light!). And with the baby’s impending arrival (six weeks!) we’re feeling the urge to consolidate our business life so it’s less likely

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How To Paint A Refrigerator With Appliance Paint

So yeah… our fridge is white now. It’s not a new fridge, it’s just our old almond-colored one “freshened up” a bit with some appliance paint so that it would play along more nicely with our white cabinets. After tons of you (literally dozens) mentioned that you had great luck with appliance paint in this post, we were encouraged to give it a try. I’ll admit that I initially had my doubts, but after hearing such rave reviews from you guys, we figured at its best, this update would help an old fridge blend in more until we save up enough money to replace it during Phase 2 of this kitchen makeover. And if it

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Fab Freebie: Have Mercier

Whoever wants a little more ooh-la-la in their home this week is in luck. Nineteen Mercièr is giving someone $500 to spend on any of the items in their shop – all of which are inspired by old world France. They have a nice mix of timeworn and weathered pieces, right alongside bold metals and graphic shapes. So whether you’re trying to complete the look in a rustic room, or just bring a bit of balance to a more modern space there’s plenty to choose from. 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

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Painting On A Faux Inlay Pattern

This kind of spoils the whole “wait for it… here it comes…” build-up, but I had to lead with an after picture for you guys. It’s a super affordable, deceivingly simple thrift store table upgrade. Seriously, don’t tell me you can’t do this. You can. And I’ll give you one of these if you say you can’t. Do you remember the $25 thrift store Moroccan table that I brought home nearly two years ago? Even after cleaning it up, the top still had a few issues, but I didn’t want to rush into altering it right away (like attempting to putty, sand, prime, and stain/paint it) so I just tossed a few things on the

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