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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Ceramic Dog Flashbacks

To make room for our DIY-ed clothespin light, first we had to give the current fixture the ol’ heave-ho: Well, not literally. Since there’s actually something kinda charmingly retro about that puppy, we wanted to give him a new life somewhere else in the house instead of sealing his fate (aka: donating him to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore). That’s where this hallway that leads to the guest room, hall bath, playroom, and nursery comes in: Clearly our hallway screams “nothing to see here folks, move along” for the time being, so there’s certainly a lot to be improved upon. But our attention kept going to this 18″ wide (I’ll pause while you digest just

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Fab Freebie: Channel No. 125

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org has done it again and selected our winner as… Chelsea (who loves the smell of coffee in the morning). Congrats! The only fragrance we’re giving away this week is that of sweat and elbow grease (yummy, right?). Because this week’s prize comes from Channellock, who not only makes some of our favorite tools but is also celebrating 125 years of forging them right here in the USA. So they’re giving away 1 + 2 + 5 tools (that makes 8, btw) to one soon-to-be-sweaty guy or gal. That lucky lady or lad will be getting a five-piece Tool Roll, two

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Our Finished Laundry Room Makeover Before & Afters

With the addition of a light fixture and shoe storage this past week (and deciding to nix a window covering for now and just frost the window when we convert the carport into a garage), we just had one last item on our tig ol’ bist (which is how I would imagine Missy Elliott would say “big ol’ list”): Frost the side door for privacy <– seen here Remove the narrow shelving that gets blocked by the open door <– seen here Remove the old shutters that block much-needed light <– seen here Craigslist the old un-energy efficient stacked top loaders and snag a killer deal on new Energy Star front loaders <– seen here

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We Got Professional Photos Of Our House

The following images make me wish I could carry a professional photographer around in my pocket at all times. But since I can’t, at least we had the pleasure of having one over for the afternoon. Local-ish photographer Andrea Hubbell (she’s from nearby Charlottesville, VA) is doing a series of “living spaces” photo shoots and asked if we wanted to participate for fun. Since we’re (a) not too camera shy – at least when it comes to our house and (b) always excited to see our home through someone else’s eyes (especially someone a lot better with a camera), we gave an enthusiastic yes. And boy are we glad we did. Not only was Andrea

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Adding Shoe Storage By The Door

We couldn’t do all of this work in the laundry area and just ignore our sloppy shoe situation. Since the side door into our laundry room is our most-used entrance, it’s also the dumping ground for most of our footwear (since we try to keep shoes off in the house).  Up until now, our “storage solution” has been a shallow woven basket from Bed Bath & Beyond about five years ago (that and a pile next to it – not pictured, because I don’t want to ruin the illusion that we’re not complete animals). This system actually worked fine at the old house since the basket stayed in the sunroom, where it sort of fit

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Hunting Around For Clothespins To Make A Chandelier

Sure it’s Sunday, but how about a little bonus behind-the-scenes tale of hunting down clothespins for the Pinterest Challenge light fixture that we have in the works? Other considered titles: “The Petersik Clothespin Tour of Richmond” “Wow, I’m a really patient husband.” “Sorry environment, we vow to plant three trees to make up for all that driving” Okay, so here’s the deal. When we first started our clothespin light fixture (first mentioned here), we snagged four bags of clothespins at Ben Franklin just to get us started. We knew we’d need more, but we didn’t want to go crazy buying them until we decided on a pattern and had a better sense of how many

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Turning Note Cards Into Wall Art

Well well well, if isn’t those little photography note cards again. You know, the ones we bought on our anniversary from a local art gallery to hang in our bathroom? You might not even have registered them in that post since everyone went bananas over the whole Sherry-haircut thing.   Anyway, hanging them in the bathroom was the initial plan. Until I noticed some of the photo colors were in the same neighborhood as our framed $5 scrapbook paper. That neighborhood being Sue-the-Napkin-ville. Or is it Sue-the-Napkin Heights? We figured that maybe our $4 a pop Sherri Conley note cards were destined to live in these eight frames (plus we couldn’t decide on a configuration

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Fab Freebie: Who’s The Joss?

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** The lucky person this week, thanks to random.org, is… Lauren (who will be feeling really lucky when her house sells). Congrats! Five hundred big ones is nothing to laugh at… especially when you’re spending it on items that are up to 70% off retail. And thanks to Joss & Main, one of you is gonna get quite the e-shopping spree this week – yeah, to the tune of $500! Joss & Main is a flash sale site stocked full of fresh discounts daily, all focused on home and decor but covering a wide range of styles. That way you’re more likely to stumble

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How To Hang Your Ironing Board On The Wall

As much as we love having our new built-in shelves in the laundry room, they did kinda get in the way of our oh-so-fancy ironing board storage system. You know, the one that made a clanging noise whenever the spin cycle kicked on? So clearly the ironing board had to find a new home. Earlier on we thought about making a little cubby so the ironing board could slip into our built-ins, but we wanted maximum space for baskets and bins and bowls (instead of breaking things up and making it narrower). We contemplated just shoving him (her?) in a closet somewhere else in the house, but somehow it felt like he she it belonged

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Fab Freebie: More Than Words

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below (along with some sweet discounts)!*** Before we announce our winners, let’s first get to two consolation prizes: discounts! Get 15% off your WordGarden order with code YoungHouseLove15 and get 15% off of your Everywhere We Look order with code YHL15. As for our two winners, random.org has selected… Leah (who “definitely” loves typographic art) and Rebecca A. (who loves books and typographic art – which seemed to be a trend). Congrats ladies! This week’s pair of prizes (for a pair of winners, no less) come from two Etsy sellers who have a way with words. Namely, they turn the written word into stylish

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How To Add Built-In Shelves Next To A Washer & Dryer

Laundry room update? Don’t mind if I do. To jog your memory, so far we’ve replaced the washer/dryer, taken down window shutters & cluttered shelves along with frosting the door (all here), filled some ceiling cracks, and painted the room the same color (Benjamin Moore’s Sesame) as the kitchen. And voila, we’re all up to speed. Well, if you really want to be up to speed, now it looks like this: But let’s back up so I can blather on about how those shelves came to be. Even during our initial walk-through of this house we decided to maximize that sliver of space with some built-ins to add a lot more function. Did we mention the

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A Weird Milestone

We passed a weird milestone on Wednesday. On the surface, it just marked seven months of living in this shouldn’t-call-it-new-anymore house. Then we realized it also marked the point at which Clara has spent more of her life living here than at our first home. We always knew our first house would just be a foggy blip on Clara’s memory radar, but passing this milestone feels like it’s actually happening. The house that we spent renovating/loving for over 4.5 years meant so much to me and Sherry – it wasn’t just our first home, it was our wedding venue, our DIY testing grounds, our inspiration to start this blog, and where we took our baby

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