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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June Superlatives: Northern & Southern Fun

Since it’s a holiday here in the US (America’s birthday, no less!) we’re spending the day with our family, but we thought we’d take a minute to look back on the month of June (once again we’re late with our little recap – sorry guys!). But in an attempt to TOTALLY REDEEM OURSELVES (name that movie), we’ve also linked to a bunch of Fourth of July related posts of yore for ya (here, here, and here) and we snuck a few never before seen things into this recap – like a new family portrait that the lovely and talented Katie B snapped for us while we were in Atlanta (how is no one crying?!). If

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Fab Freebie: Mixed Media

*** This contest is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And our lucky winner of over $400 worth of art is… Kate (who loves the mix of love salty and sweet: chocolate covered pretzels, salted caramel, trail mix, etc). Congrats! There are so many incredible options when it comes to bringing art into your home, so we thought we’d put together a mixed bag of three very different, but equally cool artists’ work. The first comes from D is for Dino, a local guy who also moonlights at our favorite candy store. He makes awesome graphic prints that are crisp, beautiful, and contain “a hint of geekery.” Here are a few of

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Failing The Inspection To Build A Deck

If at first you don’t succeed… dig more holes. At least, that’s what was on my agenda after failing our first deck footing inspection (this post explains that debacle). This project definitely isn’t moving along at the speed of lightning, but we’re creeping slowly towards the goal of a finished deck to enjoy family meals on by the end of the summer – maybe even by this time next month if we’re lucky. But remember this speed bump? Since our original plan got the big ix-nay because we were trying to attach ledger boards to unapproved surfaces (although it was initially approved by the county), our new plan required us to make it a free-standing

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Father’s Day, Animal Friends, & Cheesy Grins

Work continues on the deck (looks like we’ll have an update for you on Monday barring any unforeseen disasters inspection failures!) so to end this week with a dad-worthy bang, I thought I’d share something that a bunch of you have been requesting: a belated Father’s Day recap (like last year’s) – especially since the day included a few home related activities and presents. The day started off much like any normal Father’s Day might. We went out to one of our favorite brunch spots (deLux) and enjoyed some french toast in their open-air back room (we also enjoyed an impromptu walk beforehand because we accidentally arrived 20 minutes before they opened – oops). Our

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A Bathroom Makeover With Floating Shelves

Now that we’re back home (and back in the swing of things), let’s start this off with a deck sneak peek. Oh yes, more holes are happening. So rest assured that we’re working towards a passed inspection (remember when we failed here?) and we hope to have an update on that early next week. So be sure to hold your breath for us! But back to our Reader Redesign. Despite this email starting off with a cheer to my alma mater’s rival, I couldn’t help but share this awesome bathroom makeover with an even more awesome price tag. Plus, although we may not agree on college teams, we can definitely relate to a bathroom that

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Renovating Arguments – They Definitely Happen

Occasionally we get comments like “I don’t know how you spend all day together without fighting.” While I appreciate the assumption that we have some flawless, all-smiles marriage – we fight. We get upset with each other… and Clara… and even Burger. I’m not saying we have Real Housewives-worthy throwdowns (our table flipping count is still at zero) but like any normal couple we argue. Sometimes in a healthy, I-fight-because-I-care way. Sometimes in a probably less-than-healthy Sherry yells and I give her the silent treatment way. But the point is – yes, we fight (skip to about 11:45 on this old blogiversary Q&A video for a brief mention on the subject). As upfront as we’re

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Fab Freebie: Magnesium

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Wow. You guys are a lot more opinionated about the periodic table than I had assumed. Anyways, random.org selected the winner of this giveaway as… Andi W. (who likes Sodium for all of the salty snacks it provides, but admitted “My inner nerd wants to vote adamantium.”) Congrats Andi! Hold onto your seats, chemistry nerds. We’re giving away some magnesium this week. It’s coming in the form of Oreck’s latest and lightest-weight upright vacuum ever – the Magnesium. In fact, at less than 8lbs it weighs in at about half the poundage of an ordinary upright. Not to mention its skinny but strong

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Building A Frame To Make A DIY Upholstered Headboard

We owe you a huge post about all things Haven/ATL, but we’re actually driving home today (after crashing a bunch of awesome houses, doing a thrift store tour with Katie B, hosting an informal backyard wedding for Clara and Will, etc) so we’ll share what we snuck in before we left for Atlanta: the beginnings of a headboard for the freshly rearranged masted bedroom. With Ed the Bed officially minus posts, we quickly turned our attention to making him plus headboard – as you saw Sherry mock up in Photoshop last week – along with darker floors and a darker dresser: We wanted something upholstered over something wood/tin/woven/stenciled/painted since we wanted something cushy to lean

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Oops We Failed Our Deck Inspection

#FAIL Oh how I wish that hashtag was in reference to some cheeky Internet meme. Instead, it’s about the result of our deck’s footing inspection. Sigh. Picture us singing “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have, the facts of DIY life.” So here’s the deal. We scheduled the inspector to come look at the six holes we had dug for our footings. By my understanding, he’d simply be looking at each one to make sure they were in the correct spots and dug to the right width & depth. Pretty straightforward by my assumption. But if you recall, we chose to go above and beyond by

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Fab Freebie: This Little Life Of Mine…

*** This giveaway has reached its cap of 10,000 entries, and has been closed – see who won below!*** After reaching our cap within 24 hours, we’ve gone ahead and let random.org pick our one lucky winner. They are… AJ (who can’t wait to take our next picture for our annual anniversary photo). We know the feeling. Congrats! …I’m gonna let it… be organized online? If you’re one of those people that can’t seem to get a handle on your family photos – between your camera, phone, computer, and Facebook / Instagram / Flickr – you just might find the answer to your prayers in ThisLife. It’s a free cloud photo storage tool that, among

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Making Our Post Holes To Build A Deck

Before we get to our weekly deck update, we just have to say HOLY COW you guys have awesome homes! So many folks submitted house crashing photos for our upcoming trip to Atlanta for the Haven conference – and we wish we had time to see every last one of you! We’ve worked out a plan to crash as many as we can fit in and are crying a little inside that we can’t get to all of you –  but we might be back out that way for book tour stuff in the fall so there’s always next time! So this is just a huge thanks to everyone for offering to allow a toddler, a

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How We Use Photoshop For Blog Photos

Since Photoshop is our go-to tool around here for blog picture editing (and we get asked for a post with tips, tricks, or pointers pretty regularly) here it goes. But first, you should know a few things… 1. We’re not Photoshop experts: I took a digital photography course in college (in 2003) that taught me some basics and a few tricks, but it was by no means exhaustive. Sherry has a similar background, having used it a bit in art classes in high school and college. But both of us consider most of our skills to be self-taught. Basically just playing around and seeing what button created what effect on our photos. Sherry was a

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