Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Halfway Through May

It’s time for our monthly moment of thanks to the sponsors who make the other 30+ posts possible. Without them we might not have food on our tables or clothes on our backs (and hungry, naked blogging doesn’t make for good DIY morale). So feel free to check out some things that caught our eye this month, and peruse our usual round-up of discounts at the bottom of the post – plus a hint about Monday’s $500 giveaway! This “Splatter Stacks” print from Hoot Design Co. Because books make me happy. Shades of Light‘s dhurrie rugs, like this honeycomb guy that comes in five colors. Our pal Dusty’s DIY backsplash install as featured on The

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How To Draw Floor Plans With Floorplanner.com

Just like our first house floor plan and our current house floor plan from yesteryear, a bunch of you have requested a new house floor plan. So here ya go! They definitely help visual people like us see what walls are where, and what flows into what. So we whipped this up with floorplanner.com (which is, as the name might suggest, a free floor planning site). One big difference from the last two floor planning posts that we shared? This time there’s a second level. Who’s got two thumbs and a set of stairs? This girl. The funny thing is that when we shared a video tour of the new house, some people said “wow,

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How To Remove Carpet & Prep For Hardwood Floors

Dude, removing wall to wall carpeting (and all the layers under it) is no joke. We learned that when we finally tackled that task this weekend – and lived to tell the tale. Let me just tell you, progress smells a lot better than old carpeting. Even when there’s a substantial amount of sweat involved… When we bought this house we knew that the four bedrooms upstairs (along with the hallway) needed new flooring since the once-cream (now mostly tan) wall to wall carpets were stained, threadbare, and even holey in some areas. Thankfully a few areas were so loose we could peek under them during our very first walk-through to see what we were

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Fab Freebie: Talent Show

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** This week’s randomly selected winner is… Sheilagh (who’s talents lie in “all aspects of art and being crafty!”). Congrats! One of the most exciting parts of doing a project is getting to share the sweat-inducing results when it’s done. And that’s the idea behind HouseTalent, a free site where you can easily upload before pics, progress shots, and after photos of the DIYs that are going on in your digs. The friendly interface makes browsing other peoples’ accomplishments just as easy as uploading your own inspiration – from small furniture builds to major room overhauls. And to help you get some of your projects ready

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How We Sold Our Second House By Owner

Holy cow, did we just sell our house? (I’ll pause while Sherry flails around since that sentence is a trigger). Now that we’re through the inspection & the appraisal (and the closing date is officially on the calendar), we’re finally at the point that we feel safe enough to shout it to the interwebs (we waited until this point to share the “we sold our house” news last time too). Of course nothing’s guaranteed until we’re all signing on the dotted line in early June, but so far, so good… First, some background: Sherry was set on selling our house FSBO (For Sale By Owner) again. She argued that we stood to save nearly ten grand –

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How To Paint Exterior Siding

Remember back when we debated painting the siding on the front porch way back here in fall 2011? Hence the creepy Halloween wreath on the door. We had picked a color and everything (Flagstone by Martha Stewart – the one on the right in the photo above) but before we got around to doing it, the temperatures dropped too much to paint. Then the test swatches – which lived on our porch for several months (sorry neighbors) got painted over when it was time to shoot book photos out there. The project literally became out of sight, and out of mind. Then we redid the columns. And when we did a few of you guys

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A Kitchen With Dark Gray Lower Cabinets & White Uppers

As much as we love a white kitchen, there are so many other fun options out there, like my sister’s wood cabinets + white appliances combo and “tuxedo” kitchens (a combo of dark and light cabinets). So when Rita’s makeover landed in our inbox, we couldn’t believe how much she changed her space for the better, and especially liked her two-tone cabinets. Here’s her letter: Hi Sherry and John, We recently finished renovating our kitchen. The challenge was creating a kosher kitchen (two sinks and separate spaces for meat and dairy) while keeping it looking clean and uncluttered and keeping the cost down. The original kitchen was beige-on-beige laminate with very little counter space. The

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How To Hang Window Boxes

Word up my fellow Pinterest playas. Hope you got down with some baking, crafting, painting, organizing, sewing, building, or knitting fun because it’s time to share this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). The only rule is to pin something you’ve wanted to get done (big or small) and do it. You know, instead of sitting on your duff pinning other things… which I’ll admit happens a whole lot in my world. Our mission this season? Window boxes! I actually pinned two window-box related pics, this picture just for the eye candy of it (at $90+

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Planning A Dragon Birthday Party

In keeping with our annual tradition, we thought we’d give you a peek at Clara’s invitation and a few of our party supplies like we did last year and the year before. And since a lot of you are trying to guess the theme that she picked this year (after choosing worms last year)… well… say hello to our little dragon. The dragon theme came about a bit more gradually than last year’s theme, which was born from her worm-laden dreams. Somewhere between declaring that the book Dragons Love Tacos is her favorite (we even read it to her preschool class last month) and frequently requesting to wear her dragon cape around the house – it

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Fab Freebie: Come To My Windows

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And this week’s lucky winner is Amy (who says she has an “unhealthy addiction to my iPhone, between email, Facebook, Pinterest etc. but I put it away for family time.”) Congrats! Whether it’s googling around for a tutorial, answering comments on the go, or making a list of project materials on our phone, gadgets have definitely wormed their way into our DIY routine. So we thought one of you might enjoy being hooked up with over $700 worth of Microsoft’s newest Windows devices – a Surface RT and a Windows Phone. The Surface is like a tablet, laptop, and e-reader in one –

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A Video Tour Of Our New House

Now that we’re wrapping things up at our current house and we’ve spilled the new house beans it’s like we’ve finally given ourselves permission to LOSE. OUR. MINDS. So yeah, this new house video tour is full of chirpy excitement that only a home in your dream neighborhood can produce. Forgive me. It’s not a good look. And watching it produces the same embarrassment that my way-too-enthusiastic mom elicited back in high school. Which confirms that I’m turning into her. Uh oh… Woop, there it is. The first set of stairs we ever owned, and the house that’s attached to them. A few notes: I’m not awkward at all in the beginning. We used John’s

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How To Stain & Seal The Deck

With our power washing done we could finally stain and seal our deck, which we completed and re-furnished on Tuesday (literally hours before our first showing!). But let’s rewind to where we left off yesterday. We mentioned that after finishing it in late August we were told to give the pressure treated wood 2-3 months to dry out before sealing any of the moisture from the treatment in (apparently sealing or staining PT wood too soon can lead to terrible results). So by the time staining was advised, it was too cold out to apply the stain. But even after spring rolled around and we power washed, it still wasn’t quite ready. What was standing

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