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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Painting A Herringbone Ceiling

Sometimes it’s so easy to forget little spaces like entryways, hallways, closets, etc. That’s why we love Mandi’s complete transformation of her entryway, which we originally discovered when Sherry pinned her awesome ceiling paint treatment over on her home away from home (yes, as a guy I still don’t quite understand the magic of Pinterest but then again Sherry doesn’t quite understand the magic of Angry Birds). Anyway, back to Mandi’s entryway makeover. Here’s her story: I’ve spent the last week and a half making over my entryway and I am dying to show you! This is what it looked like before the makeover: And here’s the after. I love it. The hands down greatest

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Cutting Down Cabinet Doors To Fit

We knew from the moment that we decided to add new (secondhand) cabinets to our kitchen that the doors could be a challenge. Even though we only ended up with 5 missing doors, it was important that we get those to match with the rest of the kitchen for a seamless look (aka: so no one would look around and guess we had some mismatched thrift store cabinets among us). Here are the five doorless cabinets that we had to address: We knew we had a few options to result in a kitchen full of matching doors, so one of them was bound to work. Here they are (in order of expense from most to

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How To Hide A Microwave By Building It Into A Vented Cabinet

So, remember that microwave that we got a great deal on a couple of months ago? Yeah. Well. We returned it. A few of you questioned why we needed “such a big microwave” when we originally posted about it, which did get us thinking that we don’t do all that much microwaving. A bowl of soup here. A bit of reheating/defrosting there. And when we took down the kitchen’s original black over-the-range microwave (which was just as wide as our oven – 30 whole inches)… … we realized just how hulking the new 30″ one would look in its new home next to our pantry. See, we had originally planned to build it in there

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Prepping For A Corian Counter Installation

We were feeling a little less than pumped about how unfinished our “new,” tile-ready walls were looking… … mostly because we found ourselves staring at that mismatched unpainted paneling (shudder) and those ugly unpainted/stained/gross parts of the ceiling that were exposed when we removed the upper cabinets. So what’d we do? Why we got a-paintin’ of course! The paneling took two coats of primer and two coats of paint (just to be safe). And the ceiling took… well, more coats of primer and paint than I care to share (I lost count, actually – maybe five or six?). Since some of it was totally unpainted and other areas were stained, we just wanted to be

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Fab Freebie: Home Sweet Illustrated Home

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Random.org has surprised us this week and selected a male winner for the first time in foreverrrrrrr (shocking, we know). His name is… Thomas (and he’s looking forward to time off this holiday season). Congrats dude! (Congrats buddy? Congrats fella? I dunno, I’m so used to saying “Congrats ladies” I’m kinda at a loss). One of our favorite things to give are custom house portraits (we’ve actually purchased two for my parents in the last year – and even bought one for ourselves). So as we enter the giving-est time of the year, we figured it would be fitting to give one of

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November Superlatives

So yeah… it’s suddenly December? Guess that means it’s time to take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff to keep things spicy. This month we were all over the place as usual, from doing some exterior, nursery, office, ornament, and place-setting stuff to a bunch of kitchen things. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives (you know, just for giggles). Oddest Couple: Little ol’ Sherry and this tall built-in that we made to give our fridge a more finished look

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Making A White Kitchen With Simply White Cabinets

Lately lots of the submissions that we’ve been getting are kitchen related, and you know we’re in the kitchen mindset these days… so we’re happy to share. Jasmine & Sam’s remodel wooed us with their use of white on white with tons of texture and a sleek clean feeling. And when it comes to function, we’re really impressed by how the addition of more upper cabinets and details like molding and trim elevated (both literally and figuratively) the entire room. Here’s Jasmine and Sam’s email: Hey guys! My family and I just had our one year anniversary in our new house and I thought to send you some pics of our new kitchen. We actually

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How To Hang Cement Backer Board For A Wall Full Of Tile

As exhilarating as demolition can be, there’s always that nagging voice in the back of your head reminding you that you’re going to have to replace whatever you’re demolishing. Bummer, right? Well, we didn’t let ourselves wallow in that realization too long and dove right into reconstructing the kitchen. Actually, between demoing the tiles and the plywood we actually snuck out to The Tile Shop (in my sister’s borrowed SUV) to buy cement board so we’d have all of our supplies ready as soon as demo was done. The cement board (1/4″ thick Permabase Ultrabacker to be exact) was about $10 per 3ft x 5ft sheet after the 10% discount code that they offer everyone

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Fab Freebie: Moo Moo Moo!

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Our trio of winners this week (thanks as always to random.org for the selections) are… Lila @ sweet and lovely crafts (who wants triple the hours in a day), Molly (who wishes for 3 times the energy, time and money to take on more projects she reads about here)  and Emily B (who’d like her yard & house tripled in size). Congrats you three! We started doing giveaways just about 3 years ago, and our 3rd giveaway on December 1, 2008 was with a fun printing company called MOO. The prize was valued about $20 and fewer than 300 people entered. Now MOO

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How To Demo Old Backsplash Tile & Plywood

In case all of that turkey and stuffing made you forget, allow me to remind you that our kitchen was looking something this after the upper cabinets came down: Since the clock was ticking on our new counters (in around 2 weeks we should no longer be sink-less and counter-less), we had to get the walls prepped for the new backsplash. Not that the backsplash would be going up before the counters (we’ll get a snugger fit if we install it afterwards, plus we don’t want it getting damaged during the whole counter install), but because wall prep = demo (aka: a mess) we didn’t want to worry about scratching our new counters if they

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Gobble Gobble

We have about a million things to be thankful for, and you guys are at the top of our list. Thanks for caring to drop in and see what’s going on at our house. Speaking of which, in case you were wondering… this recently happened: After eating lunch the other day, but before cleaning up the table, Burger snuck into the dining room, climbed up to the table with the help of a chair (!) and snatched half of a baguette that remained uneaten. Knowing he’d be in trouble for it, he immediately sprinted into the closet to devour that hunk o’ carbs in record time. I followed him in – half to make sure

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Adding Built-In Shelves Above A Media Cabinet

Is there anything better than a beautiful, functional, and DIY-ed piece of furniture? Arguably yes (a free car full of money?), but not much. So we loved getting Kim & Scott’s email about the built-in media wall that they constructed with a couple of friends. Not only was it custom built to perfectly fit the space, it saved them at least $450 (many similar units go for $750+ and theirs was $252 to build). Here’s Kim and Scott’s letter: We started out with a very green accent wall, and over time we began to layer in a few new pieces to the living room (a shaggy rug, a Craigslist coffee table, etc). After said changes,

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