If you’ve got a tiling project in your future, remember, bookmark, voice memo, tattoo, or do whatever you need to do to remember Mapei Flexcolor grout.

floor tiles: pink, white, and taupe 

I know this sounds like I’m overreacting, but take it from people who have grouted 7 bathroom floors, 3 showers, 3 mudrooms, and 2 backsplashes in the last two years: this grout has been life-changing. And no, this is not sponsored by either Mapei or Floor & Decor, which is where we typically buy ours (sorry, necessary disclaimer because this post is going to sound pretty gushy).

Why We Love Mapei Grout

I’ll explain WHY we love Mapai grout so much AND toss in some tips for picking the right grout color (including our go-to color that works nearly every time).

Continue reading The Best Grout – And How To Pick The Right Color at Young House Love.

Who wants to refinish a table? You? Good – because we’ve actually refinished TWO dining tables using a little elbow grease, ZERO chemical strippers, and, well, a lot of sanding. It’s a testament to how easy it can be to breathe new life into an old piece of thrift store furniture.

Why Refinish A Table?

We needed not one, but two dining tables for our duplex rental because each side has its own dining space. For one side we planned to use our old dining table, which was a hand-me-down Crate & Barrel table we got from a friend.

She had warned us that the cherry finish was pretty scratched up and needed some refinishing at the time, but we just never got around to doing it.

The second table was my sister’s old farmhouse dining table. We jumped at the chance to buy it before she listed it on Facebook Marketplace.

Continue reading How To Refinish A Table at Young House Love.

We’re big fans of floating shelves in kitchens. They’re functional, stylish, and create breathing space around all that cabinetry. We’ve had some version of them in nearly every kitchen we’ve remodeled, but our favorites are these DIY floating shelves in the kitchens of our duplex. Today’s tutorial will show you how to build them for your own kitchen.

wood cabinets | tile | counters |pendant | faucet | hardware | trim: SW Extra White

Building your own floating shelves is a great way to fit them precisely to your space AND get the exact finish you want. We’ve used storebought floating shelves in kitchens too – like these chunky Ikea shelves and rustic Pottery Barn shelves – but they’ve never looked quite as custom as our DIY floating shelves.

Continue reading DIY Floating Kitchen Shelves at Young House Love.

One challenge when building the floating shelves in our duplex kitchens was drilling through the tile backsplash. After all, we had just spent a lot of time and money installing all of this beautiful tile. We didn’t want to mess it up! Was it a little scary? Yes. But is it totally doable? Also yes. Let’s talk about it.

wood cabinets | white cabinets | tile | counters | fridge | range | pendant | faucet | hardware | walls: SW Spare White | trim: SW Extra White

Ideally, we would’ve hung our shelf supports before tiling. Buuuuuut we weren’t seeing eye-to-eye about where to (or even *if* to) hang shelves. Luckily we resolved our stalemate shortly after tiling (I won’t bother you with who was right… but let’s just that person is very handsome and very humble).

Continue reading How To Drill Through Tile at Young House Love.

We’ve gotten hundreds of questions about the financial side of running an Airbnb or other short term vacation rental. Specifically: “can you detail the expenses and fees that take a bite out of the profit? Are there hidden costs? How exactly do rental taxes work? Insurance?! ACK!“

Whether the person asking us was considering doing one themselves, or just plain curious (talking about money = interested face emoji), we’re laying it all out in the hope that it demystifies it a little bit, and is helpful to anyone who might be on the fence about whether or not this is a viable side hustle. We actually really enjoyed learning the ins & outs of this stuff – so it’s fun to share what we learned.

Obviously there are expenses like actually purchasing, renovating, and furnishing a home that you’ll be using as a vacation rental.

Continue reading How Much Does It Cost To Run A Vacation Rental (With Real Numbers) at Young House Love.

As our bathroom reno continues (current status: more demo happened, our vanity, tub, & toilet arrived, and we have our plumber & electrician scheduled to rough things in and then we can prep & tile) we thought it would be fun to share a duplex kitchen budget breakdown. *Also, for anyone who has inquired about renting the duplex this fall, there’s an announcement about that later in the post*

wood cabinets | tile | counters | pendant | faucet | hardware | tall cutting board |walls: SW Spare White | trim: SW Extra White

Obviously, there are LOTS of factors that affect how expensive a kitchen renovation will be, so let this post just be a reference point for you – not a prescription for how much a kitchen reno should cost.

Continue reading Ikea Kitchen Costs – A Full Breakdown at Young House Love.

We talked on this week’s podcast about how our first rental season at the duplex wasn’t perfect, but it went pretty darn smoothly, all things considered (you can hear a bunch of specific stories, nerve-wracking moments, and things we learned in that episode). Over the course of this past summer, we hosted 23 families thanks to it being a duplex. Two bookings were always happening simultaneously, and the house was fully occupied with guests every night from mid-June to Labor Day. We joke that going from managing zero Airbnbs to two was kind of like going from having zero kids to having twins – it literally felt like we were plunging ourselves into the deep end of vacation rental management – but we learned SO MUCH. So we wanted to share 5 big lessons with you guys now that we’re on the other side of it all.

Continue reading 5 Lessons From Our Summer As Airbnb Hosts at Young House Love.

This all started because we wanted one of those cool “Historic District” plaques on our beach house. Spoiler, we got it…and one for the duplex too! But the process turned us into amateur sleuths, history-buffs-in-training, and (more predictably) people who paint their front door a new color while they’re at it. So here’s the story, along with a mini porch update, and some tips & advice for uncovering the history of your home too.

Ever since we bought our beach house three years ago (yes, three!) we’ve been jealous of admired the official “Cape Charles Historic District” plaque on our neighbor’s house (the blue one between the duplex and the pink house in the photo below). We originally presumed that it was a designation that was only awarded to certain homes that met strict historic restoration qualifications (like having all of the original wood windows – which neither of our houses came with when we bought them).

Continue reading The Real History Of The Pink House (There’s A Twist!) at Young House Love.