Finally took the photos and videos for this post and I can’t wait to share it because it changed our house in such a major way. Introducing… the area that we affectionately call our kitchen porch. Aka: the grillin’ spot with all the greenery.

grill | outdoor table | outdoor stacking chairs | large white planter

If you followed along on Instagram Stories for the last few months, essentially this side porch always existed, but after we closed off doors number 7 and 8 from our bedroom which led out here (yes our bedroom had 8 exterior doors & still has 6 of them – more on that here), it was just a floating porch without any door leading to it. Here’s an old photo to show you what we essentially were starting with (this is after the exterior stairs came down from the upper deck, but before we painted the house, got new railings, etc, etc).

Continue reading Our New Kitchen Porch at Young House Love.

“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 Ways We Made The Most Of Our Small Kitchen at Young House Love.

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.

We’re currently still in Richmond (not for much longer though!), and in order to share a huge progress post about our Florida house’s exterior, we want to be there in person so we can take tons of progress photos that’ll explain a lot more and make that post exceptionally exciting. So that’s coming your way next week (yes, by this time next week we’ll definitely be living there!), but buckle up because this post is not a consolation prize. It’s just as dramatic as the before & afters of our current house’s interior, which we shared a few weeks back. In fact, our Richmond house’s outside transformation could probably be filed under: “Biggest update we’ve ever made. Ever.” So let’s get right into it.

We actually forgot that we had filmed a before tour of this house’s exterior, but then a bunch of you requested a final exterior video tour just like the one we did inside.

Continue reading A Look At How Far Our House’s Exterior Has Come at Young House Love.

Someone asked me the other day for details on how we organized the beach house kitchen, which is something we photographed and filmed this summer to share with you guys, and when I went to send them the link to this post, I realized that we never actually wrote it! So yes, these pictures sat on the camera for months as my tan faded, along with memories of warm days spent with my toes in the sand (current status: toes in my Ugg slippers because it’s freezing!).

Years ago you guys liked having a look inside of our Richmond kitchen cabinets, so John and I had some fun snapping lots of organizing photos for this post last August (and filming what is perhaps the WEIRDEST video of our lives – please watch it if you can because I can’t even really explain what came over me, but John finds it highly amusing).

Continue reading How We Organized The Beach House Kitchen 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 Our Big Closet Makeover – The Budget, The Video Tour, And The Before & Afters at Young House Love.

Updated January 2022

We weren’t happy with the color of our existing kitchen cabinets – too orange and dated looking! – so we wanted to give them a quick makeover for a darker, more contemporary look. We decided to stain them to maintain the wood grain appearance, but we worried that would require us to sand off all of the old finish. Yuck! Luckily, we knew of a product that would let us skip that messy and tiring step while still giving us the end results we wanted.

You can see our results above, and read below for how we got there!

What Stain Product Did You Use?

We used Minwax Polyshades for this project, which is similar to a gel stain. Unlike traditional wood stains, which have to soak into the wood to work, a PolyShades coat or gel stain product sits on top of the existing stain, much like a paint application would.

Continue reading Staining Your Wood Cabinets Darker at Young House Love.

Finally… we have a full video tour of both sides of the duplex! A ton of people have asked for this (or asked if they missed it) and, well, today is the day. If nothing else, I recommend watching it to see the ecstatic relief on my face at the end that WE. ARE. DONE!

Also I talk through a bunch of our changes and choices throughout the reno, and share some of our favorite decisions that upgraded the house in the biggest ways.

The video is also just good for seeing how each room flows together, checking out what’s different from side to side, and basically “walking through” the entire project with us. Just click play to watch it below:

Note: If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to see the video. You can also watch it here on YouTube.

Continue reading A Video Tour Of The Duplex at Young House Love.