Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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House Crashing: Sisterly Digs

We can’t believe it’s been five years (!!!) since we house crashed John’s sister Emily. And since they’ve completed a lot more rooms (we crashed them right after they moved in), we can’t wait to share the goods. Oh and their front door is Cornichon by Martha Stewart. Every time we pull into her driveway it makes me smile. Here’s that cute family of ours now. You might remember that Emily lives with her hubby Todd, three kids, and a pretty sizable pooch named Tuck – so this is a hard working house with a big dog, a four year old, a tween, and a teen running around. We love that it always feels welcoming and

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Fab Freebie: Mob Mentality

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** Okay, mobsters – here are this week’s two lucky (and randomly-selected) winners:  Charly W (whose most recent local purchase was Vermont maple syrup from the Woodstock Farmers Market) and Megan C. Congrats! Lovers of local, connoisseurs of craftsman, and followers of all things fun, get ready to do some serious browsing. Scoutmob is a lot of things (flash deals, events calendar, online flea market…) but through it all there’s a charming emphasis on local. This week they’re inviting two of you to spend $200 in their Shoppe, a curated collection of independent artisans and makers who often weave hometown pride into their work. There’s tons

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How To Save Money On Electrical Work

Ok, so we recently had some work done. Nope, not calf implants, but you’re close… How about can implants? Also known as recessed lighting. And we went for a pendant injection while we were at it (when in Rome…). Actually the wide shot shows more of the chaos that ensued just to get the room ready for its close up (we removed half of Karl The Sectional and pushed him across the room along with rolling back the rug and covering the floor with drop clothes under each work area). Can you believe we’re well into year three of living here and we’ve never had overhead lights in the living room (except for one small

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Updating A Thrift Store Doll’s Cradle

Psst- We’re still at work on the living room (you got a preview of that mess project here) so we’ll be back with those details on Monday (barring any unforeseen catastrophes).  Woot, it’s Friday y’all. I’ll pause while you celebrate with a desk/cubicle/subway/couch dance. Speaking of rejoicing, for every time that we share heavier DIY related projects (laying a stone patio, building a deck, renovating our kitchen, or even adding board & batten) there are always a ton of little updates that we tackle – sometimes for less than $5 in under 5 minutes. Which explains why our Projects page is full of those things too (you know we love a smorgasbord). So after sharing

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How We Make Our Annual Family Photo Book

Last year is soooo, well, last year. But before we bid it a formal adieu, let’s get into one of our favorite annual happenings: Yup, we’re currently experiencing a resurgence of 2012 love thanks to the recent arrival of the 2012 Petersik Family Yearbook. We love ordering a photobook each January (which we share every year) to encapsulate the previous year’s favorite photos. We were big fans of the first one that we bought back in 2010 from MyPublisher, so we’ve stuck with them each year since so that all of the books look similar (plus, we love the quality). So with the addition of yearbook number three, we’re finally starting to have a nice little collection

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Store Crashing: Gelati Celesti

We’ve only store crashed a few times (like this cute local kids consignment shop or this office crashing from Charlotte) but when a local ice cream store called Gelati Celesti opened up in our neighborhood, not only was the ice cream pretty darn good, so was the design. In fact, we actually thought a lot of it could translate into someone’s home (so it’s not just a “commercial” look that you can’t implement in your own kitchen). Let’s have a look around on this fine Wednesday afternoon, shall we? When you walk in the awesome black-framed doors surrounded by black-framed windows and look to the left, there’s a rustic whitewashed plank wall with a prep

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How To Replace An Ugly Doorbell

Which eyesores? The wicked ones in our hallway of course. Because if we were going through all of the trouble to install board and batten, we didn’t want a blah light fixture, a dingy old ceiling vent, and a gaudy doorbell stinking up the view. So here’s an overdue rundown of those other little updates that you might have noticed in last week’s big board & batten reveal (while we steadily add crown molding to the playroom, guest room, and this very hallway – which we can’t wait to share!). Although updating the light fixture, the doorbell, and the ceiling vent sound small-ish in size, they definitely were detracting from the view. So those little

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Tips For Mixing Prints And Patterns

Q: I really love Clara’s room! Great color choices. Do you have a formula for mixing prints? I love how they are all so different – even the colors and yet they all compliment each other and totally make the room! For my boys room, I am mixing prints but find it gets very busy looking or I tend to go with the same color making it kind of boring looking.  – Cappy A: It’s funny that this comment came in about a day after I ran around Clara’s room photographing a bunch of the patterns going on in there in the hopes of making a little grid to show how we mixed & matched

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Fab Freebie: Bestå Friends

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And our lucky-slash-friendly winner this week is… Jennifer M (whose best friend is her husband. They met in college studying architecture together and now work together). Congrats! If you saw that title above and thought “oh, like the Bestå media storage system from Ikea” instead of “typo alert!” then you may be just as into the fine purveyor of flat-packaged Swedish furniture as we are. And if you’re not the only Ikea lover in your circle of friends, then you’ll be happy to learn that this Saturday on March 9th Ikea is celebrating BYOF (Bring Your Own Friend) day as part of their

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How To Install Crown Molding

Feeling too nervous to install crown molding yourself? We were too. But we just installed crown molding in our daughter’s bedroom and it was surprisingly cheap to pull off (less than $100!) and easy to execute. *PATS SELF ON BACK*. All it takes is the right tools and some attention to detail. So let me back up, tell you how I did it, and explain why installing crown molding went from one of my most dreaded projects to one I’ll surely be doing again. Steps To Install Crown Molding We’ll provide a more detailed photo and video tutorial below, but here are the basic steps to installing crown molding in any room: Adding Crown Molding:

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Our 32 Favorite Home Paint Colors

Alternate punny post title: Gimme Some Moore. Yes, that was a Busta Rhymes reference. Dude, that song was my junior year jam. And speaking of jams, our new nail gun is our latest. John’s totally ready to get his crown molding install on this weekend, assuming he can wrestle it out of my hands. Just gotta let these guys acclimate a little bit longer… So while the crown molding gets to know our house a little better (and I dreamily gaze at it while whispering sweet nothings) we’re excited to share our 2013 Benjamin Moore paint picks! We’re a little tardy for the party with this – and a big thanks to everyone who has

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Board & Batten For Less Than $60

Yesterday you saw how our board and batten project came out for the Pinterest Challenge, so today we’re back with the full tutorial shebang. And hold onto your safety goggles, it’s 2,000 words long. But don’t let all the words fool you, we’d say that this was one of the biggest bang-for-you-buck / most fool-proof ways to make an easy upgrade that we’ve encountered in a while. Wow, just realized I’m five sentences into this and I’ve already said “bang” twice. Not sure if that’s a good sign or what… We had long known that adding some sort of molding feature to our hallway was in our future… and now we’re just kicking ourselves for waiting

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