Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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The Best DIY Tools

We’re psyched to be a part of Mrs. Limestone‘s “Junk Drawer Overhaul” series, where a few bloggers will be sharing how they’re kicking off the new year right by re-organizing their messy kitchen junk drawers. We bent the rules a little bit and shared how we organized our tool drawers (which are also located in our kitchen). But it wasn’t really a drawer re-organization since our tools had just been piled in the corner of our office after we moved. Nice, right? You can read more about how our screwdrivers and hammers went from “yikes” to “that works” over on A Brooklyn Limestone In Progress. And an interesting thing happened while organizing our tools. In

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An Epic Shower Curtain Fail

Well, it’s not really epic. More like Not So Bad Fail. Or No Biggie Fail. But we like to share our trials along with our triumphs, so here ya go. We were in HomeGoods scouting night tables, rugs, pillows and whatever else wanted to come home with us when we spotted this baby for a mere 12 beans. It’s a shower curtain. Fun modern pattern? Check. In line with the gray & yellow color scheme for our guest bathroom? Check. On sale? Checkity-check-check. So we brought it home (our only purchase of the day, actually, but that’s another story) and threw it right into place. At first it felt like the perfect step it waking

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Wall Art For The Nursery

We finally hung stuff on the wall in the beanette’s room. Earth shattering right? Except it’s actually somewhat of a big deal considering we haven’t hung a single thing in the entire house except for a wreath on the back of the fireplace in the living room for Christmas. That’s right, for the last month we were card carrying picture hanging virgins in the new house. But now that we made about 34 holes (yes, I counted) in the walls of Clara’s room, our v-card is long gone. So we snapped some pics of the nursery now that it has a little more flava. The only real change from Clara’s room in our last house

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Fab Freebie: Designer Labels

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Since January is often the season of organizing, the folks at DYMO thought they’d help a couple of you amp up your process with a brandspankingnew label maker. But the LabelManager260P isn’t your mom’s label machine. This puppy lets you design labels with a full keyboard, special characters, 3 label sizes, 3 fonts, 6 text styles, and even 8 underlining and framing techniques. So get ready to pimp your “bills” folder or those “recipe” files. Here are all the entering deets: PRIZE: The DYMO LabelManager260P TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “LABEL ME!” and… BONUS QUESTION: … spill

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Using A Cloth Napkin For Color Scheme Inspiration

Please tell me you sung that title to the tune of the Brady Bunch? If not I’ll give you a minute to get to it. Now that we have that out of the way, I thought I’d share our inspiration command center when it comes to the new house. It’s this napkin that we scored on clearance from Crate & Barrel (which you might recognize from this post of yore). I kid you not. That napkin is like the Sue Sylvester of Casa Petersik when it comes to picking colors and pinning down that ever elusive whole-house-color-scheme. She’s loud. She’s totally in charge. And she’s fun to watch. Thankfully no bullhorn though. That wouldn’t go

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How To Paint A Mirror

The deed is done. Everyone on Team Paint The Mirror White (not to be confused with Team Edward, which I’m totally a member of) can rejoice. Our mirror above the sink went from this: To this: And I guess we should show how it originally looked when we moved in for the full before: But back to the white paint choice. After much thought (and a decent amount of flip-flopping) we decided to go with our first instinct and paint the mirror white to match the trim. It definitely looks integrated and a bit less heavy, so the nook is now a little less look-at-me-right-now distinct (which is a good thing since we’re trying to

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The Washer & Dryer We Picked: Stackable Whirlpool Duets

Our new washer and dryer are here! Which of course means that our old ones are not. Fortunately our plan to craigslist them worked out swimmingly (thanks for buying ’em Leslie Ann!) even if it did leave us appliance-less for a few days (as you saw in the video house tour). By selling them for $250 thanks to good old craig and his list, we in effect brought our already-super-discounted total down from $638 to $388. Although after the wall plug, the stack kit, and taxes it was closer to $460 spent. Either way, we’re still feeling crazy good about the deal – and we’re glad that so many of you were able to take

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A Video Tour Of Our New House

So it’s been exactly a month since move-in day and it’s shameful to think that we haven’t shared a video tour of the place yet. We officially accept a virtual slap on the wrist. Or a noogie if you’re old school. But no indian burns. Gotta draw the line somewhere. Anyway, after unpacking, list making, nursery painting, door frosting, bi-fold removing, duvet ordering, bed-assembling, washer & dryer hunting, shelf removing, Christmas tree decorating, playing with ceramic animals built-in bookcase arranging, built-in bookcase painting, dealing with a plethora of mirrors (some in very odd places), bedroom painting, Christmas tree dismantling, and waiting for our new washer & dryer to arrive (update: they’re here! more details later!)

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What Could Have Been…

When we’re painting we talk about all sorts of weird things that we probably wouldn’t otherwise get around to. And while painting the bedroom we got to the topic of “names that our parents almost gave us.” Get this. My mom wanted to name me Gina. We would have been John & Gina. That made us titter. Not sure if it’s a had to be there thing though. Either way, John’s dad’s choice of names takes the cake. He wanted to name John… wait for it… Lars. Lars Petersik. How funny is that? If I had seen tall dirty blond John at work and asked a coworker “oh who’s that?” and heard them respond with

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Removing A Medicine Cabinet And Hanging A Bathroom Mirror

Our recent flurry of mirror-related projects means my repertoire of pun-riddled mirror references is growing thin. Our latest victim was the guest bathroom. We figured after swapping out the medicine cabinet in our master bath, that we might as well do the same in the guest bath. Especially since our guests won’t exactly need a medicine cabinet. At least we hope not. It was still functional, but had definitely seen better days (the interior metal cabinet was starting to rust- we think it was original to the house, which makes it almost 50 years old) and we figured we could do better than the plain silver frame. So two screws later it was off the

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Painting The Bedroom Light Teal: Carolina Inn Club Aqua

That’s the name of the new bedroom color. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it does look pretty good rolled on the walls. We finally made a decision to go with the middle band on the Valspar swatch at the top of this photo (though we got it color matched to Olympic’s No-VOC paint in a satin finish). We liked that it was green and a bit more saturated than a color we’d choose for our last house. Here’s one last look at the room paint-less (and mostly furniture-less). Oh yeah and look at poor semi-disassembled Ed the Bed. We had to remove one slat on the top so that he could slide

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Fab Freebie: Cut It Out

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** It’s no mystery that we think silhouettes are a great and graphic spin on the traditional framed family photo. So of course this week’s prize is right up our alley: a customized 8×10 silhouette portrait from Nella Designs. Nella Designs has a bunch of other fun items in her Etsy shop (like this 2011 desktop calendar that our winners will also be scoring), but it’s these prints made from photos of your family, pet, or even you & your significant other (in your choice of color) that really caught our eye. You can see more of the prints that she’s personalized

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