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A Tribute To Burger https://ift.tt/3mfnBy0

We shared some sad news on Instagram Stories last week, but wanted to make sure to post something here too, because Burger was such a huge part of our blog. Last Monday, our sweet chihuahua Burger passed away at the age of 15. It was a long wonderful life, but we miss him so so much. The house is way too quiet without him.

We got him when we were 24 years old. Before we got married, before the blog, before we had kids, before almost every adult experience we had together. He was there through it all.

He was always such a happy boy. We are so grateful for all the years we shared. He seemed to pass away peacefully in his sleep. For a dog that was diagnosed with a severe heart murmur six years ago, we are grateful for all the extra years that he defied the odds after that.

Continue reading A Tribute To Burger at Young House Love.

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7 Smart Storage Pieces That We Rely On Every Day https://ift.tt/39RTkP0

Anyone who lives in a small-ish space knows that thoughtful storage can upgrade so many aspects of your life at home when it’s done right (and it can be a daily frustration when it’s not done well or at all). No matter how big your rooms are or how many you have, you just want to be able to access things easily & keep them in a smart spot – and downsizing from our 3150 square foot house to this 1400 square foot home last year definitely challenged us to be even more mindful about how we incorporate the most useful storage systems into our home. Suddenly we were living in 6 rooms (down from 14!) and we also no longer have a garage, an attic, a big outdoor shed/workshop, or even a closet in most of the bedrooms (of our 3 bedrooms, only 1 had a closet when we bought this house!).

Continue reading 7 Smart Storage Pieces That We Rely On Every Day at Young House Love.

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9 Kitchen Updates That Help Us Make The Most Of Our Small Kitchen https://ift.tt/3CuR1O1

“We just couldn’t figure out why you weren’t tearing out the kitchen.”

That’s what one of our contractor’s guys said to us right as we moved in last year. I understood his confusion. We were redoing floors, moving doors, vaulting ceilings, etc – but we left the small old kitchen relatively untouched – complete with mauve laminate countertops. You can see what I mean in this post.

But to know us is to know that we strongly prefer to live with an expensive-to-renovate room like a kitchen first, just so we don’t rush into spending major money on big permanent changes that we might later regret or wish that we thought through a little longer. So we spent the last 16 months debating various big ideas for this room, all while peppering in some simple smaller updates to get a feel for how they help improve the space and what we might want for our more long-term plan.

Continue reading 9 Kitchen Updates That Help Us Make The Most Of Our Small Kitchen at Young House Love.

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Putting In A Pool: The Process, The Cost, and All The Before & After Photos https://ift.tt/2W8qJSb

It’s been a full year in the making, but OUR POOL IS DONE*! Here’s where I imagine someone saying “and the crowd goes wiiiiild” (and the crowd, in this case, is the five members of our household – including Burger shaking a tiny pom-pom). Today we’ve got one HUGE post full of info about the entire process, the budget, and, of course, the finished result. We’re also answering some of the most common questions we got throughout this project.

*Well, mostly done. More on that later

towels / hooks / wall scuppers / chair / drum stool / sconce / doorknob / tan pots / white pot / lounge chairs / solar path lights

Neither of us have ever lived in a house with a pool or even in an area of the country where residential pools are very common.

Continue reading Putting In A Pool: The Process, The Cost, and All The Before & After Photos at Young House Love.

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Before & After Photos: 14 Months In! https://ift.tt/3ru2clL

Note: This post was born from an updated Before & After page that we heard people were having trouble finding (since it wasn’t at the top of our blog feed). So here it is, forever immortalized as a chronological post. And now, since we’ll continue to update our Before & After page over time, we have this post frozen in time, which is nice to look back on. Wish we had done it around 6 months in and at the year mark too.

We downsized to this 1,400 square foot house in Northwest Florida on May of 2020 after a fast, furious, and long-distance three-month renovation. You can read more about how we found ourselves craving a pared-down lifestyle for our family here and here (that last one is a really good synopsis of what led us to this exact spot).

Continue reading Before & After Photos: 14 Months In! at Young House Love.

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Building An Easy Privacy Trellis (With 2 Pieces Of Wood + 1 Planter Box) https://ift.tt/2Sh80BV

BRB, just changing the name of this blog to “Solving Problems With Plants.” And I know we promised a huge pool post, but the pool is still very much in progress. Hopefully it’ll be done next month and we can write one big breakdown with approximately 473 photos. But back to how plants can not only hide ugly stuff, they can also offer some pretty great privacy, as we’re about to demonstrate below.

One of the things that contributes to our house being extra walkable to shops, parks, the beach, and restaurants is that it’s less like a sprawling suburban neighborhood due to the lots being a good deal smaller (you can read more about why a walkable neighborhood and a smaller house/lot really appealed to our family in this post).

It’s a similar feeling to our former beach house in Cape Charles, Virginia, which taught us that we really didn’t mind being that close to other homes.

Continue reading Building An Easy Privacy Trellis (With 2 Pieces Of Wood + 1 Planter Box) at Young House Love.

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A Simple DIY Outdoor Plant Shelf To Disguise Ugly Utility Boxes https://ift.tt/3ssk7s4

When we shared pictures of our front porch last fall, we said that our decorating strategy out here was basically “plants and more plants.” It helps visually connect the porch to all of the greenery surrounding our house and – as we’ll show you today – it’s also helping us hide some less-than-pretty parts of this outdoor area. Let’s call them wall warts. Three large rectangular wall warts. But more on that in a second.

white fluted planter | outdoor ceiling fan |wicker storage box | larger white planter | similar egg chair

First let’s travel back in time to what this all looked like last February when we put an offer in on this house (that’s our realtor in the photo below)

As you can see, we’ve already come quite a long way (you can read more about the exterior updates we did in this area here & here).

Continue reading A Simple DIY Outdoor Plant Shelf To Disguise Ugly Utility Boxes at Young House Love.

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Our Bedroom Ten Months In (Houston, We Have A Closet!) https://ift.tt/2Nt5E0v

Long story short, instead of having 8 doors that lead outside in our bedroom (yes, we really had that many), we now have 6. And spoiler alert: it’s still plenty. We really just use the middle set along this huge wall of doors to go in and out, but the view and the light that the other doors let in is truly a room-making detail. We love the view in here and all of the brightness that shines in, and the addition of the fence for our own little private courtyard out there has been so nice. It not only makes the yard feel more private, it makes the bedroom feel more nestled and private too (more on that fence/courtyard area here).

rug | similar lamps | bed frame | headboard | similar bench | ottoman | curtains | curtain rod | similar table / wood chairs | door knobs

The exciting thing about eliminating that last set of double doors (which used to be where our left nightstand and the left half of our bed are in the photo below), is that we could then move our bed into that cozy nook that was created:

rug | similar lamps | bed frame | headboard | similar bench | ottoman | curtains | curtain rod | similar table / wood chairs | door knobs

As a reminder, the picture below is how the room used to be arranged (the bed just rotated one wall to the right after we closed off those doors):

nightstands | rug | similar lamps | bed frame | similar woven mirror | similar capiz mirror | similar bench | curtains | curtain rod | similar inlay dresser

So not only do we have a brand new bed wall with a view of the fireplace and our pretty wall of doors, that shift also allowed us to add a huge closet full of more storage than our house has ever known!

Continue reading Our Bedroom Ten Months In (Houston, We Have A Closet!) at Young House Love.

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How We Created A Cozy Fire Pit Area In Our Formerly Boring Side Yard https://ift.tt/3bfvhtp

We’ve been enjoying this fire pit hangout spot for months now, but it hasn’t been on the blog… until today. This is basically a lesson in how a fence can make a HUGE difference in defining an area, which can lead to adding some simple outdoor furnishings (in this case, it was four adirondak chairs and a fire pit – which hit the ground and instantly created an entirely new “outdoor room” for our whole family to enjoy).

We hang out here and make s’mores at least once a week (and sometimes a lot more than that), so it has been a very welcome addition. Especially during a time when everyone is spending A LOT of time at home, so something novel and new like this bonus hangout zone feels extra special We even made s’mores for dessert on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, so it’s quickly becoming quite the family tradition.

Continue reading How We Created A Cozy Fire Pit Area In Our Formerly Boring Side Yard at Young House Love.

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How To Hang An Outdoor Daybed (On Video!) https://ift.tt/3tnkm9v

Last week we shared how we built the DIY outdoor hanging daybed that we installed on our front porch. And as promised, I’m back to share how we hung it since, if you’re like me, hanging things that are meant to support the full weight of a human body (or two!) can make you a little nervous.

It was actually extremely easy to do. So easy that we did it more than once (ha!) so that it resulted in the smoothest and most non-tipsy sway possible (our first hanging attempt made it tip forward and backwards a bit, which wasn’t ideal). Thankfully the second attempt worked like a charm. Plus it meant we could document the entire thing for you, so you can just skip right to doing it the better way on the first try.

Here’s how it looked when you last saw it, after our initial hanging attempt:

We mentioned were going to rehang it in last week’s post, because almost immediately after hanging it with just two ceiling hooks, we realized that suspending it that way made the daybed swing front-to-back a bit more than we hoped, like an actual swing you’d find on a playground.

Continue reading How To Hang An Outdoor Daybed (On Video!) at Young House Love.

#additionally sad home renovations

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How To Build An Outdoor Hanging Daybed https://ift.tt/3t2z1GQ

Back in October we mentioned our plans to add a hanging daybed to the covered portion of our front porch and our entire family couldn’t be more excited that it’s finally done.

Hanging daybeds like this are super popular in our area, and we’ve always had a soft spot for them. Is there anything better than reading/napping outside on a lazy Saturday afternoon?

One of the Airbnbs that we stayed at in Costa Rica last January had one that pretty much cemented our feeling that they’re just about the perfect outdoor lounge spot. Sherry and our daughter spent hours there, each leaning up against a side arm with their legs extended towards each other, reading and chatting and swaying.

Then, lo and behold, we realized that we had a near-perfect spot for one on the front porch of this house.

Continue reading How To Build An Outdoor Hanging Daybed at Young House Love.

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A Loveseat For The Sitting Room https://ift.tt/2XF7qgh

A bunch of you got a sneak peek at this change thanks to Instagram Stories right after the holidays, but here’s a quick update about the new loveseat we got and what the sitting room is looking like these days.

We got the loveseat on Overstock, and of course now it’s out of stock – but I did find it here and here in the darker color (ours is the “light gray” one). So far we’re loving it, and it really went a long way in making the whole area feel like a legitimate hangout space. It’s also super comfy, which is really what matters (and you know this post is going to have some John & Sherry for scale pics).

ottomans / loveseat / rug / chairs / art by Teil Duncan / gold frames / coffee table / lamp / side table

We mentioned in our post a month ago about the evolution of our sitting room area that we’d love to get some larger seating, like a loveseat for the wall below.

Continue reading A Loveseat For The Sitting Room at Young House Love.

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Updating A Covered Porch With Floor Paint & A Hanging Tent https://ift.tt/38krRpa

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about living here, it’s that we do a ton of living outside. Between each at-home learning break the kids are out there running around, we make s’mores at our fire pit every week or so, we sit on our front porch and watch the neighborhood dogs go by, and we often eat or hang out on the second-floor deck (we even work on our laptops up there on especially nice days – which is where I’m writing this post right now).

We can really feel the house working extra hard for us thanks to the location/climate (good weather definitely encourages us to be outside a lot), but also due to having so many great outdoor areas for us to enjoy (we had no idea how awesome an upstairs deck would be, but boy do we appreciate having it!).

Another pretty fortunate occurrence is that a lot of these outdoor areas just needed one or two simple updates to go from “things we used to walk by” to “a spot that gets used every day.” Like this covered porch…

You last saw it in this post about our house’s exterior updates (there’s also this more recent exterior post) – and it sat pretty much unused for the last 8 months until we realized it was the perfect spot to hang a big hanging tent that we got for the kids for the holidays.

Continue reading Updating A Covered Porch With Floor Paint & A Hanging Tent at Young House Love.

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How We Built An Easy Modern Fireplace Mantel… Just In Time For Stockings! https://ift.tt/3mqbIlF

We mentioned in this year’s holiday decorating post that we wanted to get some sort of fireplace mantel built this month and, well, Santa delivered! ::pats self on back::

art | frame for art | rug | ottoman |chairs | crystal fireplace logs | storage cabinets | curtains | rods | large light blue vase

Yes, setting a goal to have a place for hanging our kids’ stockings is a little random, but we were happy to have the motivation to check this project off our list sooner rather than later.

If you recall, our fireplace looked like this when we moved in:

Here’s a wider shot of that area right after we got here, just for kicks. Ah, those packing blankets as curtains are #MEMORIES.

So yeah… it feels good to be here:

Sherry did some work to freshen it up over the summer, like scraping and painting the black surrounded and lightening up the interior brick with paint.

Continue reading How We Built An Easy Modern Fireplace Mantel… Just In Time For Stockings! at Young House Love.

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Our Kitchen & Sitting Area, Six Months In https://ift.tt/341uf1A

We shared this space three weeks after we moved in and now we’re back with a six month update for ya. Much like we said in that first post, we have some long term plans for this room, so this is just what it looks like as of this moment in time (I highly recommend photographing rooms to see how they evolve because it’s so much fun to look back on).

Since that three-weeks-in post, we did a series of inexpensive updates that have really made this room so comfortable and so useful for our family (first we made these five small changes, then we painted the cabinets, and here’s a post about how our much smaller kitchen is organized for anyone who likes to peek behind cabinet doors & drawers like me).

pendant light / similar table / kitchen chairs / Ikea shelving system / how we built the shelves

We have plans to fully renovate the kitchen down the line, but thanks to our updates, nothing about this current kitchen is spurring us on to get to that sooner rather than later – which is a nice feeling.

Continue reading Our Kitchen & Sitting Area, Six Months In at Young House Love.

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How We Decorated Our New House For The Holidays* https://ift.tt/3g6fDT5

*Aka, the moment I’ve been waiting for since, oh, the day we moved in.

There’s something extra special to me about decorating a house for your first holiday season spent there. It’s right up there with seeing whatever pops up outside during your first spring at a new house (I basically scream out the window like I’m the announcer at a football game: “over on the left it’s A PATCH OF DAFFODILS! NOBODY SAW THAT COMING!!” But back to our holiday house tour. It’s looking very sweet & festive around here.

Since this move also involved some serious downsizing & simplifying (last week John shared an update on that), it promised to be an interesting exercise in what would go where in our smaller home. As you heard on the podcast a while back, we donated our beloved Christmas tree AFTER squeezing it into the pod and getting it all the way here, because we realized that such a wide tree (it had a 5’5″ base – so it was THICK) didn’t really have a spot that it could be set up in a single room of our house that wouldn’t severely impede the flow of things.

Continue reading How We Decorated Our New House For The Holidays* at Young House Love.

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Has Downsizing Been What We Expected? https://ift.tt/2Jh7COP

Believe it or not, we’ve lived in our new house for over six months now. Half a year! So we thought this would be a good time to check in on some of the goals we had for moving and downsizing to see what has met and exceeded our expectations – along with detailing some of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered along the way.

This is going to be long & detailed, because it feels like there’s a lot of ground to cover, and while this rundown will be pretty specific to our situation, I think it’ll still give you a good window into the realities of downsizing that you might also encounter if you were to go for it. And yes, it includes money details. And a chart. You know I love charts.

To Recap, Why Did We Move?

We’ve got a thorough explanation of our reasons for moving from Virginia to Florida in this post from February.

Continue reading Has Downsizing Been What We Expected? at Young House Love.

#additionally sad home renovations