Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Three Months In

Dude, we’ve been here over three months! On one hand it feels like we’ve lived here forever, and on the other hand it feels like we just moved in last week (wasn’t it last week?!). We’re definitely surprised by how much we’ve knocked out since moving in (new flooring upstairs, a bunch of exterior upgrades, a half bathroom and a foyer facelift, some fresh paint in the bedroom, and a freshly lofted sunroom) yet some of the completely untouched rooms have us itching to bounce around to them soon. But enough chatter, let’s get to the photos. Here’s a time capsule of how our house looks three months in: – The Front – We’ve had

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A Beautiful DIY Secret Garden

Something has us gravitating towards outdoor spaces lately. Maybe it’s being mid-makeover on our freshly lofted sunroom? Maybe it’s wishful thinking that summer isn’t ending? Whatever it is, we loving Stacy’s transformation of her backyard into a quaint and cozy green space. Here’s her letter: There were several books from my childhood that affected my view on life and how I wanted my home to be when I grew up. One of them was a book titled Mandy, and another was The Secret Garden. I have always wanted a space that was all mine. A space that maybe didn’t function as anything other than a retreat and a place to image and dream. Welcome to my secret

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How To Turn A Coat Closet Into Toy Storage

The closet next to our front door was an obvious place for our coat closet when we first moved in. But since our definition of “coat closet” seems to include random stuff like cleaning supplies (vacuum, dust buster, etc) as well as miscellaneous files and bags, we quickly realized that it was smarter for us to use the deeper closet under the stairs for that stuff instead. It’s slightly closer to the garage anyways, so it’s actually a more convenient spot for daily coat access (not that I’m ready to admit summer’s over yet). But that left this lonely guy next to the door without a job to do. And what’s the opposite of having

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Painting Our Bedroom A Rich Blue Paint Color

Nope, we’re not cooking in the bedroom, that’s the name of our new paint color… You’ve actually seen it already in this post about the color palette that we’re leaning towards for this house and we’re so dang happy with it. It was between Sparrow, Knoxville Gray, Sea Star, and Black Pepper for our master, and when we held up the swatches it took the lead for having depth along with a cool faded feeling. It feels fresh, yet also could be one of those “historical colors” which we think is the sweet spot for our house. Since it’s a large room full of light furnishings and crisp white trim and doors, we thought it

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Craigslisting & Selling Old Home Items & Furniture

After a few “settling in” months we’re going through that phase I like to affectionately call the What We Really Need (And Don’t) Phase. Essentially, like most folks before a move, we tend to do our best to craigslist or donate or yard sale the things we know we no longer need or use (so we don’t waste time/energy moving it only to store it and never use it again in the new house). But we do end up moving all of the stuff that we loved and used in our last house, even if we’re unsure where it’ll go in the new house. Then after a few months of actually being in the space

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Deciding Between Painting Or Tiling A Concrete Floor

Last you saw our sunroom, it looked like this: Well, now it’s looking a little something like this: Forgive the poor iPhone pic, but it’s the only one I snapped (just to text to my parents, actually) before Richmond turned into rain city yesterday. But you get the point, we’ve made some good progress lofting the ceiling (with the help of a professional framer who came out this week to make sure our roof wouldn’t collapse). But we’ll get into the story of the ceiling next week once the electrician has come and turned the (now loose) wires into junction boxes for two fans. Today we’re talking about a floor plan. As in, a plan

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How To Decorate More Confidently

Happy hump-day afternoon, y’all! I made you guys a little something. I realized that while many of our posts are tutorials or projects or planning or shopping related (how we built this, what fill-in-the-blank we found on craigslist, how we painted that, etc) only around 2% of them have touched on the heart of the whole DIY thing: just doing you and having the faith/courage/conviction/confidence to go for it when it comes to creating a home that you love. So if you’re feeling stuck or second guessing yourself (goodness knows we do that!) these simple words from people far wiser than ourselves might be all that you need to pull the cord and go for

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House Crashing: Perky & Personal

When Julia invited us to crash her house, which she describes as a typical cookie cutter Pennsylvania house on the outside (she’s not allowed to change much, even the color of the front door), we fell in love the moment she virtually let us inside. Here’s Julia now. She lives here with her husband Jarrid, her 10 year old son, her six year old daughter, and her three kitties. Their house definitely feels like a nice mix of quirky and fun with elegant and classic choices. Soft neutral walls with white molding are mixed with a cardboard deer head and a pretty crystal chandelier. You can see her living room peeking out down the hallway

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Hanging A Moravian Star Light In The Foyer

Dude, things just got real in the foyer. We found this light at the local lighting outlet here in Richmond called The Decorating Outlet for $135 (down from $455 at Shades of Light, just because it had been returned). I had always pictured something big and architectural in there – most likely in an oil-rubbed bronze finish because there are a bunch of ORB doorknobs going on in the foyer and I thought it would look nice. Thankfully John was game too since the guy’s down with geometry and shapes and stuff. UPDATE: Here’s an incredibly similar moravian star pendant on Amazon since the Shades of Light version is currently out of stock.  Boom. The foyer

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Fab Freebie: Can I Quote You On That?

This week WallQuotes is hooking up TWO of you with a little wall makeover. In addition to $150 towards anything on their site, you’ll also get $50 to your favorite paint store. So while you’re adding some new color to your space, you can also add some personality with WallQuotes’ easy-to-apply vinyl decals. They’ve got pre-designed quotes for a range of rooms and occasions, plus you can design your own. We also love their graphic skylines, monograms, and wrought-iron inspired headboards. 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 giveaways is available worldwide! And for anyone who misses

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How To Tear Down An Old Ceiling

Oh what a feeling… dancing on the ceiling. Which is much easier when your ceiling is on the floor. But let’s rewind to a time when our sunroom ceiling was more ceiling-like. We’ve mentioned we wanted to try vaulting the ceiling in here to make it feel even more open (here’s a link to some of our inspiration). We’ve never vaulted a ceiling before but we figured this was a pretty low-risk spot to finally give it a go. We realized from the start that we might need to hire a pro for part of the job since structural ramifications like “the roof could cave in” is one of those failing answers to our “what’s

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Easy DIY Bouquets

Happy Friday, y’all! What is it about sunroom ceiling demo that gets me all hyper and clammy? Yes, that’s continuing today (we’re still opening things up and waiting on some expert advice) but I promise we’ll have an official update for you guys on Monday! And now, just for good measure, more exclamation points!!!! In the meantime, I figured after a big week of sunroom demo, whitewashing, sunroom rebuilding, and more sunroom demo, it was high time for a budget blooms post. We used to do these every month, and then I fell off last year. And then I got back on the wagon and fell off again later last year. But I’m baaaaaaack! Not

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