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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April Superlatives

For those asking where the April Superlatives went, here they are! Remember how last week was all about organizing? Well, we weren’t organized enough to share this post on time. Oops. So before May gets too far gone, here’s a look back at all the things we got checked off the ol’ to-do list in April (in yearbook style superlatives, of course). We even tossed in some never-before-seen stuff for kicks. You can check out all of our monthly superlatives dating back to January of 2011 right here (it’s over a years worth of projects crammed into just 15 posts). Oh, and we’re starting this round up with my latest obsession. You have been warned. Most

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Fab Freebie: Take A Seat

***This giveaway has reached our cap of 10,000 entries so it’s no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** After our quickest giveaway in YHL history (hitting the max number of entries in under 6 hours!), we’ve already turned to random.org to select our winner. And it is… Azar (whose favorite relaxing activity is a tie between reading and knitting). Congrats! Does the name La-Z-Boy immediately make you think of a big ol’ leather recliner? It did for me. So color us surprised when we learned they’ve actually got a pretty darn extensive line of furniture – including sofas, loveseats, ottomans and even accessories in modern patterns and fresh colors. The kicker? They’re giving

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Planning A New Deck Build

Ah, the “alley.” The affectionate name we gave that weird void of space created between the original part of our house (on the left) and the addition (to the right). We appreciate that they left that space (so we wouldn’t lose all those windows like we would have if they joined the structures instead of creating that alley), but it’s kind of awkward. It’s currently home to an extremely short (and extremely worn) balcony overlooking a bunch of liriope, our AC unit, our oil tank, and the neighbor’s house. It’s completely useless to us. Unless of course we like the thrill of wondering when / if the wood is going to disintegrate beneath our feet.

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Our Messy Basement Workshop

This week has been all about cleaning and organizing, so it’s only fair that I take this opportunity to own up to the most unclean, unorganized space in our house (perhaps ever in our whole lives). The horror lies behind this door, in my basement workshop: Just like our first house, we have a separate entry basement that you access from a door in the back yard. Except in this house, I’ve avoided showing this space the entire 16 months that we’ve lived here. Yes, it has been kept completely off camera and video – which is almost unheard of for over-sharers like us. Why? Because I’m embarrassed to my core about its state. I’ve

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A Kitchen With Wood Cabinets & Sage Green Tile

In honor of this week’s organization extravaganza, we thought this makeover was a great reminder that organizing and planning isn’t just about putting things in baskets or sorting your socks. An organized thoughtful approach to your home could help a dark and dated space become beautiful & functional with a little (or a lot) of planning, penny-pinching, perseverance, and perspiration. Morgan and her husband Kevin took their paneled den and turned it into a bright and modern kitchen. The transformation is, in a word, insane. And their planning tips are awesome, like scouring Craigslist every day in a nice wide radius to save serious loot – and rethinking the placement of a kitchen to make

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A Picture’s Worth… Well, You Know

Hi guys! I’ve been behind the scenes messing around with tech organization while the lady wife chats about feminine products and nail polish and whatever else she has been chatting about lately (justkiddinghoneyIloveyou) but since today is the day we said we’d get on some paper/tech org – specifically some blog streamlining (but you guys can tackle anything like digital photos, filing paperwork, or cleaning up your desktop) I’m here with the goods on that. With all the organization happening around our house this week it was bound to spill over to some blog organization eventually. And the portion of our site that was feeling the most out of control was our Projects page. You

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Fab Freebie: Boys In The Yard

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** After lots of love proclamations for NSYNC, NKOTB and more, random.org has survived boy-band-mania and crowned our winner as… Megan G (who says she loves the original boy band…The Beatles). Congrats Megan! In the spirit of a week of cleaning & organizing, who could use a new lawn mower to tidy things up outside? Well, someone’s getting this puppy (valued at $339) thanks to Lawn-Boy. It’s self propelled, easy to start, and features a “Blade Stop” system that allows you to turn off the blades without killing the engine, which comes in handy if you’ve got a lawn frequently peppered with sticks or

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Richmond Craft Fair: Spring Bada Bing

Two weekends ago we hit up the Richmond Craft Mafia‘s Spring Bada-Bing craft show (which we told you about via this giveaway). It was similar to their Handmade Holiday event that we checked out back in December, so since that post was such a hit with you guys, we thought we’d share all of the awesomely local craft-y goodness that we happened upon during this show too. Oh, and while we didn’t leave with the bounty like we bought last year – we did purchase one of the many things we loved (times three, actually). So feel free to guess what it was as we lead you on a little craft tour de jour (and we’ll

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A Red, White, and Teal Bunkroom For 4 Girls

Projects like Shannon’s almost make us wish we had four daughters running around. I should emphasize the “almost” on that. Haha. But, once you see the project Shannon took on, you’ll see why the idea of having four girls around sounds kinda awesome (and this is coming from a guy who grew up with three sisters). Hey guys! It’s so funny reading your blog. We were and are where you guys are – but we started almost ten years ago when we bought our first house. Since then we’ve brought our total baby count to five (yup, five!) and we’re still in the same house – trying to make it work. Anyway, with the birth

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Turning Kid Art Into Custom Fabric

Well, Clara can go ahead and add fabric designer to her resume. With her 23 month photo in the can (see the full photo project here), it means the next monthly picture in line is the big 2-4… otherwise known as age 2. And since we concluded her first year of weekly-fabric-backdropped photos… … with a custom fabric design that we made through Spoonflower by scanning her name drawn out in marker on paper (and tiling it in Photoshop), we though we’d make it a tradition and create more homemade fabric for her second birthday. We thought about doing something similar with Clara’s name for our she’s-two fabric (perhaps in Sherry’s handwriting instead of mine)

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House Crashing: John And Sherry Plus 8

You know how excited we get to snoop around houses and share the goods with you guys (we’ve even crashed open houses and stores), so just picture our excitement to crash EIGHT houses on one block for your viewing pleasure. It definitely wasn’t our most traditional house crashing adventure – it was actually a home show here in Richmond called Richmond Homearama, where home builders team up with local designers to construct and decorate eight houses in a variety of styles. Most of the homes are already sold by now, but you can still stroll around for ideas and inspiration. So we thought we’d show you a few of our favorite nooks and crannies. It

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How To Add Floor Trim, Transitions, and Reducers

Since sharing this photo over a month ago, some of you have asked for more detail about putting the transitions around the cork floor in our kitchen (and around the fireplace’s floor surround). Oh but remember we’re eventually going to be refinishing the rooms with the orange wood flooring to match the darker cork tone, so it should look something like this down the line (pardon the bad photoshop): Finding the right thing for the job was a bit of an effort on our part since our Lisbon Cork doesn’t come with matching transitions. In fact, the guy at Lumber Liquidators recommended against any kind of cork transition because they’re not as durable as a

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