FAQs
You asked, we answered. Without further ado, the scoop on all things This Young House:
Why did you guys start this blog? It was actually John’s idea to start a little blog to track the progress of our kitchen remodel. We quickly realized that we enjoyed sharing all of our adventures- and misadventures- in home improvement and so a hobby (and eventually a bonafide profession) was born.
How do you manage to write so many posts? Doesn’t that take forever? Yup, writing content, taking pictures and about a million other blogging related duties can certainly take a fair amount of time. But we love every minute of it (well, maybe not every minute of it). We’re lucky to be reasonably fast typers and pretty swift photoshoppers to boot.
Where did you guys meet? We met in New York City when we both worked at the same advertising agency on Johnson & Johnson baby products and ob tampons. What can we say, babies and feminine hygiene brought us together. We secretly dated for almost a year and kept things under wraps until we moved to Virginia and got engaged. To this day our old coworkers still reference how we “blew their minds” and we laugh about all the times we almost got busted strolling through Central Park hand-in-hand.
Is this your full time job? Yup. The blog has officially become my full time job as well as John’s pretty demanding part time job (on top of a full time job in advertising). Between writing all the content (we try to post at least twice a day during the week, sometimes three or even four times), designing custom mood boards, managing our shop, and crashing weddings and houses, we’re super busy- but we love it! We definitely work well beyond the 40 hour work weeks of our past, but it’s a truly rewarding endeavor and we love that we’re in it together.
Don’t you guys also write for a couple of magazines now? It’s true! We’re lucky enough to have been recruited to write regular columns in regional publications like R. Home Magazine and even in national glossies like DIY Magazine. We’re beyond honored and actually have to pinch ourselves whenever we see our words in print.
What paint color is in your kitchen/bedroom/den etc? For a fun little paint per room breakdown, click here.
Where did you get your sofas? The den sofa is the PB Basic from Pottery Barn while the living room sofa is a Rowe sofa that we snagged for about $400 cheaper by finding a local Rowe retailer (who basically sells Pottery Barn sofas without the markup).
How did you create those built-in nooks in the bedroom? We used two inexpensive doorless wardrobes from Ikea on either side of the bed for tons of added storage space and used drapery panels (also from Ikea) to hide all the clothes and shoes. To finish things off we added a wooden header to make the wardrobes look even more custom (and keep them from looking like two big refrigerators on either side of the bed). For more details, click here, here, and here.
Where did you get the green headboard in the guest bedroom? Did you make it? Yup, in about ten minutes with a $12 staple gun. For our simple and speedy headboard tutorial, click here.
Where did you get the yellow patterned rug in the living room? It’s actually from Pottery Barn (we scored it super cheap thanks to the fact that it was a floor model). It also comes in orange and brown. Check it out.
Where did you get the brown and white patterned blanket in the guest bedroom? Believe it or not this is one of our most frequently asked questions. We snagged it at Bed Bath & Beyond about a year ago but have seen ‘em as recently as a few months ago so you might still be in luck if you dig through the sale stuff. Oh and don’t forget one of those 20% off coupons that they’re always mailing out. Happy hunting!
How do you make those mood boards for your design dilemmas? We make ours in Adobe Photoshop, so after we bring a bunch of our favorite items into Photoshop, we size ‘em, cut them out, and add some numbers to create a handy dandy guide that correlates to our explanations. If you don’t have access to Photoshop, we’ve heard great things about Polyvore, so you might want to check that out here. Happy mood board making!
What goes into the process of creating a custom mood board? Do you start with a specific item (like the biggest or most expensive)? We usually start with the requested decorating style along with specific furniture requests. For example if someone requests a “sleek and modern look” for their dining room, we might start with the table (maybe a fab glass one from CB2). Or we could start with a super cool light fixture (like a modern pendant from West Elm) or even with the curtains or the rug (which might inspire our color scheme). In a nut shell: there’s no method to our madness and a lot of what we choose at the start of a project ends up getting bumped by something better that we find later (for example, curtains that looked great with the table might get swapped for new ones that look great with the table AND the new rug that we found). It’s an unpredictable process, but it’s always super fun for furniture & accessory junkies like us (who love sniffing out a good sale while we’re at it).
Does every mood board make the blog? How fast do you make them once you receive a request? Almost all of our mood boards do make it to the blog (sometimes during busy times we can’t squeeze ‘em all in, but we make a concerted effort to share as many as possible because we love hearing what you guys think). As for the timing, we turn everything around within one week. So if someone requests a custom mood board, we whip one up within five or six days and spend the last day writing the post to explain the why and the where of everything.
Are there any design styles that you favor when it comes to mood boards? Any that you won’t do? It’s fairly obvious that we like anything light & airy (and we’re suckers for all things white). Other than that, we really like everything from super modern to quaint cottage- as long as it’s clean and current. Our house is such a style smorgasbord (lots of West Elm, Target and Ikea mixed with vintage thrift store finds and a beachy color palette) we like to combine a few different styles in each mood board to keep things from looking too predictable and expected (which also keeps things current longer than something that’s too rigid style-wise). We really loved the rustic cabin mood board that we whipped up a few months ago and also adore unexpected quirky rooms like this and this. We also enjoyed this worldly makeover and of course this beachy & airy bedroom transformation.
Do you guys really crash weddings? You want the real scoop, huh? Some of the weddings we “crash” are actually friends or family members, so it’s not like we hop on a plane to Hawaii and drop in on a random couple. See, after we featured “This Young Wedding Week” (about our own nuptials) people loved seeing wedding details and requested some ideas for fall weddings, winter ones, destination ones, expensive ones, affordable ones, etc. So we thought it was only fair to share all the weddings that we attend (from the inexpensive backyard versions to the swanky Manhattan bashes). And while we’re actually invited to most of the weddings that we “crash”, we do occasionally find ourselves in the right place at the right time to do some bonafide crashing.
