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 | | 248 Comments

Online Tools for Planning A Space in 3D

Break out the 3D glasses! Okay, not really. Put them away. This blog will not be coming to you in any additional dimensions today. As you saw in our latest kitchen planning post yesterday, I finally bit the bullet and learned me some Google Sketch-Up (as many of you recommended) to help us plan our kitchen renovation. But having been a loyal user of Floorplanner.com in the past and having recently become acquainted with Ikea’s Kitchen Planner, I thought I’d give you my take on how these three 3D modeling tools stack up against each other… because there’s actually not a clear winner in my book. Each have pros, cons, and a different scenario where

[ Read More ]

| By | | 1,371 Comments

Why We Decided Not To Do A Banquette In Our Kitchen

For all those wondering when the heck we’ll tackle that kitchen banquette idea that we mentioned a few weeks ago (here and here), well… probably never. Cue the frowny face emoticons. Here’s the deal. After getting lots of positive feedback on the idea a few weeks ago (over 1,400 comments total!), Sherry and I were certain your collective enthusiasm would push us from “we think this is a good idea” to “this is definitely a good idea.” And it nearly did. But parts of us still questioned the whole commitment-factor when it came to actually doing it (we definitely described it as a half baked idea when we shared it). We worried if it’d really

[ Read More ]

| By | | 173 Comments

A Classic Marble Bathroom Renovation

Just as we mentioned last week, Reader Redesigns are back y’all!! And we’re kicking things off with Michelle’s amazing bathroom renovation. She and her husband David gutted the crazy yellow bathroom, completely reconfigured the layout, and built it back up in beautiful greys and fresh sparkling whites. Here’s her letter: Hi Sherry & John! Your bathroom at your first house sparked me and my hubs to renovate our 1952 en-suite bathroom. We followed soooo many of your tips (we ran into all of the same demolition problems, including the wire mesh). It was no bueno! But thank goodness all of the hard work is done. I shared the big final reveal of the bathroom here

[ Read More ]

| By | | 2,599 Comments

Fab Freebie: Canine Design

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Burger barked a few times at random.org and it spit out our two winners. They are… Ruth (who’s jealous of the “sleep wherever you want” factor) and Mattie (who envies the happiness her dog finds in a squeaky toy). Congrats ladies! Everyone else – don’t forget about the discounts listed among the giveaway details. They’re still valid! Tomorrow is Burger’s 5th birthday (I’m sure you already had it marked on your calendar), so this week’s giveaway is distinctly doggy-themed in his honor – thanks to two puppy lovin’ shops. The first is Oliver Blu Designs whose punchy animal silhouettes find their way onto

[ Read More ]

| By | | 324 Comments

How To Add Molding To The Top Of Your Cabinets

Yup, we got a little trim. As you read in last week’s Day In The Life post, we recently tackled the add-trim-to-the-hooter-and-the-hotter-office-desk project. The basic game plan was to add some simple baseboard or molding to the bottom of our cabinets so they looked more like built-ins. In other words, the bottoms were looking a little unfinished… I took measurements and headed off to the store with my little cheat sheet. Notice how I mark which way my cuts go? When I’m making angled miter cuts I’m so anxious about cutting the wrong way that I leave myself as many reminders as possible. One very critical measurement, not shown here, was the trim height. We

[ Read More ]

| By | | 184 Comments

Anatomy Of A Blog Post

Ever wonder what goes into writing one of our posts? No? Well, we’re gonna tell you anyways. Consider it another peek behind the scenes and into our crazy blogging minds a bit further. We probably take our post writing a bit more seriously than most folks (but maybe we should since paying the mortgage depends on it) so we’re certainly not saying this is how it should be done. It’s just how we do it. In general terms, most of our project-oriented posts go through these stages: from planning & prep through doing & documenting things, all the way to posting & responding to comments. Those of you who write blogs about your home probably

[ Read More ]

| By | | 270 Comments

9 Blog Coding & Site Design Tips

Since a bunch of you have requested it, I’m going to attempt to dole out some technical blogging / coding advice. I’ll admit I’ve been very hesitant to write this because I am very much an amateur myself. Asking me for web design advice feels a bit like asking your waiter to teach you how to cook. I can tell you the basic ingredients of what we’re serving, but things might get hairy if I’m asked to put together a menu. It’s really all just trial and error and a decent amount of googling around for answers. Note: yes, the following visual is a coding joke, hence the brackets. Now that I’ve let my insecurities

[ Read More ]

| By | | 273 Comments

Blogiversary IV: A Few Fun (& Crazy) Blog Stats

As if this morning’s pie charts weren’t enough, we’re back to get all numerical and statistical on you. Each year we like to break down what YHL looks like by the numbers. Some are crazy. Some are surprising. Some are serious. Some are, well, just for fun. We’ve included some of last year’s numbers just for comparison’s sake, but you can also look back at our past by-the-numbers posts for our last three blogiversaries to see how things have changed: 2010, 2009 and 2008. 2,014 – The number of published posts to date on Young House Love (Last year: 1,527) 16 – The number of published posts to date on Young House Life (clearly someone’s

[ Read More ]

| By | | 368 Comments

How Do Bloggers Make Money?

Like previous blogiversaries, we’re gonna use this week as an excuse to take a look at the business side of blogging (at least as we know it). As you’ve probably gathered by now, we never intended to start a business when we wrote our first post back in Sept 2007, nor did we ever construct a formal business plan. So this whole adventure has been a learn as we go / roll with the punches / adjust along the way / insert more cliches here kind of deal. And just like we don’t claim to be DIY experts or trained interior designers (we’re just two people with a chihuahua and a baby), we’re not about

[ Read More ]

| By | | 7,342 Comments

Fab Freebie: West In Show (Continued)

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Well, after a blog-busting (literally) 18,018 entries across two posts (the first one got overloaded after reaching 10,680 entries so we had to start a second one) we finally have one lucky winner in what has become our biggest giveaway to date. In case anyone was worried about how this would all be tallied, we used random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 18,018 and located the comment that correlated with that number across both posts (although you guys can no longer access the comments on the first post, they’re all visible to us in our WordPress dashboard, so we were

[ Read More ]

| By | | 10,680 Comments

Fab Freebie: West In Show

***Uh oh – looks like we like we hit capacity on this post with over 10,000 comments! But this giveaway is closed anyways, so I guess it’s okay.*** It’s no secret that we love West Elm (we own two daybeds and a desk among other things from their store). So let’s just say that we’ll be mighty jealous of the person who wins this week’s FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR gift card there (four year blogiversaries are for big prizes, after all). And not that you asked, but if you need any help picking out what to buy – might we suggest some of these lurvely items below (Sherry had trouble picking just six things, so we

[ Read More ]

| By | | 171 Comments

The House My Parents Downsized To

I don’t usually write these House Crashing posts, but this home in particular is very special to me. Well, at least it will be over time – it’s my parents’ new house here in Richmond. Since we literally crashed their pad for a few days post-Hurricane Irene (when our house had no power) and have spent many an evening hanging out over there, we figured it was high time we snapped some pics to share with you guys. That’s Dad and Mom right after moving day back in May (they’ve since painted the lavender door bright red). I’ve mentioned before how they sold their house of 32 years in Northern Virginia (aka, my childhood home)

[ Read More ]