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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A Beautiful DIY Secret Garden

Something has us gravitating towards outdoor spaces lately. Maybe it’s being mid-makeover on our freshly lofted sunroom? Maybe it’s wishful thinking that summer isn’t ending? Whatever it is, we loving Stacy’s transformation of her backyard into a quaint and cozy green space. Here’s her letter: There were several books from my childhood that affected my view on life and how I wanted my home to be when I grew up. One of them was a book titled Mandy, and another was The Secret Garden. I have always wanted a space that was all mine. A space that maybe didn’t function as anything other than a retreat and a place to image and dream. Welcome to my secret

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How To Turn A Coat Closet Into Toy Storage

The closet next to our front door was an obvious place for our coat closet when we first moved in. But since our definition of “coat closet” seems to include random stuff like cleaning supplies (vacuum, dust buster, etc) as well as miscellaneous files and bags, we quickly realized that it was smarter for us to use the deeper closet under the stairs for that stuff instead. It’s slightly closer to the garage anyways, so it’s actually a more convenient spot for daily coat access (not that I’m ready to admit summer’s over yet). But that left this lonely guy next to the door without a job to do. And what’s the opposite of having

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Deciding Between Painting Or Tiling A Concrete Floor

Last you saw our sunroom, it looked like this: Well, now it’s looking a little something like this: Forgive the poor iPhone pic, but it’s the only one I snapped (just to text to my parents, actually) before Richmond turned into rain city yesterday. But you get the point, we’ve made some good progress lofting the ceiling (with the help of a professional framer who came out this week to make sure our roof wouldn’t collapse). But we’ll get into the story of the ceiling next week once the electrician has come and turned the (now loose) wires into junction boxes for two fans. Today we’re talking about a floor plan. As in, a plan

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Fab Freebie: Can I Quote You On That?

This week WallQuotes is hooking up TWO of you with a little wall makeover. In addition to $150 towards anything on their site, you’ll also get $50 to your favorite paint store. So while you’re adding some new color to your space, you can also add some personality with WallQuotes’ easy-to-apply vinyl decals. They’ve got pre-designed quotes for a range of rooms and occasions, plus you can design your own. We also love their graphic skylines, monograms, and wrought-iron inspired headboards. 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 giveaways is available worldwide! And for anyone who misses

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How To Tear Down An Old Ceiling

Oh what a feeling… dancing on the ceiling. Which is much easier when your ceiling is on the floor. But let’s rewind to a time when our sunroom ceiling was more ceiling-like. We’ve mentioned we wanted to try vaulting the ceiling in here to make it feel even more open (here’s a link to some of our inspiration). We’ve never vaulted a ceiling before but we figured this was a pretty low-risk spot to finally give it a go. We realized from the start that we might need to hire a pro for part of the job since structural ramifications like “the roof could cave in” is one of those failing answers to our “what’s

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Framing Out And Caulking Exterior Doorways

As exciting as it was to remove the sliding glass doors from our sunroom, it left a very unexciting task (by comparison) next on our list. Removing all of the metal door frames left lots of exposed raw wood along the edges of each opening. Not only did it look unpolished, but it was recipe for rot (that recipe being rain water + raw wood = rot). So we jumped on this to-do right away. When we got our house painted, this room had a lot of rot repair on the outside so we’re hyper-vigilant to the issue right now. So instead of filling those areas with wood, I splurged on PVC (i.e. plastic) since

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A Cute Play Kitchen With Light-Up Burners

Clara has had her play kitchen for over a year and a half and she still plays with it nearly everyday, which is practically a toy miracle considering how quickly other items are dismissed. So play kitchens have a special place in our hearts. And this one is extra special because, well, Casey and Phil had a ton of fun making their own – and brought lots of new ideas to the table. They don’t have a blog, but they outlined their process here for you guys: Much like you guys, my husband Phil and I decided to build our daughter Zoey a play kitchen for Christmas. I sketched it out to mimic our kitchen

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Fab Freebie: Raise Your Glass

Who’d like $1,000 worth of new tile? Any takers? Hope so, because GlassTileStore.com is gonna make it happen for one of you this week. They’ve got a huge selection of tiles in a huge range of styles, including stone and metal ones too. And if you’re wary of buying tile online, they got you covered. You can sample five products for just $5 and once you’ve made your selection, everything ships free and fast. Plus there’s a no questions asked return policy that’s good for a full year. So is that a new backsplash in your future that I smell? Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load,

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Converting A Sunroom Into A Back Porch

Sherry and I were excited when we first laid eyes on our house’s sunroom. We were actually grateful for the barely budge-able glass sliders and the damp carpet because the sellers positioned this house as a real fixer upper, and we knew the raw state of this room was one of the things that put it within our price range. When it came to brainstorming what we thought we could do with it, I had deja vu for our first sunroom, which we made over with some floor & ceiling paint, sheer curtains and some cozy furniture. My mind used that to fill in the blanks as to what this new sunroom could become. And

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Our Family Vacation In Destin, Florida

For those who requested more info about our recent family vacation, here it goes (and you can check out all of our past road trip and vacation posts here). We decided to take our week-long summer vacation in Destin, Florida this year. Since my family wasn’t doing a beach week like usual, and we were already going to be in Atlanta for the Haven conference, it felt like a no brainer to accept the Bowers’ invite to join them for week on the Florida panhandle. Katie Bower’s husband Jeremy did the hard work of finding a house to rent for the week (finger snaps for him, everybody). Since their extended family rents frequently in the

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Feeling Selfie-ish

When we posted this Instagram shot last month we alluded to the fact that it wasn’t our ordinary, everday snapshot (our caption revealed that both of us had to put on make-up for it). That’s because we took that shot while on the set of a photoshoot for Richmond Magazine’s Best & Worst issue. This annual collection of reader-voted favorites includes award categories that range from normal (Best New Restaurant) to trendy / weird / random (TV Anchor Who Never Ages). How did we make the list? Best Local Instagram Feed, y’all! We couldn’t believe it when they called us. I mean seriously, we were like “are you sure that’s us?” You can read the

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Gratitude With Gusto

It’s time for our once-a-month pause to shout out how grateful we are to the sponsors who help to make all of our other posts possible. So feel free to check out some summery blue & green things that caught our eye this month (and peruse our usual round-up of discounts at the bottom of the post). The cool color scheme of this Mykonos stencil from Royal Design Studio. WallQuotes‘ $250 “Teachers Rock” sweeps to help enhance a classroom. This green “3D” indoor-outdoor rug from Shades of Light that starts at $69. The Tile Shop‘s mixing of glass tiles in this bathroom spotted on their Pinterest page. This hand-painted-looking pillow from Joss & Main. Samples

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