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 Stain And Seal A Deck

You know that part in a movie where the dorky girl rips off her glasses and throws on some makeup and suddenly she’s a bombshell? Well, our deck has already tossed its spectacles aside (i.e. we stripped off the old finish) and now it’s time for some lipstick (i.e. stain). We’re not exactly aiming for bombshell status here, but we’d settle for – I dunno – sexy librarian? I think I’m getting lost in my own analogy. The gist is that with our deck boards cleaned, we could finally apply a new protective finish. After some discussion, we decided to use a semi-transparent stain. Both of us prefer that look over something completely solid, but

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Fab Freebie: Insta-nt Attraction

Hear ye, hear ye, lovers of organization and instagramization. This week THREE of you are getting a couple of picture perfect prizes (bad pun intended). The first comes from StickyGram, who specializes in turning your Instgrams into charming little magnets. Each winner will be getting five sheets of nine different magnets (for a total of 45) that you can tear off and use however you’d like. They also make great gifts. My sister included a StickyGram sheet in each of the Mother’s Day cards that she sent out this year and they were a huge hit. But if you win 45 Insta-magnets, wouldn’t it be great to have a fun place to stick them? That’s

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A Kids Bedroom With Map Wallpaper & Bunk Beds

…in his bedroom. Well, most of it. Here’s Emma’s hilarious letter about the makeover they turned out for their son’s room: We moved in to this three-storey 1876 “brownstone” (sidebar: it is neither made of brownstone nor located in New York City) three years ago – we’re in Ontario, Canada. We’ve been working our way through the house converting what was four separate apartments back into a single home. This bedroom is up on the third floor and it belongs to our 5-yr old son, Angus. The ‘Before’ photos were taken when we first looked at the house and, at the time, this bedroom was the living room of a medical student at the University

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Fab Freebie: Tektonic Movements

We’re still at the beach but somebody’s about to rock your DIY-lovin’ world. The makers of TEKTON tools are giving one of you a “Complete Toolbox Makeover” in the form of a giant collection of their most popular tools worth over $1,000! It includes 46 different tools and tool sets – meaning that everything from a sleek fiberglass hammer and an awesome 10-in-1 pocket tool to an 135-piece wrench and screwdriver set could be coming your way. I couldn’t even cram half of what you’ll be getting in my measly little mood board below. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up

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How To Change A Bathroom Faucet

Check out this ladykiller in the half bathroom: It’s not especially offensive looking, but it leaks. And with a single knob I’m always worried that Clara will accidentally turn it to scalding hot when she’s washing her hands. So we hit up our Habitat ReStore hoping for a cheap find. Sherry lunged for joy (you need to see that in person by the way) when she spotted this $12 find in the pile… only to learn that it was inexplicably missing one handle (we dug around for 20 minutes looking for it to no avail). Just wasn’t meant to be. So we settled for this $34 find at Home Depot, which was pretty much the

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How To Install A Nest Learning Thermostat

Everywhere we turn these days there are things that need updating. Some just for aesthetic reasons. Some for functional. Some for both. Enter our old timey, first floor thermostat in our office. We figured with our new furnace system it’d be a good time to update this to something more energy efficient. We made the swap to a programmable thermostat in our first house, so this time around the tech geek in me begged Sherry to let us take this upgrade a step further – especially since so many of you have commented about loving your Nest. To my surprise, she agreed. And that’s how I found myself holding one of these babies. But let

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How To Run A New Cable Wire

One thing we were excited about doing differently in this house vs. the last one is having a TV in our master bedroom. And while we did briefly have a TV in our last master, we never hooked it up to a DVD player or bothered to get a second cable box. Heck, I’m not sure it even got plugged in. We’ve never been gung ho about having a bedroom TV (and we realize it can be a hot topic) but as two people who struggle to snap out of blog mode at night, we thought it would help fight the temptation to work on our laptops (which happens all the time downstairs on the

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Designing A Showhouse Model Home

Yup, Sherry and I have started work on another new house. But before you gasp – we’re not moving into this one… and it isn’t technically ours. Heck, it’s not even built yet. In fact, the lot currently looks like this: Some of you may remember this Mega House Crashing that we did last year where we toured 8 custom show homes – each constructed by a different builder and decorated by a different interior designer – as part of an event called Richmond Homearama. Well, their 2014 event is now in the works and they’ve asked us to design one of the homes! Cue the girlish shrieking (not from me, I promise my shrieking is

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Fab Freebie: I Sense A Refresh

As we mentioned on Friday, we have an almost unbelievably shallow kitchen sink. So when Kohler offered us a new sink and faucet, it pained us a little to say no… but you know we love to pay things forward to you guys! Which is why we’re thrilled to announce that someone’s about to win any KOHLER sink of their choosing (yes, any!) AND a new KOHLER Sensate Touchless faucet (so you’ll be able to turn your water on and off by just passing your hand – or bowl or spatula – under the faucet’s sensor). They’re even offering a free consultation with a KOHLER interior design to help you pick the perfect sink &

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Breaking Down The New Pad

It’s Friday! Let’s get mathy up in here. By now you know I’m a card carrying facts & figures nerd (here’s Exhibit A and Exhibit B) so when Sherry and I started to notice some unique stats about our new house my throat basically erupted with “LEMMEDOSOMEINFOGRAPHICSPLEEEEEASE.” Whether she actually was keen on the idea or was just worried that disagreeing would turn me into some beastly werewolf-statistician, this post was born. We always end up loving random time capsule posts like this the most in hindsight (it’s fun to look back at things we probably would have forgotten otherwise, like this, this, this, this, and this). So in the name of some headed-into-the-weekend fun

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How To Program Your Garage Doors

We have two garage doors. I know, I know – cool story, bro. But I promise this gets better. Well, it does if you’re a tech nerd or just enjoy life’s little conveniences. Sherry’s eyes glaze over when I try to tell her this stuff, so I’m talking to the remote-control-loving convenience enthusiasts out there. Anyone? Each door came with its own remote, which we inherited from the previous owners. This guy barely worked at first, but with a quick battery replacement it works almost too well – occasionally opening or closing the door when the remote shifts in my cup holder. Did I mention it didn’t come with a visor clip? Yeah, that’s why

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Celebrating Our 6th Wedding Anniversary

Last weekend marked our sixth wedding anniversary. As you’ve come to know from us, we like to celebrate with some family time, a good meal, and a few pictures to remember it all by. Actually, one of our few goals for commemorating each year is to get a family portrait (which we hung as a collection in our last house). It started off very casually on our little point and shoot. Then it started involving tripods and camera remotes (you can thank Clara for that). But this year we went super simple and just broke out the iPhone on a family walk. I snapped this guy with my own hand. We also tried to get

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