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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Making A Big Double Desk With Secondhand Cabinets

The transformation of $6 hotel nightstands into a built-in-wall-to-wall-desk-for-two continues. If you recall, we last removed the hardware, sanded, and primed them all in preparation for painting them white. But before painting, we had to do a bit of construction (we needed to attach them in pairs and built them up about four inches so they’d be desk-height). And before doing any construction we decided we ought to look at them in the space first… … which is clearly something that we should’ve done sooner (but they’re darn heavy, so moving them back-and-forth isn’t fun – which is why we plopped them down in the sunroom and moved on to sanding and priming). Oh well,

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Our Blog Makeover

Yup, after months of working on a little behind the scenes blog makeover (not kidding, this stuff literally takes us months) we’ve FINALLY let ‘er rip. Like any project, there were unexpected delays: mysterious coding glitches, inexplicable site crashes (thanks for your patience on those, btw), an earthquake and even a hurricane to round things out. But before we let another excuse get in our way, we decided to just go for it. It’s not 100% done. It may crash the site again. There could be a blizzard next week. Who knows. It’s actually surprising to us that we haven’t done this sooner. We’ve had the same exact blog look/background/layout since the spring of 2008

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Fab Freebie: Sign Me Up

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org, our trio of winners are…Kristen (who just signed up for Pinterest and is already addicted, but hasn’t had the guts to do anything yet), Victoria DeVaugh-Geiss (who just signed her up for a gym with her husband) and Robyn (who sadly just signed up for unemployment after having been laid off). If you’re name isn’t here, don’t forget you can still get $10 off your Signs by Andrea order with code YHL10 through September 12th. Weathered old wood? Check. Simple clean lettering. Check. Personalized and hand-made? Double check. Signs by Andrea hit a lot of our favorite decorating notes, which

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Cabinet Hunting (No Store Left Unturned)

First of all- holy cow. We just had a crazy earthquake a few minutes ago. Very strong! It was completely unexpected for our area (we’ve never had a strong one before). The epicenter was right outside of Richmond (only about 35 miles from our house) and it registered about a 5.9! We’ve even heard from friends up in NY who felt it. Miraculously nothing fell off the walls or broke, but the whole house shook violently and it was insanely loud (we all gathered under a steel-enforced doorway and stared at each other). So yes, we were all shaken up by it but very thankful that we’re ok and hope that everyone else who experienced

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Finding Secondhand Cabinets For $6

Last weekend we journeyed two hours north to Arlington, Virginia so Clara could have some quality time with her cousin Elsa (and apparently so my cousin Travis and I could rock some daddy-plaid, shorts, flip flops, and matching Kettler bikes together (the latter of which were both his, found for a huge deal on craigslist). While there, Elsa’s mom, Cat (who is Sherry’s BFF that we introduced to my cousin back in 2007 – and now they’re married with two kids) took us to this cool shop in Old Town, Alexandra called Red Barn Mercantile. It had tons of beautiful stuff, but what caught our eye most was this bowl of vintage printing press letters.

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Fab Freebie: It’s A One-derful Life

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org, our four winners are…Kathryn (who wants to know how long this paint will keep, since she’s in an apartment now), Kristen: Turning A House Into A Home (who wonders if it’s better to dust or vacuum first), Alisa Decatur (who’d like to get to the bottom of her daughter’s summer-time procrastination) and Kassie (who wants to know how much painting she’ll be doing when she buys a house). Congrats ladies! Toss on some old clothes, because four of you are about to get painting. This week’s giveaway will cover everything you’ll need, starting with $60 worth of Olympic ONE paint.

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Making A Compost Bin From Pallets

Ever since we started composting back in 2008 at our old house, we’ve enjoyed doing it (snaps for free fertilizer, reusing “trash,” and getting some subtle encouragement to eat more compost-able foods). But our composting adventures have been somewhat limited by the size of the DIY compost container that we made 3 years ago (we did eventually make a second bin, but it’s nothing like those bigger composting systems that we’ve seen at stores or in DIY magazines). Even back in 2008 when we created our little bin, I initially wanted to make a more “legit” system out of shipping pallets (like I read about here and here) but hunting down and transporting a bunch

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A Visit To Ikea

First off, this post wasn’t paid for or perked by Ikea. We just wanted to share a recent pilgrimage. And we like them (especially with this cool announcement). Anyway, some people say you can tell a lot about a person by looking in their purse, their closet, maybe even their iPod. But what may give you a good peek into our lives is a look into our car trunk… after a trip to Ikea. This was the scene after a recent trip. It was our first since my parents moved out of the same area as the Ikea (which is about 90 minutes away) meaning no more quick stops after a family visit. Clearly, we’ve

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How To Plan An Office Makeover

Two things first: We updated yesterday’s door-painting post with further-away exterior shots for everyone who requested those (and also updated our header- woot). Sherry knows she owes you a door hardware post (she’s editing pics and writing it up for tomorrow) but just to keep you dizzy, now we’ll dive into some office stuff. Told you we were all over the place these days! Hot on the heels of our recent nursery furniture shuffle, we decided it was high time that we got shifty with our nothing-has-changed-in-eight-months office sitch (functional or comfortable aren’t words we’d use to describe that space thus far). Actually, adding a file cabinet was the first step (other than that it’s

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Fab Freebie: Talk About Home Improvement

*** This contest is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org got his random on and selected our winner as… Tracey @ Tropical Happiness (who just moved into a new house last week so she has lots of shopping to do). Congrats! For everyone else, keep that chin up – you can still enter the Hometalk $500 Lowe’s gift card giveaway through Sunday. You may already know that Hometalk is a community of home improvement experts (including some familiar HGTV faces) and fellower DIYers sharing home and garden projects, advice, and even contractors. And for this week’s giveaway they’re majorly hooking someone up… to the tune of a $500 gift card

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How To Hide Your Printer

So as much as you guys gushed over our temporary string handles for our new Effektiv file cabinet (note: this is sarcasm), we did scoop up some actual hardware that we much prefer. They’re black glass handles that were originally $9, but Hobby Lobby (aka Schlobby Bobby) was having one of those perpetual 50% off sales, so they were $4.50 a pop instead. As I mentioned here, I was a bit nervous about installing them, since it was up to me to make sure they were all centered and level (Sherry + measuring = meltdown). So I triple-measured and even made myself a little guide out of card stock. First, I figured out that my

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How To Add File Storage To Your Home Office

We haven’t given our office any love in the entire eight months that we’ve lived here (other than deciding that it was no longer the dining room and shifting that into the old formal living room nearby). Pretty much our moving day MO was to: plop old office furniture down, work away, and ignore the fact that the rug’s crazy-off-center and you can bump your head on the old dining room chandelier. Sad times. But the lack of love given wasn’t for lack of trying. We’ve been keeping our eye out for two similar/identical secondhand filing cabinets for, oh, eight whole months. So we were starting to lose hope after about twenty five visits to

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