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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Maternity Portraits In Front Of The Christmas Tree

Before we took down the holiday decorations, we decided to snap a couple better-late-than-never seasonal pictures, since this will likely be the last time we can take a photo like this in front of the tree. Kinda crazy to think that this was our last Christmas with just one little one (well, two including Burger – and about 30 if you count all of Sherry’s ceramic animals). What’s even crazier is that Clara stood still enough for this long of an exposure! If you want to take a photo like this, our tips are: use a tripod, lower the lights in the room so the tree glows, and use a long exposure and stand as

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Twenty Favs of Twenty-Thirteen

2013 has been quite the year. It began with a book tour, mid-pointed with us moving into a new house, and ended with us finding out that we have a baby boy on the way. And in between there have been lots of projects, announcements, transformations, and other good stuff. So we thought we’d make our last post of the year a look back at our 20 favorites – from makeovers to personal moments – of the last 12 months. We fell off the “monthly superlative” train somewhere around our move, so we’re well overdue for a little retrospective anyways (cue the slow jazz). So here we go, in no particular order… #1 – Refacing

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Fab Freebie: Monkey Business

If your garage looks anything like ours at the moment, you’re in luck. Monkey Bar Storage is hooking someone up with over $1,000 worth of garage storage and organization solutions. In addition to eight feet of grid shelving and an assortment of hooks and hangers, you’ll also get to pick three specialty racks for whatever fits your storage needs – bikes? tools? skis? golf bags? Heck, at this rate you could even add “pick up a new hobby” next to “tame the garage” on your New Year’s Resolution list. 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

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How To Paint Your Upper Cabinets White

We’re soaking up a white Christmas over here! Nope, we didn’t wake up to any snow on the lawn, but there was a dusting of white elsewhere on the premises… We used last week to sand, prime, and paint all of our upper kitchen cabinets and – shocker – we ended up going with white. So yeah, it’s a little bit different from our original plan to paint them a light gray-tan on top… and a little more like what we did in our last kitchen – but just for those uppers. We have a completely different plan in store for the lowers – and it actually involves wood stain and no paint at all

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A Blue Boy’s Nursery With Clouds & Stars

Hope you guys are having an awesome week-between-Christmas-and-New-Years. We’re soaking up some family time, along with sanding, priming, and painting our kitchen cabinets (it looks like a small paint bomb went off with some random gingerbread cookies among the fray), so we’re hoping to share our progress on Monday. But today we wanted to drop by with a makeover by Katy for her son Gabriel. This transformation was not only completed on a serious budget (she estimates that it was under $200, including big things like a bed and a dresser), it was also done in a rental (and we know you guys love to see those). Bravo to the landlord for letting her give

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Fab Freebie: An iPad Stocking Stuffer

We’re still surrounded by piles of wrapping paper, but we wanted to stop by with a special holiday giveaway for you guys. The prize? An iPad 2 along with a custom iPad cover from StickyGram! You may know StickyGram already from the cool magnets that they make for your Instagram photos, but they also create fun stuff like customized phone and iPad covers (the latter of which doubles as a stand). 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 United States (but we’ve got an international giveaway coming up right after

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Christmas Card Ideas You Can Photograph Yourself

Every year we like to drop in before everyone abandons their keyboards for Christmas (or have you already?) to share our Christmas card along with some gushy words of appreciation. So thar she blows: We had a few other ideas planned for our card this year (Clara gift-wrapping Burger, Clara riding her bike with a tiny Christmas tree on the back as Burger ran next to her, etc) but a combination of book deadlines, hospital decorating, showhouse meetings, and bad weather tied us up. Thank goodness for this shot that we miraculously got on the day that we told Clara she was going to have a little brother (I’ve filed it under “Christmas miracles”). And

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Another “What Kind Of Accent Do You Have” Quiz…

Since hundreds of you guys got in on the fun with this American accent quiz, we couldn’t help but share the latest in online linguistic diagnostics – especially since this one seems to be pretty darn accurate. Which you’d hope, considering this quiz comes from the New York Times (and is adapted from some data from Harvard). Like the last one, it asks how you pronounce certain words… …but it also asks about what terms you use (firefly or lightning bug? semi-truck or tractor trailer? yard sale or garage sale?) to help pin down what area of the country your dialect is from. It generates a dialect “heat map” of the United States, and pinpoints

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Our Free Annual Calendar Download

This time of year we tend to feel behind on just about everything: projects, emails, present wrapping, cleaning, proper hygiene… but by some miracle, we’re actually ahead in one department: making our homemade family calendar. As many of you know, for the last five years we’ve whipped up a simple-yet-colorful calendar in Photoshop. A few of you (like Lauren and Alexandra) have even asked if we had this year’s ready yet (since we like to share the customizable template, in case you need a last minute gift). So I’m relieved to exclaim “the deed is done!” It doesn’t usually serve as our note-riddled family calendar (that’s what Sherry’s desktop planner is for) but it’s more

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Switching A Hanging Microwave To A Range Hood

Hood, there it is. Well actually, for the last couple of weeks it has been more of a “hood… there it isn’t” situation in our kitchen. You may remember that we removed our over-the-range microwave before painting the kitchen and were thinking to get a 30 inch gas cooktop. Microwave’s the only appliance we’ve planned to replace as part of our Phase 1 kitchen makeover, since it was so front & center in the room, it crowded our stove, and we always seem to prefer range hoods over microwaves with vents when it comes to performance. So we replaced it with a stainless countertop microwave (more on that here) which we’ll eventually get “installed” into

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Fab Freebie: Tool Blizzard

If your current tool collection could be described as “little to no accumulation” prepare yourself for the virtual snowstorm of power tools that may be coming your way. The good people of Ryobi are forecasting over $600 worth of tools this week. There’s a 10″ Sliding Compound Miter Saw. A Cordless Brad Nailer. And, best of all, a Ryobi ONE+ Ultimate Combo Kit that’s stocked with six tools (including 3 more saws!) that all work from the included 18V lithium ion battery. And if that doesn’t get your head spinning with ideas, there are plenty to get inspired by in the Ryobi Nation community – where you can enter to win even more tools. Please

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Our Holiday Makeover At The Children’s Hospital

Well, you can stick a candy cane in it, because one of our favorite seasonal projects ever is officially done! To recap, we were invited to help with a very special project: decorating a family waiting room at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. They contacted us in the hopes that we could volunteer our time to warm up the room so it’s more cozy and homey year-round, as well as to add some festive touches for the holiday season. Not only did it sound like a fun project, it had such a deserving purpose that we couldn’t wait to get started. Here’s what it looked like when we first visited. We set our

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