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.

| By | | 10,002 Comments

Fab Freebie: Sherry’s Birthday Wish

***This giveaway has reached its cap and is now closed – see who won below!*** You guys shut this puppy down with 10,000 entries in less than a day. Wow! So we’ve already selected our random winner. She is… Rhonda (who thinks she’s gonna ask for a juicer – to go along with her Christmas blender). Congrats! Tomorrow is Sherry’s 31st birthday. So a few weeks ago I asked her if she wanted to do anything special giveaway-wise to celebrate. She looked dreamily towards the sky, a smile spread across her face, and she said “I want to do a Jonathan Adler giveaway and I want a picture of him holding ceramic animals and grinning

[ Read More ]

| By | | 249 Comments

Planning & Buying Materials For A Fireplace Makeover

Having fresh paint in the kitchen has given us a chance to look at the room with, well, fresh eyes. And it has sparked our plans to take the fireplace to the proverbial next level (we mentioned building out the mantel and retiling the painted-over tile hearth a few times like here). It has already come a long way since we moved in, thanks to removing (and craigslisting) the old stove and giving it a paint job. But with the rest of the room feeling a little more upgraded (there’s shiny penny tile all the way to the ceiling on the other side of the room), we’re itching to amp up this side too. As

[ Read More ]

| By | | 322 Comments

Infographing It Up

Back when we did this post full of fun charts and graphs (concocted from the results of our 2012 reader survey) we learned that you guys are just as into infographics as I am. So in that spirit, I tabulated and illustrated a bunch of random facts and figures that we never want to forget from our recent book tour. Sort of like an info-scrapbook that encapsulates that crazy time in our lives (in under 100 words) so we can always look back on it. So without further ado, here are all the places we went, the adventures we had, and even the pounds that we put on along the way. Enjoy! * Each of

[ Read More ]

| By | | 364 Comments

How To Add Remotes To Your Bedside Lamps

Number five is alive! (Short Circuit, anyone?) I went with that intro because we recently added a helpful robot to our household (you know I’m into gadgets – I think my favorite post ever was this one entitled Super Toilet). Let me start from the beginning. We’re big proponents of having lights that you can reach from bed. It sounds obvious, but for a while the only light in our first master bedroom was overhead and operated by the switch by the door (which feels miles away when you’re lying in bed half asleep). So until we installed the wall sconces two years into living there, we experienced a battle of wills each night to see

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,366 Comments

Fab Freebie: Mob Mentality

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** Okay, mobsters – here are this week’s two lucky (and randomly-selected) winners:  Charly W (whose most recent local purchase was Vermont maple syrup from the Woodstock Farmers Market) and Megan C. Congrats! Lovers of local, connoisseurs of craftsman, and followers of all things fun, get ready to do some serious browsing. Scoutmob is a lot of things (flash deals, events calendar, online flea market…) but through it all there’s a charming emphasis on local. This week they’re inviting two of you to spend $200 in their Shoppe, a curated collection of independent artisans and makers who often weave hometown pride into their work. There’s tons

[ Read More ]

| By | | 375 Comments

How We Make Our Annual Family Photo Book

Last year is soooo, well, last year. But before we bid it a formal adieu, let’s get into one of our favorite annual happenings: Yup, we’re currently experiencing a resurgence of 2012 love thanks to the recent arrival of the 2012 Petersik Family Yearbook. We love ordering a photobook each January (which we share every year) to encapsulate the previous year’s favorite photos. We were big fans of the first one that we bought back in 2010 from MyPublisher, so we’ve stuck with them each year since so that all of the books look similar (plus, we love the quality). So with the addition of yearbook number three, we’re finally starting to have a nice little collection

[ Read More ]

| By | | 306 Comments

How To Replace An Ugly Doorbell

Which eyesores? The wicked ones in our hallway of course. Because if we were going through all of the trouble to install board and batten, we didn’t want a blah light fixture, a dingy old ceiling vent, and a gaudy doorbell stinking up the view. So here’s an overdue rundown of those other little updates that you might have noticed in last week’s big board & batten reveal (while we steadily add crown molding to the playroom, guest room, and this very hallway – which we can’t wait to share!). Although updating the light fixture, the doorbell, and the ceiling vent sound small-ish in size, they definitely were detracting from the view. So those little

[ Read More ]

| By | | 7,940 Comments

Fab Freebie: Bestå Friends

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And our lucky-slash-friendly winner this week is… Jennifer M (whose best friend is her husband. They met in college studying architecture together and now work together). Congrats! If you saw that title above and thought “oh, like the Bestå media storage system from Ikea” instead of “typo alert!” then you may be just as into the fine purveyor of flat-packaged Swedish furniture as we are. And if you’re not the only Ikea lover in your circle of friends, then you’ll be happy to learn that this Saturday on March 9th Ikea is celebrating BYOF (Bring Your Own Friend) day as part of their

[ Read More ]

| By | | 331 Comments

How To Install Crown Molding

Feeling too nervous to install crown molding yourself? We were too. But we just installed crown molding in our daughter’s bedroom and it was surprisingly cheap to pull off (less than $100!) and easy to execute. *PATS SELF ON BACK*. All it takes is the right tools and some attention to detail. So let me back up, tell you how I did it, and explain why installing crown molding went from one of my most dreaded projects to one I’ll surely be doing again. Steps To Install Crown Molding We’ll provide a more detailed photo and video tutorial below, but here are the basic steps to installing crown molding in any room: Adding Crown Molding:

[ Read More ]

| By | | 439 Comments

Board & Batten For Less Than $60

Yesterday you saw how our board and batten project came out for the Pinterest Challenge, so today we’re back with the full tutorial shebang. And hold onto your safety goggles, it’s 2,000 words long. But don’t let all the words fool you, we’d say that this was one of the biggest bang-for-you-buck / most fool-proof ways to make an easy upgrade that we’ve encountered in a while. Wow, just realized I’m five sentences into this and I’ve already said “bang” twice. Not sure if that’s a good sign or what… We had long known that adding some sort of molding feature to our hallway was in our future… and now we’re just kicking ourselves for waiting

[ Read More ]

| By | | 73 Comments

A Dining Room Makeover With Yellow Wallpaper

You know Sherry and I strive to develop the skill of brevity, so receiving Avis’ submission was a reminder that it can be done. While her email gave us the main parts of her story, her pictures did all of the talking (somewhat literally). You’ll see what I mean below: Sherry and John, HI!  I’m Avis. I started reading your blog this year and fell in love! Although we have no Clara (who is the cutest accessory EVER!) we do have a few Burgers running around the office. Aside from designing stationary I occasionally do DIY re-modeling in my Decatur, Ga condo. I was inspired by you to do a dining room re-do that I

[ Read More ]

| By | | 5,025 Comments

Fab Freebie: City Love

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** This week’s TWO lucky winners are… Maria G (who loves Kansas City despite being under 12-15″ of snow at the moment) and Fiona (who loves her hometown of Washington DC so much she even loves the traffic). Congrats you two! Today marks the seven year anniversary of our move to Richmond, VA. Woo hoo! It’s crazy to think that it has been that long, and to celebrate this week’s giveaway is from a city-minded artist: Kimberly of Albie Designs. We’ve had her charming illustration of New York City hanging in our hallway o’ frames for as long as there has been a frame collection there

[ Read More ]