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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Using Brackets To Makeover A Kitchen Island

This email from Laurel-Dawn sounded like a common situation. You find yourself in a cookie cutter home, dying to put your own personal spin on the house so it doesn’t look exactly the same way that the builder left it. Well Laurel-Dawn and her husband definitely turned a common kitchen into something spectacular. Here’s her letter: “I live in a super simple home. It’s what my mom calls a “tract home” which I personally hate, but I guess it’s true. I live in one of those neighborhoods where all of the houses look the same and it’s hard to put a personal stamp on things. I dream of someday updating a home with a lot

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Filling Cabinet Gaps Around Our Stove

Some aspects of this kitchen remodel are certainly less exciting than others – especially when compared to having just opened the wall up. But alas, these things must be done. Including a few that we wanted to accomplish before the countertop guy came to template for our new counters (that’s something we want done accurately, after all). First on our list of little things was filling the gaps next to our stove. The base cabinet that we removed was 36″ wide, but the stove is only about 30″ leaving a little under 3″ of nothingness on either side. Since you can’t squeeze much function into two and 3/4ths inches (almost every pull-out drawer was 3″

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Removing Our Kitchen Sink & Our Old Granite Counters

In the words of Carla from Top Chef: hootie hoo! Our counters are ordered (more on what we chose and why we chose it here). They came in at exactly $38 a square foot from Home Depot (no hidden/added charges, which was nice) which added up to around $1700 (ouch, good thing we’ve been saving for this kitchen a while). We also priced them out at Lowe’s and a couple of local retailers and none of the local retailers could do better than $55 a square foot (huge difference, huh?) and while Lowe’s and Home Depot both had the same $38/square foot price, Lowe’s charged more for the sink cutout and a few other add

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Three Zero

Today I turned 30. Woot. My mom didn’t make me stand in front of an “I AM 30” banner (or fashion a crown for me) like she has in past years, but she and my dad did have us over for brunch on Sunday morning. It was actually a surprise that Sherry planned with them. I had known about the brunch (since my cousins, aunt, uncle, and little sister had traveled in from DC for the day), but was somehow oblivious to the fact that they might use the gathering to celebrate my thirtieth until a candle-filled plate of muffins was placed in front of me. Oh, but my mom did make me this: Never

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Fab Freebie: ‘Tis Z Season

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** After another entry-limit-reachin’ giveaway, we’ve closed things off at 10,000 comments and random.org has selected our winner as… Nicole is STL (who’s looking forward to holiday time off for relaxing with family and friends). Congrats! Since you guys seemed to like the $500 (holla!) prize last week, why not do it again today? This time the half-G of goodness is courtesy of Z Gallerie, whose penchant for sparkle and white ceramics is appreciated by us all year round… but even more so during the holidays. You can hit up their holiday section (or any section really) for loads of silver, gold, and ruby

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How To Trim Out A Cased Opening And A Half Wall

The wall is down (more here). Drywall is up (more here). Time for trim. I actually kinda enjoy doing trim. Despite it requiring lots of focus and attention to detail, it’s very satisfying to see all of those rough edges turn into crisp white borders. But before I could get to trim, I actually had to take care of the ledge on our half wall and the door jambs first. Our neighbors recently had a similar wall opening project done in their house (these guys), and we really liked how they treated their half-walls with a wood platform on top and trim beneath to dress it up a bit. It looks really finished and balanced

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DIY Drywalling Tips

As exciting as it is to have both that section of wall and the contractor gone, there’s still a lot of work ahead of us before our opening is finished. Unless this is your idea of beautiful dining room: Oh and speaking of the contractor, locals have been asking for Steve’s info – and now that we’ve worked with him and were extremely happy with his result, we’ll share (we only like passing along people’s info after we work with them, to be sure they’re someone we’d recommend). He’s a licensed Class A contractor as opposed to a handyman (so he doesn’t hang doors or build furniture or do odd little jobs), but if you

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A Yellow And White Checkered Kitchen Floor

Still working on the drywall situation for our new opening! While we get that together and snap some pics for this afternoon, let’s look at an awesome kitchen makeover – you know to keep the momentum up. Of course we perked up when we spotted the words “1948 ranch style house” and “kitchen renovation” in our inbox. Then we saw the awesome before & after pictures attached and, well, see for yourself. This is one of those makeovers that reminds us that whatever the budget, making one or two daring or unexpected choices can make the room (and make it feel like yours). We’re loving the playful choices like the yellow floor and the chalkboard

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Hanging Protective Plastic For A Kitchen Renovation

Things are getting pretty Dexter around here in preparation for our wall opening. Because when walls come down, dust comes out, and therefore protective plastic must go up! So to set the mood I’ve intentionally left these photos kinda dark and eerie. I’m nothing if not theme-y.   Oh and since I affectionately call myself Captain Safety (much like Sherry wishes $herdog would catch on), it bears mentioning that old homes can have lead paint, and therefore call for extra precautions (especially if you have little ones and pets around), so you can find more info on that here. We followed those directions and had our walls checked for lead (it’s the thing to do

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A Vintage Sign For Wall Art

Remember how we stopped at this place in Maryland on our way to our Labor Day beach weekend? And remember how we spotted these cool sign letters there that were made even cooler when we learned that they were meant for a Dollar Tree store and were selling for $20 each? I was obsessed with them and almost took home an E, R, or A, just because (sadly there’s no P, J, S, C or B in Dollar Tree). Well, I finally got me one. Let’s give a lukewarm welcome to letter L. Why L? Well… give that L a little 180 degree spin and whaddya get? Our favorite number AND a happy John (our

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Fab Freebie: Colorful Goods

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries (it has hit our cap of 10,000 entries) – see who won below!*** Since we maxed out on entries less than 24 hours into the giveaway, we thought we’d go ahead and crown our winner. Random.org has selected… Jen W. (who’s long had a love affair with the color grey, but has lately been drawn to cheery yellows lately). Congrats! It’s no secret that we loves us some HomeGoods. So how psyched are we to give one of you a $500 gift card this week? Answer: very psyched. And if you’re stumped on how to spend that money, HomeGoods has a new series of “Design Happy” videos to

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October Superlatives

It’s that time again! When we 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 spice things up. This month we were all over the place as usual, from doing a bunch of kitchen things to dipping into a few office projects, some landscaping tasks, and even a few Halloween crafts. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives (you know, just for kicks). Most Destructive: Demoing out our fridge cabinet, which officially kicked off to the kitchen makeover madness. Best Timing:

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