Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Trying To Keep An Asparagus Fern Alive

We’re trying a new house plant on for size here at Casa Petersik, which might sound about as newsworthy as “John got a haircut,” but it’s actually quite a big deal for us. See, we usually stick with what we know in the plant department (read all about the plants that we know and love right here). So who’s the new guy in town? Why this fantastic feathery asparagus fern that we fell in love with at Home Depot (in an already-owned planter that was gifted by a friend a while back). While swooning over our new housemate, we were sure to ask the garden people if it was easy to kill and two separate

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A Gold, Tan, Teal, & Yellow Living Room Mood Board

We had a grand old time whipping up this nature-inspired mood board for anyone who’s looking to add some kick to their living or family room. We sadly can’t find the time to create custom mood boards anymore (it took a good 6+ hours to make one client commissioned board since we’d have to familiarize ourselves with the space, note the items that they want to keep/lose, brainstorm a new floor plan, etc). And because we don’t want to shortchange clients by tossing sub-par mood boards together (or watch mood boards disappear permanently from our site) we’ve come up with what we like to believe is a nice compromise… We’ll be whipping up general mood

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How To Hang Curtain Rods In A Corner

We’re back to share phase two of our big sunroom makeover with you guys. After painting the dark daybed white and bringing in our old guest room dresser and mirror for the first phase (which we affectionately refer to as our work-with-what-you-have phase) it was time to add two things to accentuate what we already had going on in the room. Paint and curtain rods. Let’s delve into the paint category first. See, we had been dying to paint the sunroom ceiling an inviting aqua color for a while, especially since it’s a tradition in the south to have a light blue ceiling on your porch (and we figured we’d enjoy the color even more

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Take It Back: Returning Things That Don’t Work

Among other things, one quirk I inherited from my mom was my aversion to return lines. Sure, there’s really nothing to fear about going to customer service and returning a purchase that just didn’t work out, but somehow it made me uncomfortable. In most cases I’d rather just suck it up, consider it my bad for buying it, and call it a loss. Maybe I just felt wrong making the retailers deal with my poorly repackaged item or just preferred to avoid any debate over whether it met their policy. But then I met Sherry, the self-proclaimed Queen Of Returns, and my relationship with those once dreaded lines completely changed. Sherry has the exact opposite

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Do It Yourself & ReadyMade

You may recall that back in April when Sherry’s belly was still full of baby we had some visitors stop by Clara’s nursery, including one wielding a big camera. Well the pics from that double-duty photo shoot for Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers have finally seen the light of day. At least the ones for Do It Yourself have (the others will be popping up later this year). In fact, a bunch of you have already mentioned seeing them in the Fall 2010 issue that’s out now. Our usual “He Said, She Said” advice column took a one-issue hiatus in order to share those photos of Clara’s DIY-riddled nursery. There’s even

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Turning A Dresser Into A Changing Table

It’s about time that we featured some projects from our über-productive pregnant Twitter friend Jen Woodhouse (who also happens to have moved recently from Nashville to the Richmond area). Jen’s been furiously nesting ever since landing here in Virginia and we thought you guys would love to see some of her projects (all of which you can learn more about on her blog The House of Wood). Here’s her letter: Inspired by your awesome Craigslist dresser project, I refinished an old dresser and will use it as a changing table/dresser for our little Eggroll. You can read more about the project here. And since I find myself wanting to show-and-tell all my DIY stuff with

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How To Prime And Paint A Daybed

You guys may remember the sunroom quickchange that occurred a few months back when we turned our former third bedroom (which once housed a West Elm daybed and a desk) into Clara’s nursery. Being work-with-what-you-have people, we brought the daybed from that old bedroom of yore out into the sunroom, and we mentioned that someday we would hopefully get around to priming and painting it white for a more balanced look (since it’s about a foot away from our other already-white West Elm daybed). We actually didn’t think it looked too bad when it was dark since it worked with the metal framing on the glass doors that surround the room… … but now that

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