Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

| By | |

The Best Smart Home Tech

It has been almost 4 years since we last detailed the ways we use smart home technology to make our household more efficient. Since then we’ve changed homes, states, and even our smart home systems. So today I thought I’d break down what we’ve added, what we’ve gotten rid of, and what still has a stranglehold on my nerdy tech-loving heart (and even one that was Sherry’s idea!). As usual, none of the products mentioned in this post are sponsored or gifted. It’s just stuff that we have bought and loved – or (in some cases) don’t love so much anymore. So let’s get into it. STILL LOVE: Alexa Voice Assistant Call us basic, but

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Introducing Penny Petersik!

If you follow our Instagram stories, you’ve probably seen the news that we welcomed a new member of the Petersik family recently. But I wanted to take a moment to properly introduce her here on the blog. So… say hello to Penny! After Burger, our chihuahua of 15 years, passed away in October, we were wrecked. It was a huge loss for our family, and in the initial days after Burger’s passing we donated a ton of things he left behind (our vet was able to pass along his treats, food, crate, and heart medication to other dogs in need of those items). Of course we saved a few keepsakes like his collar and blanket,

[ Read More ]

| By | | 270 Comments

How To Add Crown Molding To Cabinets

Updated January 2022 Do your kitchen cabinets feel a little bit unfinished? Or maybe don’t quite reach your ceiling, leaving a weird gap? We’ll gonna show you how we installed crown molding to give our upper cabinets a simple DIY upgrade. It’s one of my favorite, easy kitchen projects – and we completed it in just 3 hours! Why We Added Crown Molding To Our Kitchen Cabinets When we finished our kitchen reno last year we decided to forgo any crown molding on the top of our upper wall cabinets because we decided we liked the clean, modern look of the square edge. Plus we had never installed crown molding before, so I think we

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Adding Storage To A Small Kids Bedroom

When we thought about all the functions that would be helpful to have in our son’s bedroom, which can definitely be described as “cozy” when it comes to the size (real talk: this room is small), he needed: We definitely could have pulled the “your room is really small for a desk, not sure we can do that” card – but we thought it was worth a try thanks to the idea of customizing a built-in desk right next to the bed that could double as a nightstand. And low and behold, it worked like a charm. So yes, this small room has everything on that list we shared. A bookshelf, a desk (that also

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Costa Rica With Kids

We have so many good things to say about our family vacation to Costa Rica! This was our first international trip with our kids and we’re convinced it was the best possible destination for their first passport stamp. It was relaxing, enriching, and fun all of us. So today we’ll answer all of your questions: where we stayed, what we did, and how we navigated a foreign country with young kids. When you have little kids (ours are 5 and 9) it’s tempting to default to the low-stress, easy-to-plan vacation. So part of our goal with this trip was to break out of that rut, and step outside of our travel comfort zone. It was

[ Read More ]

| By | | 555 Comments

How To Stain Your Wood Cabinets Darker

The stain on our kitchen cabinets was too orange and dated-looking. We loved the wood grain, but just wanted a darker, more contemporary color. We just didn’t love the idea of sanding or stripping off the old finish. Luckily, we found a product that would let us skip that messy and tiring step while still giving us the end results we wanted. You can see our results above, and read below for how we got there! What Stain Product Did You Use? We used Minwax Polyshades for this project, which is similar to a gel stain. Unlike traditional wood stains, which have to soak into the wood to work, a PolyShades coat or gel stain

[ Read More ]

| By | |

#182: A Big Catch Up Holiday-ish Special (Surprise!)

So much has happened since we last picked up the podcast mic, so we have a jam-packed show to catch you up on all the things. We’re talking house updates, embarrassing stories, renovation plans, and we even worked in some bad metaphorical diagrams (because describing graphs and charts you can’t see always goes over well in an audio format). We’re also diving into how house projects have slowed down around here, the remaining projects on our list, and how our attitude towards having less on our to-do list has changed pretty dramatically over the years. Plus an impromptu musical exercise that captured our family’s contentment for living in a smaller home, and why Sherry can

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Our Minimized Holiday Decor

It’s wild to think that this is our second year of decorating this house for the holidays (what even is time?!). You got a peek at some of it in our new kitchen door post, but today we’re gonna show it all! I’d describe Year Two in this house for the holidays as a more minimal Christmas but still a festive one. Last year we got a mini real tree for upstairs in the family room as well as putting up our skinny faker (that’s what I affectionately call this tree right here) in the bedroom. But this year we had a more central spot for our main tree… right in the nook our new

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Adding A Door To The Kitchen

There’s been a big change in our kitchen! As in, new-hole-in-the-house kind of big! Okay, so really it’s just a new door. But that’s big, right??? Our last post covered all the photos and angles of the new kitchen porch we created outside – just steps away from our cooking area inside. So let’s take a look at what went down inside. It’s always fun to rewind, so if we take a step back in time, this is the kitchen as it looked when we bought this house in Feb of 2020: We talked about our initial updates to the room waaaaay back in this post from May of 2020 (before we moved in). And

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Make A Faux Sheepskin Seat Cushion

We used some quick and easy upholstery techniques to add some softness and texture to a storebought bench in our family room. We even knocked it out just in time for the holidays, adding to the coziness of this room! We scored this woven bench at HomeGoods mostly because it was the right size and we liked the woven texture. But as soon as we got it home, it was clear that the netted texture of the bottom was less-than-desirable. It wasn’t scratchy, just felt – I dunno – like you were sitting on a bunch of ropes. You can see in this post about the storage unit that we immediately threw some leftover sheepskin

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Our New Kitchen Porch

Finally took the photos and videos for this post and I can’t wait to share it because it changed our house in such a major way. Introducing… the area that we affectionately call our kitchen porch. Aka: the grillin’ spot with all the greenery. If you followed along on Instagram Stories for the last few months, essentially this side porch always existed, but after we closed off doors number 7 and 8 from our bedroom which led out here (yes our bedroom had 8 exterior doors & still has 6 of them – more on that here), it was just a floating porch without any door leading to it. Here’s an old photo to show

[ Read More ]