Behold: our DIY wire trellis! I’ve wanted to try this project for over a decade and I’m over the moon with how it’s turned out. All it took was some basic tools, wire & hooks, plus a climbing vine to bring it to life. Oh, and planning. It does a bit of planning. So let’s show you how to make your own!

My urge to make a vine trellis intensified after we painted our house white last fall. The back of our garage practically screamed “ADD A DIAMOND TRELLIS ON ME!” It feels like such a chic garden accent, that our white house finally felt fancy enough for one.

Wire Trellis Before & After

Before we jump into the tutorial, let’s show you the progress our little clematis vines have made so far. Here is how the area looked before we installed the wires.

Continue reading How To Make A DIY Trellis at Young House Love.

We scoured 100+ white paint colors featured on more than a dozen “best white” lists to determine what are truly the most universally loved white paints. I even made a spreadsheet! These are the 12 colors that came up over & over again. They’re trusted by everyone from interior designers & architects to builders & bloggers alike. So let’s dive into why experts recommend them and how you can pick the right white paint color for your home.

Why Designers Love White Paint

Walls, Trim, & Ceiling: SW Pure White

White is a classic choice for trim, ceilings, and even cabinets. But white paint on your walls? That’s when the strong opinions come out! Critics write off white walls as basic or boring. But they can be a smart, classic choice that’s both timeless and on-trend. We personally love them.

Continue reading The 12 Best White Paint Colors (According To Experts) at Young House Love.

It may seem intimidating to install a stair runner yourself, but it’s so darn easy that we’ve done it twice! Thrice if you count demonstrating it on live TV (more on that later). Just follow the steps in our tutorial below, including our trick for making sure your rug is the perfect size for the project.

Adding a rug or runner to your stairs isn’t just a stylish decor choice that can add color, personality, or pattern. It’s also a safety feature! We find that adding a stair runner cuts down on slips, falls, and even makes it easier for our dog to traverse them. They also absorb sound, meaning your less likely to hear your kid clomping up and down the steps. So we highly recommend adding one if you’ve got young children, pets, or even just clumsy adults around.

DIY Stair Runner Before & Afters

The first time we installed a stair runner, it was to replace a dingy carpet runner that came with the house.

Continue reading How To Install A Stair Runner at Young House Love.

Board and batten is one of our favorite, easy DIY projects. It’s completely beginner-friendly and it makes a big impact in any room, entry, or hallway. This is the 3rd house where we’ve installed this type of wainscoting, so we’ll show you our trick for making this project faster, easier, and less expensive than traditional board and batten!

For this particular installation in our beach house, we did a higher board & batten and hung peel-and-stick wallpaper above it. It was exactly the mix of traditional & colorful that we were going for in this guest bedroom!

What is Board & Batten?

Board and batten originated as a style of exterior siding, but is also used as interior paneling. It describes a technique where thin strips of molding – or “battens” – are placed over the seams between larger, flat boards. It can be installed floor-to-ceiling or partway up a wall, and battens can be arranged vertically, horizontally, or even in boxes.

Continue reading Easy Board & Batten Tutorial at Young House Love.

Adding a headboard to your bed is one of the best ways to add polish and coziness to your bedroom. And, lucky for you, making your own DIY upholstered headboard is super easy and affordable (ours only cost $66!). This means you can customize the fabric, size, and design to get exactly the look you want. Believe us, we’ve done A LOT of them over the years!

Today we’re going to take you through the step-by-step process to create the first headboard in the grid above (top left). It’s our favorite, classic headboard tutorial. But you can check out more headboard ideas below:

• How to make a channel-tufted headboard (top right)
• How to make a daybed-style headboard (bottom left)
• How to make a wall cleat to hang a headboard (bottom right)

Materials & Tools

Your exact supply list may vary from ours, but generally, this is what you’ll need to make your own upholstered headboard for your bed:

• Fabric of your choosing (we used 2 yards)
• Extra loft batting (we used 4 yards)
• 5/8″ plywood or MDF
• Two or three 1×3″ whitewood boards
• Miter, table, or circular saw to cut your wood (optional)
• Heavy-duty staple gun & staples
• Screwdriver and screws

Why Add A Fabric Headboard?

Continue reading How To Make An Upholstered Headboard at Young House Love.

Storage is useful in any closet, but it’s especially important in small ones like our laundry closet. That’s why we built some suuuuuuper simple DIY closet shelves as soon as we moved in. It’s an easy project that anyone can tackle! They require very few materials, take only a few hours, and can be customized to fit your closet and storage needs.

washer | dryer | handheld vacuum

And as a bonus, we’ll even show you how to build a laundry counter that matches your shelves. It’s even removable so you can easily access your washer and dryer when they need servicing.

Our shelves have been going strong for nearly 4 years now and they look & function just as well as the day we installed them.

Steps For Building DIY Closet Shelves

The process for adding these DIY shelves is very straightforward.

Continue reading How To Build Easy Closet Shelves at Young House Love.

These DIY pantry shelves we made for our beach house are easy to built and can be customized to any space, even if you've got a small pantry or simple pantry closet! They're made entirely of two things: MDF sheets and pine boards. So even if you're a beginner, you can do this. Seriously.

Continue reading How To Build DIY Pantry Shelves at Young House Love.

Today we’re talking about the stock market! Just kidding. Exactly as the title suggests, we’re going to show you how we earned some really useful extra storage in our new kitchen by upgrading a formerly VERY PACKED utility closet. It used to basically just have a water heater and an HVAC system in it without much room for anything else, and now there’s, say it with me… so much room for activities. Ok, not for like cartwheels, but significantly more room to store stuff than before. Like maybe 500% more. Really.

If you watched our drawer-by-drawer kitchen organization video, you already got a peek at what we have going on in there, but today we’re sharing all the angles, and explaining how we were able to take this closet from “mostly water heater” to “so much everything else.”

The Utility Closet Before

We don’t have a lot of “before” photos of this closet because it was absolutely nothing to write home about.

Continue reading How To Add Utility Closet Storage at Young House Love.