Harold's Renovation Blog: #71: Why You Don’t See Childproofing Stuff In Our House

Keeping your kids safe at home is hugely important and creating a house that looks nice but is also livable (and not too precious) is basically the holy grail. So this week we’re sharing specific tricks and tips for how we childproofed our house without running down the safety aisle and buying every last foam pad and cabinet lock. We also finally got to meet Vern Yip in person, and he taught us a lot (like our favorite new term for choosing the right lighting) and made us laugh so hard (the hotel trick for stretching his Trading Spaces budget is the stuff of legends). We also talk about juggling the task of furnishing the beach house quickly, while attempting to layer in stuff that’s meaningful and not just convenient.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

There’s us with Vern Yip at his event in Richmond, where we were totally those people in his book signing line that chatted too long and had to be ushered along by the store employees. Oops!
You can hear Vern on our podcast back in Episode #15, where he called in with some design tips. And you can hear the founder of U-Fab (the event host) giving us some fabric and upholstery advice in Episode #10
Vern’s book, Design Wise, is also super beautiful and packed with design information.
And in case you don’t believe me about “lamping” here’s the technical definition, along with the Urban Dictionary and Online Slang definitions. So many options!

Updates

If you missed any of the original episodes we referenced, here they are:
- Episode #61 about a smarter pricing strategy on sites like craigslist, eBay, and Kijiji
- Episode #64 about paying off our mortgage
- Episode #68 about the iPhone’s “Do Not Disturb While Driving” feature
- Episode #69 about Sherry’s fear of being a sweat-monster on TV

Quiz

Here’s MyDomaine’s article about 9 Things All Insanely Stylish People Have in Their Homes

Listener Question

Above is the baby gate we had at the top of our stairs for a couple of years (it was from Babies R’ Us) and here’s the Target gate we had at the bottom of the stairs.
You can also still see outlet covers in just about every photo we post, including last week’s post about our foyer updates. We use these covers because they blend nicely with white outlets, are easy to pop off, and can even clip to your vacuum or lamp cord – so you don’t lose them while the outlet is in use.

neutral foyer beachy capiz light gingko leaf

These are the anti-tip straps that we’ve purchased for some of our furniture pieces that didn’t come with them included.
And these are the covert cabinet door latches that are great for using on the inside of bathroom or kitchen cabinets if you have any that you’d like to lock (we liked the peace of mind of using them under our kitchen sink where the soaps and cleaners live).

We actually have more details about babyproofing when our daughter was young over on BabyCenter (way back when we used to blog for them), so here are some posts about:
- Using 3M Command strips to keep low-hanging picture frames on the wall
- Anchoring our large mirror to the wall to keep it from tipping (here’s what we used)
- More details on those outlet covers we still use
- And something I forgot about – how we protected the crib from teeth marks! Luckily this was a short lived phase, hence us forgetting about it completely.

We’re Digging

Above you can see the difference between our old favorite soft white LED bulb (they’re still a great choice for enclosed fixtures – we probably have 40+ between our house and the beach house) and our new favorite that looks MUCH better in exposed bulb fixtures since it so closely resembles an Edison bulb – without that super yellow/orange tinted light. And since it’s an LED, it’s much more long-lasting and it’s still is the perfect kelvin temp so it’s not too warm or too cool. Can you tell I’m excited about it?
Below you can see the Old Navy shirt that Sherry ended up wearing on Rachael Ray (and here’s the Target shirt I wore).

And here’s the alternate top she bought that would’ve pushed the limits of their no black rule (so she wore it to meet Vern) as well as the leopard print sweatshirt she got (it’s in heavy rotation on these recent colder days).

If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.

And lastly, a big thank you to The Annie Selke Companies for sponsoring this episode. Don’t forget to use code YHL15 to get 15% off any order at AnnieSelke.com/YHL, including bedding, furniture, rugs, and more!