Dude. Remember last fall when we created a separate little site just for browsing mood boards and mentioned that we wanted to create one full of actual photos from house crashings and reader redesigns (where you could search by color or room)? Well, after a few more midnight coding tantrums and accidental hunger strikes we’ve (finally) done it. It’s a big ol’ gallery full of real rooms for your viewing pleasure. And you can access them anytime by clicking the “Room Gallery” tab under our header. Sidenote: I’ve always wanted to start a post with dude. Mission accomplished.
This new “” follows the same basic format as the existing , only these are actual photos of rooms that might come in handy when you’re looking for ideas for your casa (you know, as opposed to boards full of furnishings and accessories). We’ve uploaded pics from over thirty House Crashing adventures as well as some of our solved Design Dilemmas (which gives you over 340 pictures to peruse) and we plan to beef things up over the next few weeks by adding images from all of our previous Reader Redesigns too. You know, once I can see straight again.
Things are tagged by color and room (just like in our mood board gallery) which means you can search by room or by color scheme if you’d like. So if you’re jonesing for rooms or only want to , you can indicate that on the main page or the sidebar to hone in on what you want. Oh and to find out more about each room and see a close up, just click on the thumbnail. As always, it’s nothing fancy since our coding philosophy is just like our home improvement one (learn as you go). So please pardon any glitches or less than perfect searching capabilities and let us know if you find any broken links or typos.
We’ve also added a fun little rating feature. So if you’ve got the warm fuzzies for a particular pic, show it some love by clicking the heart icon below it on the photo detail page. It won’t put that room into a “favorites folder” or anything (in order to code that people would have to sign in, which is beyond our skill level and not everyone likes logging in anyway) but the rooms getting the most love will show up on the sidebar under the “Most Loved Rooms” title – which means everyone will have quick access to whichever rooms the crowd is finding to be the most inspirational. And they’ll constantly change as people continue to explore and weigh in, so that should be kinda fun.
So feel free to poke around and make yourself at home in our new digs (which will just keep growing as we continue to add photos). It’s definitely somewhere I expect to find Sherry all the time (we don’t get out of the house much). Can’t wait to see which rooms pop up as favorites.
Wow, what a cool feature! Thanks! It’s like but for your blog.
Totally unrelated , but here is question for you guys – Any ideas on how I can curtain up my patio glass doors..the doors open towards the inside of my house..?
I would just hang them high and wide enough for the doors to have clearance and swing in. So they sort of frame it without impeding.
That’s what I thought. I love the new gallery feature. We closing our first home in August and cannot to wait to use SO many of your great tips!
Very cool! The gallery looks great. I love how it looks after you click on a color, there are different images from each room.
Wonderful idea! Another reason to spend lots of time on your blog!
Dude! Time-waster for the day secure. Thanks guys!
Hahahaha. Just copy and paste this comment as mine.
oooh! Can’t wait to poke around! Good job DIY coding! Where’d you learn that skill?
It’s all John! He googles around and uses lots of trial and error. My hero! It’s amazing to me that he’s self completely taught! And he’s so weirdly humble about it (Oh this gallery I just tossed together? It’s nothing). He’s the man.
That is very impressive!! All I’ve managed to do is force my links to open in a new tab/window (still not sure which). I appreciate the hard work!
I just noticed that this morning and was wondering how long it had been there. Me likey!
COOL!! Thanks for putting in all the time and effort so we can enjoy your blog even more!!
Genius! I love how you guys are constantly evolving this place. Meanwhile I’ve been trying to get a house tour up for hm, 10 months….
Good work youngsters! Looks awesome.
I bow to your coding prowess. Somehow, it never clicked for me. Even HTML. The gallery looks great and I can’t wait to find come killer ideas for our new house!
Speaking of which (and completely off topic… but you guys are probably used to that), do you think I can stencil on textured walls? I painted our dining a dramatic dark gray (Winter’s Day by Martha Stewart for Behr… that’s a mouthful) and want to do some persimmon stenciling over it, but I’m not too sure about how the texture will affect the cleanness of the lines.
I think it might have a fuzzy texture around the edge of the stencil due to the texture. Which might not look bad- maybe just do a few sample ones to see if you like them (and paint over them if they don’t work)? Anyone have textured wall stenciling advice for Jess?
Neat! Off to go check that out.
Ooh sounds pretty! Check out our Projects page for a furniture painting tutorial. It should come out great!
I know how difficult coding can be, especially when you DIY and have only little experience in the field :-) .
I once coded a homepage for a PhD student workshop we hosted at our university, complete with registration, an abstract submission form and so on, from scratch. It can be quite hard, but all in all it was really fun to see the site come to life.
Right now I am writing my PhD thesis with LaTeX, do you also use it for your book?
We don’t but it sounds cool! We’ll have to check it out!
Ah, I just thaught because some publishers want your manuscript to be submitted in LaTeX. If you’re interested, it’s basically a typesetting program where you write code (similar to HTML) and compile it, the output being for example a document. It has quite strict rules how, for example, the distance between two letters or words is allowed to be, resulting in a very beautiful, harmonical, easy to read document. In addition, you can change major properties of your document just by adding a command in your source, and change it, for example, from one-sided to two-sided or change the paper format.
Sounds cool. We’ll look into it for sure! I think they’ll be laying out the type and all that, but it might be fun to play around with anyway!
This may be my favorite thing you have ever done!
Dude, nice. You guys are such a good team – I think your complementing skills and specialties are a big part of what makes your blog great. Ya’ll go together like high and wide.
Bwahahahahaa. That sounds like a Grease 3 song. We go togeeeeether like rama lama lama lama high and wiiiiide!
hate to be a debbie downer but, when i double click on bedroom i get a message that internet explorer can not open this page. anybody have any idea what i can do?
Sorry Ellen! The site is being really slow due to all the clicking around (fingers crossed that we don’t crash). Hopefully refreshing or coming back in five minutes will load that bedroom button for ya!
Seriously, just when I think you guys can’t get any more awesome…you go and do it! LOVE this new feature! You guys make my day at work when I need a little break! Thank you!
Perfect Timing! I just found your blog yesterday and we just officially got a contract to buy a home ;) I’ve been looking for good kitchen ideas in particular but also kids bedrooms. SO EXCITED to go check out your gallery.
This is awesome! Quick question – any plans to add a “Dorm” category under “To Browse By Room” anytime soon? I guess they could technically go under Bedrooms or something, but I’ll be trying out dorm living for the first time in January (studying abroad in France!) and it would be awesome to be able to browse for some dorm-specific inspiration.
Right now we haven’t crashed any dorms to create that category, but if we do we’ll definitely add it! For now checking out living and bedroom would hopefully give you some ideas though!
Awww man, I was TOTALLY hoping to see Evie’s nursery in there:( Ah well, ya win some, ya lose some. Love this new feature, though! Can’t wait to poke around some more! Well done!
We have yet to add any Reader Redesigns that we’ve already shared on our site, but we plan to add stuff that we’ve shared on YHL (in the past and moving forward) so it’s all in one place!
Awesome! Great idea, and I, too, am blown away by the coding skills. Any possibility John might host a little session with some basics?
That’s definitely something I’d consider if you think people would be interested! Maybe for our blogiversary? Would anyone else find this helpful?
Dude! Me me me me too!
Thanks for the feedback guys! I’ll have to try to throw something together for our blogiversary.
Cant wait to pour through the gallery. I may even use some of it as an inspiration for my next make over on the Nate Berkus Show!!!
Aw thanks Rashon! LOOOOOOVE your blog!
crashing, but still worth it (even with slooooooow loads).
BRILLIANT! Can’t wait to get in there once it speeds up.
There are some under kid/baby! We definitely need more though!
=( It wont load for me, it’s like… all page and no script! Here I was trying to take a peek at John’s web designing skillz! Bah-humbug! Hope you guys get it working again soon!
So sorry… we be crashing left and right. Haha. On with the tech guys though. Hope it’s up and running again in about an hour. Sorry for the suspense. Haha.
I love that someone else has a goofy sense of humor like me and yet is so cool! Thanks for the new gallery. I never got the “Martha” gene so I’m desperate for some inspirational rooms I can copy for our new house! I figure I could recreate (i.e., copy) it even if I can’t put it together from scratch!
I SOOOO love that you do your own site. I have been a fan for a while and had no idea… now I’m doubly impressed.
Ummmm, by “do your own site” I mean the coding…. and we would be very interested in hearing more about how you do it! Hubby codes our website but we are very much in the hobbyist/ amateur category.
Sounds like a coding post from John might be just the thing? I’ll beg him to write one up for the blogiversary. The problem with him is that he’s too humble. He thinks he’s “not good” at it- when clearly he’s got it goin’ on. Haha.
I think this is also crashing Pinterest (or keeping all their servers busy), lol too many pinning going on right now (probably from this site).
Oh man- we’re breaking everything today! So sorry if that’s the case!
Awesome! I cannot imagine what a headache this was to pull together, but totally worth the effort!
While we are on the topic of crashing..I was also going to ask about your friend’s blog, the Bowers… it seems like it crashes every time I try to look on there. I’m sure its because you linked all the readers from here! Or maybe I’m the only one with that problem? I wanted to see their house, too, but it crashes every time!
I think she got it all figured out! Site stuff like that is really frustrating and it can be hard to solve – hope it loads for you now!
Thanks, Sherry. What you guys do is not easy, I’m sure! Kudos to you and to the Bowers as well!
I’ve had problems with the Bower’s site off and on too. Sometimes it loads and other times it crashes.
I’ve noticed the last few months it loads reeeeaaaaallllyyyy slowly. Annoyingly so, but I’ve been patient. Sometimes I just have to come back and it works later. Nice to know it’s not just me.
The entire site is truly amazing, and addicting just like the pintrest obsession –er- phase I’m in.
Really, who needs 3,000+ pins when I don’t own a house yet (most of my pins are under my ‘house’ category or have to do with a house)? Well this girl does haha.
Right now we’re just feeding things that we’ve already featured on the blog into the Room Gallery, but moving forward we’d love to add things that way! In the meantime feel free to share your amazing nursery over on our Facebook page for all to see!
I spy a smiley face in the footer, but only noticed it on the Gallery page even though now I see it’s here too. How did I miss that!?
Fun fact: WordPress adds that to track stats. Fun and functional, no?
Awesome! Thanks for all the new perks.
Oh my gosh the new part of the site looks amazing!It looks like so much hard work, but I’m sure all of the readers, myself included will waste hours enjoying the fruits of your labor!
This is so fantastic! My husband and I just bought our first place and, slowly but surely, the DIY side of me has been growing. Daily trips to your site help me build up enough courage to start my own projects. Thank you for all your hard work and for giving me a confidence boost!
Usually we’re stickler for consistency like that too, but for now brevity has won out (since we’ve got limited space on our top menu) and who knows when we’ll be adding something new up there. But may end up renaming or retitling things down the road. We’ll keep you posted!
Great job, guys. I’m pumped to check it all out!
Thanks for the catch! Got it fixed now.
i’m impressed with the genius computer skillz. what a cool feature.
Just one more thing on your site that will keep me from getting my work done. Ha!
I really like you guys…you’re awesome. Thank you for putting so much effort into this blog!