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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Fab Freebie: On Your Mark, Get Set, Sew!

With last week’s fabric-filled giveaway still on our brains, we thought you could use something to turn random swatches of fabric into something awesome this week. Enter the Singer Vivo sewing machine, stage left. It’s conveniently compact, and it’s made with non-sewers in mind – so it’s for any do-it-yourselfers and crafters who are looking to knock out projects (like this embellished dishtowel tutorial) without having to lug out a bulky machine or pore over an instruction manual. And to make your new life as a sewing ninja even easier, they’re also throwing in some scissors and a thread kit for a total prize package of over $300. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to

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Revere Pewter, The Gray Wall Paint Everyone Loves

We were trapped inside for the last few days due to rain, so we made some progress by tackling the job of painting our recently de-carpeted bathroom & closet. Here’s a shot of what we eventually got the space to look like, complete with stenciled floor, and – what we’re talking about today – Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter on the walls. But let’s rewind for a second. First up was painting the cream trim white (we went with Benjamin Moore Simply White in semi-gloss, just like the trim in the rest of the house). Part of me hates to downplay the time that task took by sharing one measly before & after picture to cover

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How To Install Outdoor Fans

Truth: Sherry was oddly into fan hunting and the idea of adding two new fans to keep our freshly-opened sunroom cool (and to create a nice mosquito-warding-off current while we’re out there relaxing), but I was NOT excited about said fans. We actually have quite a bit of practice removing fans (I submit to you Exhibits A, B and C) – and just look at how happy it made me. Generally we’ve had 7.5 to 8′ ceilings in most rooms with them, and being 6′ tall, I’ve always felt like they were low-hanging oversized pinwheels that were one inch shy of giving me a haircut – although we’re suckers for function, so we’ve always kept

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A Nursery With A Planet Wall Mural

Some of our friends with sons lament that it’s hard to find inspiring boy rooms, which is why we’re always excited when a cool one shows up in our inbox. And our excitement for Dacia and Jordan’s nursery creation could almost be described as “out of this world.” Pun intended. Here’s Dacia’s email: Hi John & Sherry! I wanted to share my nursery with you guys. When we found out that our very first wee one was going to be a little dude, I immediately took off with designing the nursery. I had a plan all worked out, and then one night my hubby (who normally couldn’t give two hoots about decorating) sweetly said, “Would

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Fab Freebie: Er, Should We Say “U-Fab Freebie”

For years now, one of our favorite places to score awesome fabric on a budget has been a local shop called U-Fab (also run by a young married duo!). Everything from our headboard to our old dining room curtains to the backdrop we used for last week’s pregnancy announcement has hailed from there. And now that they’ve launched an e-shop, we’re excited to do a giveaway with them. And not just any giveaway – a $500 gift card giveaway! So, you can either stock up on fabrics… or take their custom upholstery services for a spin (they do bedding, pillows, window treatments, and even furniture). Plus, they’re all-around nice, fun-loving people. Please use the Rafflecopter

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Leveling and Dry Fitting Tile In An Outdoor Area

Since we last checked in on the sunroom last Thursday, Sherry and I have managed to check four more things off the list: installing two ceiling fans, cleaning the concrete floor, leveling it, and cutting the tile and planning out our pattern (aka: dry fitting). But excuse me while I backburner the fan installation tutorial (I promise it’ll pop up in a few days) because we’re just too psyched to share those three tiling prep steps with you guys. We made some serious weekend progress – more than we thought we would – and we couldn’t be more excited about the tile pattern that we landed on. In fact, I’m probably outside tiling as you

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A Marble & Dark Wood Bathroom

It’s official – we’ve got bathrooms on the brain after our impromptu update over the weekend. And not just bathrooms, but closets too. Fortunately, Meghan and her husband Sean shared a double-dose of makeover-y goodness with us: their bathroom and closet. Go figure. So check out their recaps below while we try our best to resist shopping for tile… I didn’t have a blog when you guys kindly featured our kitchen redesign, but you inspired me to start one and it has been a really fun way to document our adventures! I thought I’d share with you our bathroom renovation. It was extremely small, extremely dated (think 1960’s fab), and smelled extremely bad (no idea

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How To Add Exterior Trim And Then Caulk And Paint It

First of all, thanks so much for the unbelievable outpouring of well-wishes for our announcement yesterday. It was great to share our news with you guys. While madly trying to keep up with the 3,000+ (!!) comments, our afternoon post sort of fell by the wayside, so we figured we’ll share an afternoon one today with you instead. In the meantime, Sherry is cutting and pasting a ton of questions from yesterday’s comments and working on Friday’s Q&A post for you, and I’m here to shake my tail feathers about managing to cross a few more things off our sunroom to-do list in this week (yes, feel free to picture that). So let’s talk about

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Now Expanding

We’re excited to announce that the Petersik family is under construction again. Yup, someone’s gonna be a big sister… and she’s pretty darn excited about it. The proverbial bun in Sherry’s oven is scheduled to arrive in April, and we’re both elated to be growing. (I’ll happily put on some sympathy weight – it’s the least I can do) Burger, on the other hand, has no idea what’s going on. But he’s generally excited about life, so that’s nice. Sherry’s first trimester wasn’t without a few trials (a fender bender that had us worried for a bit and some pretty intense morning all-day sickness for the lady-wife to name a few) but we’re so grateful

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Fab Freebie: The Art of Home

You guys know we’re suckers for a good house portrait, so we’re happy to be serving one up this week thanks to watercolor wizard Michelle Schneider of The Art of Michelle. She creates all sorts of good stuff, but we’re drawn the most to her charming renderings of people’s homes and gardens. It’s always fun to see the different twists that artists put on painting their most structural of subjects. You might find someone’s pet popping up in the yard of some of Michelle’s work – or some sheet music adding some texture to a tree or a roof. This week she’s giving one of you a custom 11 x 14″ house portrait, which is

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Ripping Up Old Wall To Wall Carpet

I realize four months isn’t an eternity, but it was about 3.9 months longer than we wanted to spend with the last vestiges of the old carpet upstairs. Especially since it was in our bathroom. Ah, carpeted bathrooms. We didn’t remove it – or the portion that extended into our closet – back when we removed the rest of the upstairs carpet because we knew we didn’t want hardwood floors in the bathroom. So, in the absence of a new flooring decision, we just left the old stuff. The old, wrinkly, creamy stuff that blended right in with the creamy walls and creamy trim. But yesterday morning (yup, about 24 hours ago!) we decided to

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Blogiversary 6: You Guys Are Hilarious

As our sixth blogiversary winds down (and we stow the t-shirt launchers and airhorns until next year) we wanted to thank you guys for the good times. Hashtag thanks for the memories (please tell me you’ve seen this). Last year’s blogiversary concluded with a geeky graphic round-up of some of the most interesting stats from our annual reader poll, and this year nearly 30,000 of you guys took the poll at the end of Wednesday’s post, which was a pretty big contrast to our first blogiversary poll where I copied and pasted all 199 comment responses into a spreadsheet by hand). It was interesting to see what has changed since last year’s infographicized recap (and what

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