It's not that their house is ugly, although to be honest it's so different from my style that I dislike it.t
It's that they do things half ass, with poor planning. Or slap something up and then change it. And then fix it later because it broke or something went wrong with their poor workmanship. They buya hideous duvet cover, and design their bedroom around it. Then realize the duvet is ugly and ditch it. Redesign the entire room. Meanwhile, we all knew it was fug in the first place....
We all talked about that ugly rams head over the bed. hen they realize it's ugly, hang two prints that are hung in the wrong spot. We all said that they should be hung over the bed. Now they are hung over the bed.
They replace a light fixture. Everyone on here says it looks dumb off centered and why didnt they center it when they replaced? A week later they post alist that includes centering the light. Eye roll.
It's not that their house is ugly, although to be honest it's so different from my style that I dislike it.t
It's that they do things half ass, with poor planning. Or slap something up and then change it. And then fix it later because it broke or something went wrong with their poor workmanship. They buya hideous duvet cover, and design their bedroom around it. Then realize the duvet is ugly and ditch it. Redesign the entire room. Meanwhile, we all knew it was fug in the first place....
We all talked about that ugly rams head over the bed. hen they realize it's ugly, hang two prints that are hung in the wrong spot. We all said that they should be hung over the bed. Now they are hung over the bed.
They replace a light fixture. Everyone on here says it looks dumb off centered and why didnt they center it when they replaced? A week later they post alist that includes centering the light. Eye roll.
Buy
Ding. Ding. Ding. WINNER!!!
And seriously do we need 500 pictures of your bedroom rug transformation in a post? You switched one boring rug out with a rug that looks like it sat out in the sun all summer and is slightly less boring than the one that you replaced. But it still warranted before, during, before, after, before, after, after, before, after photos just in case we a) forgot in 20 seconds what it looked like before or b) don't know that we have the ability to scroll up to previously viewed material.
I think that is why I truly don't like them, other than the fact that they inhabit my state their posts are far far to wordy and long. A post about spray painting your 479th trinket should have a maximum of 7-10 photos and not take 15 minutes to read.
Am I the only one that wondered about the spraypainted doll furniture? They're all about low VOCs, but then spraypaint things that could end up in Clara's mouth.
Am I the only one that wondered about the spraypainted doll furniture? They're all about low VOCs, but then spraypaint things that could end up in Clara's mouth.
But they left them outside for like a month, so supposedly they are good to go.
Really, though, I see where you are coming from, I would still be leary about giving my two year old a spray painted toy.
It's not that their house is ugly, although to be honest it's so different from my style that I dislike it.t
It's that they do things half ass, with poor planning. Or slap something up and then change it. And then fix it later because it broke or something went wrong with their poor workmanship. They buya hideous duvet cover, and design their bedroom around it. Then realize the duvet is ugly and ditch it. Redesign the entire room. Meanwhile, we all knew it was fug in the first place....
We all talked about that ugly rams head over the bed. hen they realize it's ugly, hang two prints that are hung in the wrong spot. We all said that they should be hung over the bed. Now they are hung over the bed.
They replace a light fixture. Everyone on here says it looks dumb off centered and why didnt they center it when they replaced? A week later they post alist that includes centering the light. Eye roll.
Buy
Haha, yes! Eloquently put. Their style just isn't my taste. There are few things here or there that I really fall in love with, but in the grand scheme of the house, I don't end of liking a lot of the "finished" products. Also, some of the stuff that they write about for five million pages just isn't worth blogging about.
Post by emoflamingo on May 22, 2012 18:04:48 GMT -5
I think, in general, it's not like they have bad taste. Just like peach said, they make stupid decisions and then brilliantly fix them later on. I still don't trust the frankendoors, but we haven't heard about them in awhile. And the cork floors look dated to me, so I won't install them, but it's their style.
Post by emoflamingo on May 22, 2012 19:00:29 GMT -5
Sounds like they probably play with the white contrast too much because I know I've heard people say that the paint color in their kitchen is not as bad in real life because they used it too.
I think the difference between YHL and most other design/decor/home improvement bloggers is that John and Sherry photograph every. little. thing. they do and write a blog post about it. Most other bloggers wouldn't bother with a million photographs until they felt fairly certain they liked the space the way it was.
I do have to give them credit for actually DOING stuff to this house. They hired out most of the work on their old house, minus the bathroom remodel at the end. Since they're doing the work themselves now and learning as they go, I expect them to make mistakes. That's normal. That does not, however, make them experts in DIY.
Post by HesitantBride on May 23, 2012 11:50:11 GMT -5
I am still bothered by the fact that they never showed a follow up picture of their frankendoors. I've been waiting for those images, especially of the very far apart doors above their fridge. Also, the end cabinet on their peninsula (the one they got for free) is different than the others in terms of proportion. I think they have been purposefully avoiding showing pictures of those cabinets because they actually do look bad.
That corner cabinet where you have to open one door, and then the other in a certain order because instead of using a corner hinged door, they slapped two separate doors there and they can't both open at the same time. Future buyers will probably want to kill them over just that one thing.
-the doors they chopped up and glued back together... -The mismatched cabinets from the re-store that don't quite match -The range hood is the wrong scale -their brackets and open shelving look bad, too many brackets and the brackets are too large. -The weird opening that they stuck a peninsula on...looks so awkward and weird from the living room side looking in. -The high school science lab stools -the hideous floors
That entire kitchen looks like it walked off the set of that 70's show...and I feel so sorry for the future owners because so much of it was done as a hack job.
I am sorry, but their whole "We are not experts, we are just bumbling along la de da..." thing they always say as a disclaimer.
Bullshit.
You post step by step, detailed tutorials with 10000 photos and using 100000000000 word directions, on a blog with thousands of readers.Then you follow up by saying "But we have no idea what we are doing, this is just how we did it. No idea if this is right, or if it will work. So don't try it at home!"
Um...if you are hack jobbing a project, don't post a tutorial. Just say "We did this. It was our first try, hope it turns out ok!" and show a photo of the finished product. Don't give directions when you don't know wtf you are doing...the blind leading the blind.
Oh no I love their kitchen! What's wrong with their kitchen?
They cut down the box part of a cabinet and then cobbled together a cabinet door to cover it - it was seriously in four parts and looked terrible. Of course they painted it and they swear it isn't noticeable but yeah, it's FrankenCabinet. I think they also did a number on a lower corner cabinet too.
It's not that their house is ugly, although to be honest it's so different from my style that I dislike it.t
It's that they do things half ass, with poor planning. Or slap something up and then change it. And then fix it later because it broke or something went wrong with their poor workmanship. They buya hideous duvet cover, and design their bedroom around it. Then realize the duvet is ugly and ditch it. Redesign the entire room. Meanwhile, we all knew it was fug in the first place....
We all talked about that ugly rams head over the bed. hen they realize it's ugly, hang two prints that are hung in the wrong spot. We all said that they should be hung over the bed. Now they are hung over the bed.
They replace a light fixture. Everyone on here says it looks dumb off centered and why didnt they center it when they replaced? A week later they post alist that includes centering the light. Eye roll.
Buy
Ding. Ding. Ding. WINNER!!!
And seriously do we need 500 pictures of your bedroom rug transformation in a post? You switched one boring rug out with a rug that looks like it sat out in the sun all summer and is slightly less boring than the one that you replaced. But it still warranted before, during, before, after, before, after, after, before, after photos just in case we a) forgot in 20 seconds what it looked like before or b) don't know that we have the ability to scroll up to previously viewed material.
I think that is why I truly don't like them, other than the fact that they inhabit my state their posts are far far to wordy and long. A post about spray painting your 479th trinket should have a maximum of 7-10 photos and not take 15 minutes to read.
These are pretty much my biggest complaints. All the pictures make the posts very slow. I skim, but it loads really slowly sometimes. Also, side by side comparisons would be much better than before and after on top of each other.
I don't like how they are all into something and then they're suddenly like, "We always feel you have to live with a house blah blah blah." They never just admit they were wrong. I realize I've done things in my house that were a bad idea. It's OK to admit that.
Am I the only one that wondered about the spraypainted doll furniture? They're all about low VOCs, but then spraypaint things that could end up in Clara's mouth.
But they left them outside for like a month, so supposedly they are good to go.
Really, though, I see where you are coming from, I would still be leary about giving my two year old a spray painted toy.
I don't like their kitchen it's too white for me.
I didn't think the original colosr were all that bad. I'd be so worried about DD coming up to me with paintchips all up in her mouth.
Also, I do like they're one-step-at-a-time, change-a-little-here-and-there approach. It's realistic, but I don't think each thing warrants it's own post.
I don't agree with a lot of their style decisions, but I like them as people. They would be people I would probably enjoy hanging out with.
As for the house, I think I just hate the lay out. I really really hate houses with wonky add-ons that you can TELL are add-ons immediately, and their house is very much in that category.
Post by kristilynnmy on May 23, 2012 15:02:49 GMT -5
I like them, I like their style (most of the time) and I like their house but they take FOREVER to do a project. We renovated almost our entire house (a foreclosure mind you) in the time it took to do their kitchen renos! Not to mention my husband works full time and I go to school full time and we have a baby younger than Clara. Dude, get on that!
Post by bluesmoothie on May 23, 2012 15:24:30 GMT -5
I think what I like about their blog is that it shows that decorating a house is an evolving work in progress. Everyone gets so up in arms over every choice they make. They are human! Like most people sometimes they have an idea that doesn't work out.
I like that it's updated daily. I like that they're as clueless as the rest of us.
I don't like how they add in 700 words of apology to a 900 word post.
Take the bedroom rug post. It should have been this (360 words)
So without further ado, let’s get into the first tweak, which has already taken place. And it’s kind of a biggie. It all started when we saw the rug on the bottom of this picture at an outlet liquidation sale…
We love all of those colors (gray, navy, teal, white!) and the geometric pattern was totally calling our name.
But back to reality. Since it was a thick 9 x 12 wool rug, we were nervous that even on sale it would be $700 or more, which is sadly way out of our price range. But when we checked out the tag, we almost couldn’t believe our eyes. Did that really say “was $1287.00, now: $250″ ??!!!!!
That’s not 40 or 50% off – that’s over 80% off! So we asked the guy what was wrong with it to make it so cheap, since the tag said “soiled” as the reason for the discount. We hoped if it had a stain we might be able to hide that part of the rug under the bed or try to remove it with some crazy scrubbing ritual, but he actually told us it was ripped. As in, there was a hole right through it. Eeks. But thankfully the placement of the rip was in a corner, and although it looked like this if you picked it up and put your fingers through it… … it looked like this when it was laid out on the floor. See the big gaping hole?
We didn’t either! The thick pile of the rug was so dense that the rip wasn’t even visible, let alone obvious. And can we talk about how plush this guy feels underfoot? Excuse me for mentioning the original price again, but have you ever walked on a $1287 rug before? We hadn’t either. It’s what we imagine the carpets in The Donald’s house might feel like. Super super plush. Like double thick. Burger even lounges on the rug now (he used to lounge exclusively in the bed, so it’s funny to see him sprawled out on the floor these days). It’s nice to know that we have the doggie stamp of approval.
Except they added 1000 words of apology and little sniggers. haha.
As we mentioned here, the bedroom is “still looking rough and we’re not sure about a lot of things – just waiting for inspiration to strike – which might involve repainting and rearranging furniture along with refinishing the floors”). We even elaborated a bit in the comments when folks started asking what we meant by that or if we hated the current color by saying: “We love the paint color but something is off about the bedroom and we’re not sure we can rule anything out – including the paint color. Everything is a suspect until proven innocent. Haha. Something is limiting us, so we’re not opposed to changing that thing once we pin it down (it might be the curtains or the art or something else!) just to get things to “click” for us. Who knows where we’ll end up!” You can relate to that feeling, right? The whole something’s-off-but-I’m-not-sure-what-it-is thing? Moving the art together above the bed on Friday was a start, but we actually have a bunch of changes on the agenda for this week in the hopes of cracking the case and making “that room where we sleep” feel a little more like “that room that we love!” Of course we know that a big ol’ transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but we also have seen firsthand how a few updates and switcheroos can go a long way in remedying that “hmmmm, something’s just not right” feeling that has probably popped up at least three dozen times in our last five years of DIYing. So we know it well. We’ve learned that the only real way to get any closer to something that feels right is just to play around and see what you like and what you don’t. The ol’ trial and error approach. Because if you’re sitting there frozen in fear or over-thinking things to the point that you’ve lost all momentum it can get sticky. We weren’t looking for a bedroom rug, although we weren’t ruling out the idea of changing anything in that room (because remember, everything in there was guilty until proven innocent- haha). I had actually said to John “the jute rug in the bedroom could always move out to the dining room since we’re planning on getting a natural fiber rug in there for under the table and it’s definitely big enough” – so I guess you could say we were open to anything. (it’s where we got the thick wool rug in Clara’s bedroom along with her blue capiz chandelier and the big glass pendants in our kitchen), we had to check it out. So when there was a big tent sale at our favorite lighting outlet (The Decorating Outlet), which also happens to sell rugsAnd that’s when we saw the patterned blue rug in the picture above this one. And it was all over.
By now you know we’re suckers for a geometric rug, right? They just do something to us. They make us feel alive. Oh yes, we live dangerously. So you know what we did, right? We thanked our lucky stars that it was there. It was the only reason that we were able to get over $1000 off (!!!) and take home a $1287 rug for $250. We shoved that sucker into the passenger seat of the car faster than you can say “will-that-fit-in-an-Altima?” and I rode in the back with Clara, happy-squealing my way home. To save you some scrolling, here’s a before pic of the old rug for ya again (remember we’re still missing major furnishings, like something in that nook, art on those bare walls, etc): Next we pulled out the old rug that we’d love to relocate into the dining room under the table. We laughed at how naked that yellowed old floor looked. Someday we’ll refinish it, but until then our new rug will be in charge of de-naked-ifying things. First John did some cute vacuuming to remove any dust/fibers leftover from the tent sale. Look how fast he is. He’s like Edward except he doesn’t sparkle in the sun or bite me for sport. Next we shimmied it carefully under our bed. It probably took us a good twenty minutes to get it centered – just inching it back or to the side a little bit at a time. We love it more than words can say. Although, to quote Tim Gunn, it’s a lotta look. Haha. Still missing major furnishings/art of course, but we’ll get there. So some folks might go for something less patterned or colorful for their bedroom, but we think one of the main “what’s wrong with this room” issues for us was that it didn’t feel happy or fun or “us” at all. And now it does. Oh happy day. See how this room could almost be anyone’s bedroom? And see how the room above it probably couldn’t be most people’s bedroom? Haha. That’s the beauty of a room that feels like you. It almost feels like it couldn’t be anyone else’s. So I’m sure there are lots of folks out there who would pass on this baby, but we decided when we moved into this house that we were going to make a playful, happy-go-lucky little love nest for our family. So we’re cool with waking up to a room that “smiles” back at us. Sort of like how we love our chipper living room and guest room (which have those other colorful geometric rugs going on): I know, I know – things in the bedroom look a lot less polished or finished than those two rooms above. True dat. Look at that naked nook and those bare walls. But things always look crazy in the middle. Heck, sometimes things don’t really click into place until the very last tweak has been made, and I’d say we’re at least a dozen tweaks away from the final tweak (the pillows, curtains, and lamps might be the first to get some tweak-age now that there’s a new rug in town). But we’ll get there someday… Nothing is safe when we have our tweaking hats on. Haha. But thanks to the new rug we’re invigorated and excited to play around a little more and see where we end up. So expect a few more changes throughout the week as we try our hand at a few other switcheroos and snap pics for you as we go. Some might fail, others might work- so it’s all about playing around in the name of figuring this room out a little more.