Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Posts By John Petersik

John Petersik is one half of the duo behind the award-winning home improvement and do-it-yourself design blog, Young House Love. Together, he and his wife Sherry have renovated seven homes, published two New York Times Bestselling books, and designed products sold in Target and Home Depot. They are currently enjoying their downsized home on Florida's Gulf Coast with their two kids and their dog, Penny.

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How To Make Wall Decals

If Teddy ever forgets what letter his name starts with, he now has a whole wall to remind him. That’s right, it’s always “T” time in there. Har-har. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Sherry and I settled on a plan for a subtle accent pattern on the wall between the built-ins. Our original plan was to paint the Ts, like Sherry did for Clara’s raindrops. But after some of you suggested things like vinyl decals in the comments, we decided to give that a whirl instead. Vinyl has become a pretty mainstream option these days, especially for kids’ rooms. It’s removable and affordable, so we see the appeal. This tube – which is

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A Full Tour Of Our Showhouse On Video

Here we are, folks. After over a year of planning, second guessing ourselves, more planning, sweating, and filling our car with vases and egg chairs, we’ve reached the end of the Homearama Showhouse tour. So in celebration of completing this whole-house marathon of sorts, we’re kicking off this post with a whole-house video tour. Nothing too high tech. Just me stumbling through the house: Photo-wise, there are few rooms on each floor that we still haven’t shared/sourced for you. So let’s slide through the dining room, powder room, mudroom, guest room, guest bathroom, and the laundry room. We love dark wall colors in a dining space, so for this room we chose Kendall Charcoal, which

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Fab Freebie: Artfully Yours

Gallery walls just got easier. This week’s prize (for anyone in the world!) is $500 to Artfully Walls. In addition to offering a wide portfolio of art prints, they’ve got built-in tools for designing your own gallery wall arrangement. So selecting pieces, sizing and arranging them, framing them, and even testing out real paint colors in the background is nice and simple. Or you can browse their suggested walls, which are arrangements that their design professionals have already curated. They even come with recommended paint colors and hanging templates to keep it all frustration-free. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below

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How To Paint Your Garage Door & Utility Box

Do you guys ever get those irrational worries about how your house looks right before hosting a party? Leading up to Clara’s birthday on Saturday I was thinking random stuff like “I really should touch up some of the caulk in the sunroom before everyone comes over” like anyone would notice. And Sherry said “the patio table could use a fresh coat of paint” was running through her head when we were using a tablecloth anyway. But one thing that never crossed our minds was: “The back door is in pretty rough shape. Maybe we should do something about it before IT BECOMES THE PLACE WHERE KIDS PLAY WITH BUBBLES FOR HOURS.” Oh well. The

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Playing (Show)House

Before the Homearama show concluded this weekend, we slipped through on Friday with Teddy strapped into our baby carrier (Clara was with the grandparents) so we could check out the homes with visitors in them. It was fun to chat with show-goers, see our pantry getting filled up with food donations, and we even spotted a note someone left us on a notepad in the girl’s room of our house. But perhaps the most exciting thing we got to see in person was the People’s Choice Award that our house won! The votes were very close, and all of the other homes were so well done. It’s hard to put into words how much we’ve

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Beautiful Outdoor Spaces At The Showhouse

There are a few outdoor showhouse spaces that we haven’t shown at all in this entire yearlong process. Each of the seven showhouses were encouraged to include some fun outdoor spaces as well as indoor ones, so aside from the stuff you can see from the curb, there’s also a back porch and a back patio complete with a stone fireplace. The cool thing about these outdoor spaces is that they’re the places that we got to put our heads together with the builder and the architect the most – and they ended up being some of our favorites. The craziest thing is that our house won 1st place (i.e. the “Gold Award”) for both

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How To Make Planting Beds With Mulch

Let’s talk about planning planting beds, digging them out to crisp up the edges, spreading a truckload of mulch, and other fun curb appeal delights. Yes, with Clara’s birthday party coming up this weekend (more on that another day) we’ve been trying to give our landscaping a little attention. Mother Nature has done her job by cranking the greenery to eleven, so we’ve done some work to further improve the view from our front porch. And from this post title, you can probably guess what I’m talking about. Let’s hot tub time machine our way back to last summer (after all, there is no classier way to time travel) when most of our plant beds

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House Crashing: The Whole Show

For the last few weeks you guys have been requesting a House Crashing post with photos of the other six Homearama homes in the show, so we slipped through and snapped a bunch of pictures of each house, just like we did for this Homearama House Crash from 2012 (that’s your warning that this post is extremely image-heavy). Everyone who has attended the show so far seems to have different favorites, which is definitely part of the fun (there’s a “people’s choice” award that everyone who passes through can vote for, and each of the seven boxes have a ton of papers in them). All of the houses in the show sit on a cul-de-sac

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Fab Freebie: Cone And Get It

Who wants $500 to Pine Cone Hill for a little bedding refresh? They make everything from duvets and sheets to pillows, poufs, and even placemats – and they come in classic and neutral patterns or punchy colorful prints (like the Parama Diamond pattern we used in the showhouse’s master bedroom). Their site has styles grouped into categories like “Haute Lodge” and “Cape Calm” to help you find the perfect combo, or of course you can go rogue and mix-and-match from different sets. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available to residents of the US

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The Kitchen & Living Room In The Showhouse

Happy May and, well, Happy Opening Day of Homearama! Yep, our showhouse is officially open to the public as of today, along with the six others in the show. Deepbreathsdeepbreaths. Since we last showed you the office, butler’s pantry, and main bedroom (along with the en-suite bathroom & closet) and then took a pause to have a baby, let’s pick back up in the main living spaces of the house: the living room & the kitchen – which you can see from the floor plan below are both pretty big zones on the first floor. The walls in both the living room and the kitchen are Simply White, and then we layered in some colorful

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Fab Freebie: Peel The Love

Got a wall that’s looking kinda plain? Well, the people at WallsNeedLove have an answer in the form of $500 to spend on their site (and it’s open to anyone in the world!). They’ve got a whole slew of decal and vinyl designs to romance your space (and everything’s removable if you ever want to change things up). In addition to cool patterns and shapes in their decal design packs, they’ve also got wallpaper, prints, and even an “Easy Stripe” solution where you can customize the size and color for any stripe pattern that you can dream up. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it

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How To Make A Deck Gate

Today we’re going to show you how we constructed an easy DIY deck gate to help keep our dog Burger from escaping. He loves laying in the sun out there, but we wanted an affordable and attractive way to stop him from running off after a squirrel or something. We also have a newborn and a toddler, so the gate will help with them too. And the whole thing only took a couple of hours and cost us less than $30! We don’t have a fence on our property, and he has gotten more brazen lately and may even wander into the neighbor’s yard. So far our solution has been this very classy plywood boards

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