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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Giving The Gift Of Painting

Sherry, Clara, Burger and I took our little home-improvement-hungry hands on the road this past weekend to help out a few family members in Northern Virginia who, by coincidence, have also moved recently. There must be something in the water – or at least in our gene pool – that has us all relocating lately. First up was my little sister Carrie, who we managed to get zero pictures of so here’s a random shot that she sent me after the fact (that guy on the left is her boyfriend, Robert, who will be making another appearance momentarily). Carrie just rented a new apartment in Northern Virginia last month (you may remember us helping with

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How To Build A Console Table: It’s DONE!

Well, it took us 3+ weeks, but our 12 foot long DIYed living room console table is officially finished! Before I get into any more pics of the final piece in place, let me back up a bit and recap some of the most recent constructions steps that got us there (since the last time you saw our console table it was stained but still topless). As you know, we had to turn to Plan B for the top since the pallets didn’t play nice (more on that here) so after lots of driving around town in search or something reclaimed that we could use (where sadly nothing was the right width or available in

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Something’s A Little Off

If this post were a fable, its moral would be – when something in your home just doesn’t feel quite right, do something about it. Or wait for it to randomly die on its own accord and take it as a sign. We’ll use this light hanging in our living room as our story’s lead character. You may remember that there’s always been something “off” about it – it’s the only permanent fixture in that huge room, and it’s placed awkwardly in a corner (which is why Sherry tried to distract us from the annoying placement by adding a bit of color to the glass shade to cheer things up while I was out for

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Creating Custom First Birthday Party Invitations

It’s her party and we’ll DIY invitations if we want to. You would DIY them too if it happened to you if you were us. After all, our wedding invites were homemade… … so how could we phone it in for our daughter’s first birthday party? Even though much-more-talented-invitation-designers like Mrs. Limestone generously offered to lend a hand (so nice), we stubbornly set out to attempt to create our second party invitation ever on our own (well, with the help of a cute baby and a computer). I guess we just have a thing for doing it ourselves (ya think?). So we started out with a very familiar set-up to our weekly Clara photos like

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Fab Freebie: A Break From Boring

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries  – see who won below!*** According to random.org, our two giveaway winners are… Amy I. (who’d enjoyed a weekend away and then a few days at home for her pretend spring break) and DebbieRN (who’d go to Sanibel Island). Don’t you wish there was a no-adult-left-behind official grown-up spring break? Since many of the kids in our county are out of school this week, it made us think about how nice it would be if every adult scored the same week-long break from the office grind. Luckily this week’s prize from The Office Stylist promises to inject some fun (and function) to your desk job. They’ve got loads

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A Reason Not To Use Pallets For Certain DIY Projects

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? What do I look like, a woodchuck expert? I have no idea. But I do know the answer to a related yet far lesser known riddle: how many pallet planks could a Petersik pry free if a Petersik could pry free pallet planks? You practice saying that five times fast while I walk you through the answer. You know by now that the plan for our mondo 12′ long DIY console table (last shared here and here) was to build a rustic weathered-looking top out of some old pallets left in our yard by the previous owners (spotted in the background of

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How To Build A Console Table

After victoriously completing the two end sections of our three-piece DIYed console table (explained here), I turned my attention to the middle portion. You may recall that this piece will be entirely hidden between the other two (and sandwiched between the back of the sectional and the wall) so I could’ve gotten away with a very simple platform on which to lay the long tabletop that will span across all three pieces that we’re planning to make out of our already-around reclaimed pallet wood. But we figured that would just be wasted space, so we took the less simple route of creating some hidden storage in the middle piece. Allow my sketch to explain: Who

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A Tiny House Painting As A Moving Gift

Something big happened last week: my parents sold the house I grew up in. They’ve been planning to do this for a while, so it’s not a shock or anything. It’s also not as depressing as it could be since they’re selling it so they can move to Richmond (right now they’re about 2 hours away in Northern Virginia). My parents are both retired and have been planning to downsize for a while now. They picked Richmond for a bunch of reasons, including that four of their five grandchildren live here. So all in all, we’re really happy about the news. But there’s still something major about the closing of this particular chapter, so allow

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Fab Freebie: The Devil’s In The Details

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Thanks to the devilish randomization that is random.org, our two winners are… Steph (who was just talking to a colleague about the two tattoos she has…for now) and Alason (who’s thinks her little butterfly tattoo on her back makes people assume she’s a bad girl). Congrats ladies! Since you guys seemed to enjoy last week’s spring cleaning related giveaway, how about another? Your house can’t possibly be all cleaned up yet can it? This one comes from the folks over at Dirt Devil who are gonna hook two of you up with a tattoo. But you’re not going to disappoint the

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Buying Wood And Building A Console Table

First things first. Thanks for being such great sports about our little April Fool’s Day prank (seen here). Sherry was giggling the entire time she made that crazy nautical themed doggie mood board (at one point Katie Bower called and I actually heard a laugh-snort or two as she shared her little “project”). And it’s safe to say that every single comment – ranging from those of you who fell for it and those of you who knew it was a joke from the first sentence – made her day. Which made mine. Happy wife = happy life. In fact things were so copacetic around here that I was inspired to start my next big

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Thrifting in Huntington West Virginia

A few weeks back we packed up the car, went over a few rivers, and through a bunch of woods to go see my 89-year-old grandmother (aka Granny) in Huntington, WV. It was primarily a weekend of eating and baby holding (is there anything better?) because we were joined by my parents, my cousin Erin, and her 2-month-old son Finn. But we managed to squeeze in a few side adventures that we thought you all might enjoy… which we would’ve shared sooner if most of the pictures weren’t stuck in photo purgatory on our old point-and-shoot camera (we finally found the camera cord that we lost during the move this weekend). Here’s the obligatory “Clara

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Fab Freebie: Get Your Soapbox On

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – check back soon to see who won!*** Good news – everyone can get 10% off Mrs. Jones Soapbox products using code YHL10! Even better news (for two of you), random.org has chosen our winners as… Jenna (who can’t wait to clean up and declutter her office) and Erica (who’s excited to clean her garage of all the winter cobwebs, salt and dirt). Congrats! Spring is (mostly) in the air, so we figured this week’s freebie will excite anyone who is setting out to do some spring cleaning and doesn’t want to disturb the fresh spring air with the scent of chemical cleaners. Since we’re not ones to

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