The big, colorful mural we recently painted in our daughter’s room was one of the most fun and impactful painting projects we’ve done in a while. It was a combination of both careful planning and some last-minute improvising that was so easy to do, even the kids broke out some paintbrushes to help. Plus, it extremely was budget-friendly too.

The whole thing was painted by hand, just using regular ol’ paintbrushes and rollers. No fancy paint sprayers. No projector. Not even any painter’s tape! So today we’ll talk you through:

• How to plan your wall mural
• The materials needed to paint the mural
• A step-by-step process for painting
• Why you can’t really screw this up!

Our painted mural only took us about 5 hours of real working time to complete, but it was spread across 2.5 days since there was a lot of time spent letting parts dry before moving on to the next sections.

Continue reading Painting A DIY Wall Mural at Young House Love.

Some of you will remember that way back in January, Sherry talked about grabbing these wood chairs from Target on Instagram Stories for “a side project we’re working on that we’ll share after we complete the bathroom.” And then the bathroom dragged on for a few more months (you can see the finished product & full budget breakdown here) and somewhere in there this big thing happened too.

So while we’ve been enjoying this completely new room for a few months, we’re excited to FINALLY share the update with you guys. So let’s show you around and tell you why we decided to revamp this room.

chairs | drawers | legs | counter | rug | blinds | similar string lights| wall color: Behr Irish Mist

The space you’re looking at is actually our old guest room, which you may remember looking like the picture below.

Continue reading Making An Arts & Crafts Room For Our Kids at Young House Love.

Adding wallpaper to the middle bedroom at our beach house took us just a few hours and cost us less than $100. It’s a whole lotta bang for not much buck (or extra high skill level). Plus it’s 100% removable so if we ever tire of it or want to swap it for something else, it’s no big deal. Certainly less trouble than removing traditional wallpaper! So in this post we’ll show you exactly how we hung it, including a video I took of my lovely husband hanging a panel for you in real-time while I talk and point (you know, the things I’m most known for).

Selecting Your Wallpaper

There were two strategic choices we made that helped to keep this project particularly quick and easy:

1. Choosing a peel and stick wallpaper. Traditional wallpapers require you to apply a separate glue and even “pre-pasted” wallpaper means you have to wet the paper to activate the built-in adhesive (that’s the kind we installed in our second book).

Continue reading How To Hang Peel & Stick Wallpaper at Young House Love.

A little glass etching cream, a homemade stencil and thrifted apothecary jar and suddenly we've got the perfect spot to show off what we're thankful for.

Continue reading Thanksgiving Craft: A Glass “Thanks Jar” at Young House Love.

We had a totally different post planned for today, but then a super fun/random project fell into our laps on Monday night. We weren’t sure how things would turn out (we were kinda making up a DIY technique as we went along), but to say that we’re pleasantly surprised is a giant understatement. This might be my favorite under $10 project in the history of my life. And it could easily be repeated with any window you find at a thrift store, architectural salvage shop, or even at your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. SAVE ALL THE GORGEOUS OLD WINDOWS, GUYS!

Or you could just wander the streets hoping to be in the right place at the right time – because that is actually how my tale of inheriting this window begins. If you follow me on Instagram Stories, you may have heard me gleefully tell The Fateful Tale Of The Old Diamond Window, wherein I randomly took a longer route on my evening walk and it resulted in me coming down our street about 10 minutes later than I usually do, and at that exact moment I bumped into our neighbors as they were loading an old diamond-paned window into their truck to take it to the dump.

Continue reading Our DIY “Stained Glass” Window at Young House Love.

Since you guys have been asking how this large scale (but also, small scale – ha!) renovation has been going, I thought I’d share our second dollhouse progress. And if you missed our first tiny house makeover, you can check it out here.

Yes, this dollhouse totally reminds all of us of our own house, which has been especially fun. And our nine-year-old daughter has been acting as the general contractor, the interior designer, and the architect, which has also been a blast. From helping with painting and art to choosing colors, arranging the furniture and brainstorming future project ideas – she has been at the helm… WHICH HAS BEEN SO ENJOYABLE FOR MY HOUSE-LOVING HEART TO SEE (I’m also very happy to play the role of the dutiful assistant / budget realist – ha!).

This house will probably be in progress for the next few years as we add more furniture, and lights that really work, and maybe even a spiral staircase that leads up to the attic (squeeee!).

Continue reading Our Second Dollhouse Makeover at Young House Love.

When we shared the duplex backyard makeovers last month, I promised more details about how we made the decorative oars that hang on each shed. So today I’ve got a detailed tutorial for you (including how NOT to screw up your attempts to make them outdoor friendly) along with a few other “hacks” you guys asked about.

The oars actually were not part of our original plans. But after the sheds were built we nixed our plans to run electricity to them (for cost reasons – and because they really don’t need it). But the empty space where we’d planned to hang a light above the door needed… something.

That something became oars after a trip to HomeGoods where we stumbled upon a decorative surfboard. Cape Charles isn’t really a surfing town, but there is plenty of kayaking and paddle boarding, so oars felt a bit more applicable for our little beach town.

Continue reading How To Paint Decorative Oars For Beach House Decor at Young House Love.

I was surprised how many questions I got about the little dollhouse sneak peeks I’ve shared on IG stories over the last few weeks as I fixed this up with the kids. And then I polled you guys to see if you wanted a post about it, and 91% of you voted yes, so here it is!

You can read more about how these came to be on this podcast from a few weeks back, but the gist is that the kids really wanted super detailed dollhouses to fix up, and we got two of them secondhand on Facebook marketplace to “renovate” together.

This little makeover was lots of fun for us all, since the kids were at the wheel picking all the colors and helping me paint and glue and arrange stuff, and although this technically lives in our son’s room, both kids definitely had a hand in making it over (we have another one that lives in our daughter’s room that we’re also working on together – which you can see below on the left of the photo).

Continue reading Our Dollhouse Makeover at Young House Love.