I love an iced something for my daily coffee. And most days that's a cold brew I make at home. For over 2 years now, I've relied on this cold brew maker to keep a delicious batch at the ready in my fridge. I'm going to show you exactly how I make homemade cold brew and why it's my method of choice. Sherry and I aren't expert baristas or even persnickety coffee connoisseurs. We prioritize simple & straightforward brewing methods that can be successful without treating coffee like an intricate science. No shade if you have time & energy for it, but this guide is for the average home coffee drinker who wants good, reliable cold brew without stressing over the details.

Continue reading How To Make Cold Brew Coffee At Home at Young House Love.

We get a surprising number of questions about how we make our pour over coffee (and even requests for a video tutorial). We aren't baristas by any means, but we love an easy, affordable, and delicious cup every day. So we're sharing how our system checks all of those boxes - without ever tasting bitter or burned. Pour over is known to make better tasting coffee with less equipment & waste than electric coffee makers, but the process can sound intimidating - especially for beginners! Honestly, pour over is only as complicated as you want it to be. So we'll show you just how easy it us for us to make. I do it every morning in just a few minutes. And I truly think it tastes better than many fancy coffee shops - so it saves me money!

Continue reading Making Pour Over Coffee At Home at Young House Love.

Dyeing your clothes can sound difficult, messy, and downright scary. But guess what? It's none of those things! After all, I'm the girl who dyed her wedding dress so I could wear it again. Trust me, anyone can dye clothes at home because it's easy, straightforward, and crazy affordable.

Continue reading How To Dye Clothes at Young House Love.

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 What’s It Like To Downsize? at Young House Love.

Quick note: if you missed the update to last week’s post that went up a few days after it was originally published, you can catch up on that here.

When we moved in one of the subcontractors said they’d been wondering why we didn’t tear out the old cabinets and mismatched appliances and pink laminate counters and redo the kitchen before we moved in. But if you’ve followed us for a while, you know the answer. We like to live with a kitchen for a nice long time before changing the layout or doing any major upgrades like replacing the cabinets or counters (in our last house we waited three years for our big renovation). Actually living somewhere for a while to figure out what we like & find functional/useful versus trying to guess how we *think* we’re going to use a space in the early days of a new home just feels a lot less like a shot in the dark.

Continue reading Five Quick & Easy Kitchen Updates at Young House Love.

We waited over 6 years to start our bathroom renovation and now, nearly 6 months later, it’s fully completed! And you know what that means – the ensuite bathroom curse that we discovered over the last month definitely seems to be in play (more on that here). All jokes aside (but really, is the curse a real thing, because it seems like it might be?!), let’s put all of this waiting to an end and get to the goods. Including a source list and a full budget breakdown at the end of this post!

tub | tub filler | tub art | shower tile | floor tile | toilet | vanity | mirror | vanity light | wall color: Behr Irish Mist

Believe it or not, the “after” photo above was taken in virtually the same spot as the “before” picture below.

Continue reading Before & After Photos Of Our Bathroom Makeover & How Much It Cost at Young House Love.

This bathroom came together so quickly, we almost can’t believe it ourselves (and we witnessed it with our own four eyeballs). If we hadn’t watched it fly along ourselves, while everything just seemed to line up perfectly, we probably wouldn’t have thought it was possible – especially after the longest-bathroom-reno-of-our-lives that we started way back in October. (Yes it’s still going, but next week we’ll have a full reveal & budget breakdown! FINALLY!).

Meanwhile, in less than a week, this upstairs hall bathroom went from looking the way that it has looked for years (old painted double vanity, two yellow-beige sea-shell shaped sinks, bare white walls, old seams in need of some fresh caulk around the tub, etc) to a totally fresh & updated room! We are THRILLED!

And we did it with basically zero dust/reno! We reused a ton of what we had, and although we brought home a bunch of other floor tile options (at this point we’re pros at tiling a bathroom floor in an afternoon or two, so we assumed we’d do that to freshen up this space too) we realized we liked the cute vintage yellow tile better than anything else we brought home!

Continue reading Quick Demo-Free Bathroom Makeover at Young House Love.

This post is going to cover a lot of ground. Not only are we sharing before & after photos and a video tour about how we organized it all, we’re also spilling how much the whole thing cost, tossing out some closet planning tips to help you tackle an update yourself, and the details on how we made it all look built-in like a bonafide custom closet (with just $65 of wood!). First let’s get to the eyeball-related things: the before & afters. Also, please note how badly Burger wanted to be in this post. Photobombs out the wazoo.

This little room of ours has come a long way. The photo below shows how we even upgraded the entrance to the closet. See that super narrow doorway? It was 22″ wide (WHYYY?!?!?) and not centered on that wall (again…. WHYYY?!?!). For reference, John’s shoulder to shoulder measurement is 20″.

Continue reading Ikea Pax Closet Makeover With Budget & Video Tour at Young House Love.