Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Fab Freebie: Cupid’s Bar

Valentine’s Day is Friday and since we can’t take you all out to a romantic dinner for two, we’re giving away $500 worth of jewelry courtesy of BaubleBar. Their site is well stocked with an ever-updating array of necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings, and even some handy storage items. You can shop by what’s trending, what’s new, and even by what’s on tap from their notable “guest bartenders.” Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter. It might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph. And there’s a chance to win another $500 over on Style Me Pretty today, too. This giveaway is open to residents of the United States

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Adding Crown Molding Around Built-In Bookcases

We hoped to have all of the nursery’s extra chunky crown molding painted, cut, hung, caulked, and touched up by the end of the weekend, and we just made it by the skin of our teeth (where did that gross expression come from anyway?). Crown is always one of the those “it’ll be nice” things on a to-do list, and then whenever we add it we’re blown away by how much of a difference it makes. Even the most basic and boxy rooms suddenly look taller and just generally upgraded in a surprisingly significant way. Which we always appreciate since a lot of the rooms in our homes have been devoid of amazing architecture (no

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How To Pick An Exterior Paint Color

When we last updated you on the progress of the showhouse that we’re working on for Habitat For Humanity (you can read more about it here, here, and here), its exterior was largely complete and it was awaiting some paint. Well, then it snowed for three weeks in a row, which is a complete rarity in Richmond, so while we continued to scurry around finalizing materials like light fixtures, tile, and cabinetry (more on that here), we weren’t able to update you on our color choice. UNTIL NOW! Can you tell I’m EXCITED?! Get those jazz hands up, y’all. We knew from the get-go that we wanted it to be in the navy family with

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How To Make An Annual Family Photo Book

This week has already been pretty word-heavy with two big construction tutorials and a laundry saga, so we thought some lighter fare was in order – especially since a bunch of you have been asking if we made a family photo book again this year, and if so, when we’d share the details. Well, in the ever esteemed words of Madame Britney, “oops, we did it again.” In fact, the newest edition of the Petersik Family Yearbook landed on our doorstep this weekend. I have to say that we’re still so stunned at how thin-yet-picture-packed these books are. That picture above shows how five years of photos (over 2,400 of them!) can be stored in

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How To Build A Bookshelf

Today we’re going to show you how we built the bookshelves in our son’s room. It’s an easy project that we’ve since used to create custom shelving everywhere from our living room to our beach house pantry. But these bedroom shelves were our very first attempt at them and we absolutely loved how they turned out. This tutorial specifically focuses on building the actual shelves, aka the top portion of these built-ins. You can separately read about how we first built-in the cabinet bases (it’s an Ikea hack!) and later finished them off with crown molding. But since not every bookshelf needs those features, we’re talking just about the shelving today. You also can take

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The Pros & Cons Of Front Loading Washers And Top Loading Washing Machines

Well, our new washer and dryer have arrived! And we promised to share how the installation went, what we did with the floors under them, and how we like them so far (that’s where things really get interesting). We realized a few days ago that we’ve had a whole bunch of different laundry situations. In our first house we had front loaders with a counter… In our second house we had stacked front loaders with cubbies next to them… … and in this house we’ve had top loaders with cabinetry above them. Here are the new guys sitting pretty (although not quite as pretty as the others since we haven’t tackled the rest of this

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Fab Freebie: Seeing Red

A few years ago, our cousins took us into a fun home shop during a visit with them in Old Town Alexandria, VA called Red Barn Mercantile. The store had such a collected feeling of rustic weathered wares mixed with modern, often quirky, accessories and gifts – including a great selection of Dash & Albert rugs, which we’re always drawn to. So when they recently approached us to offer up a $500 gift card to anyone in the world, we couldn’t say yes fast enough. And they’re also giving 20% off to everyone with the code HOUSELOVE at checkout. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but

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How To Turn Ikea Dressers Into Built-In Bookshelves

It’s been a busy but productive week in the nursery built-in department, so I’m going to cover a lot in this post. Hang on to your hats, crank up your favorite Swedish electropop, and be prepared for some nitty-gritty detail on how we began the transformation from free-standing Ikea dresser to built-in dresser/bookshelf combo (that’s not a finished result on the right, by the way, it’s just photoshop). As you might recall, we bought two FJELL dressers because they were the size we needed and they were made of solid wood. But they did need a little additional help when it came to giving them a built-in look: None of these issues were insurmountable, but

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Picking Out A New Top Loading Washer And Dryer

In what can only be described as a one-two punch of home-ownership havoc, our washer officially died right on the heels of the big plumbing debacle that we detailed for you guys yesterday. Yup, remember when we mentioned that we hoped it would be a simple and inexpensive fix here? Well, the appliance gods must have been softly giggling as we typed that. The repair guy took one look at the corroded interior of our old machine (rusted bolts, a broken belt, etc) and said “I could attempt to band-aid this for $200, but I don’t think it would run for very long – honestly, I wouldn’t put another dollar into this machine.” And that

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Our Toilet Leaked Through The Ceiling Below

Lemme tell you, our bathroom’s wallpaper wasn’t its only problem-to-be-remedied recently. So brace yourself while we weave a little plumbing tale that spanned over the last few weeks (in fact it just wrapped up a few days ago). You know how we solemnly swear to share the good, the bad, and the ugly? Well, this one can be filed under “the bad” and “the ugly” with a side of “the gross.” So for everyone’s sake, we’ll leave out the graphic pictures. During the process of buying this house we noticed a very small, dried out water stain on the ceiling in the living room, right below where the bathroom was. We and the inspector concluded

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How To Organize A Craft Closet

So it turns out I’m Monica Geller. I get questions like those pretty regularly: Q: “I was hoping you could tell us how you organize your crafty supplies…mine seem to be spread all over the house!” – Chris Q: “Can you give us a peak at how/where you store your craft stuff? Is it obvious that I’m kind of hoping you have a secret Monica Geller closet?” – Katie And my answers are usually all strained and sputtery like this: “Our craft closet is a GIANT mess (and it’s in the guest room so they can peek in there and scream). Everything is piled into a few baskets, and there are even some paper grocery

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Picking Art For The Kitchen

The other day I was working away in the office and Sherry breezed in and stole some paper from the printer. I didn’t think much of it… until a few minutes later when I walked into the kitchen to find this. Well, this and Sherry grinning at me and batting her eyelashes. I soon learned that these large succulent photographs that she’d been eying for some time from West Elm had gone on sale (boo, but it looks like they’re back to full price now). It’s more than we typically spend on art, but they’re very large (almost 30″ wide and tall) and the price included the big glass frame – so Sherry took the

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