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 | | 3,239 Comments

Fab Freebie: So Happy Together

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** It’s February, so we thought we’d try to line up some love themed giveaways for you this month. Kicking things off is Le Papier Studio who takes our affection for silhouette art and turns it up a notch or two (or twenty). They’ve got a bunch of Valentine’s-ready items from plates and prints to cuffs and coasters, many of which can be customized with a silhouette of you and your loved one. PRIZE: A $75 gift card towards any purchase at Le Papier Studio. TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I’M SO HAPPY WITH [–––]!” and… BONUS QUESTION:

[ Read More ]

| By | | 198 Comments

Holy Homeslice

Is that really our name listed over on Apartment Therapy as the winners of this year’s Homies? Wow. We’re simultaneously flattered and flabbergasted. Just call us flattergasted. Wait, maybe you shouldn’t. It kinda sounds like a euphemism for flatulence. But it’s safe to say that we’re shocked and are definitely feeling all “aw shucks” about it. A big thanks to everyone who nominated and/or voted for us. There are so many awesome home blogs out there and it’s such an honor to think that anyone believes that we belong anywhere near the top. We were just happy to be nominated among so many fantastic fellow bloggers. Really. And a big thanks to Apartment Therapy for

[ Read More ]

| By | | 149 Comments

How To Use Painter’s Tape To Catch Drill Dust

In the midst of hanging our bedroom curtains last week, I snapped some pics of a little trick I use to control the mess of drilling holes into our walls (in this case to make room for curtain rod anchors). Some of you probably already do this, but I figured I’d pass it along to those who might not be in the know since we only joined the tape trick club about a year ago. And not many people think cleaning up drywall or plaster dust scattered below their work area is a fun way to pass the time. Including me. Anyway, the trick is crazy simple and looks a little something like this: It’s

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,195 Comments

Fab Freebie: The Bold & The Beautiful

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to the bottom to see who won!*** We’re always on the lookout for new art these days (lots of empty walls!) so we’re excited to bring you this giveaway from Barcelona-based illustrator Judy Kaufmann. Her bold prints – sometimes colorful, sometimes stark – have a charming combo of simplicity and intricacy. Here are a few of our favs below, but you can of course browse more in her Etsy shop. PRIZE: A $50 gift card towards any print from Judy Kaufmann. TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I’M BOLD!” and… BONUS QUESTION: … tell us about something bold or brave you’ve done.

[ Read More ]

| By | | 655 Comments

Assembling Our Karlstad Ikea Sectional Sofa

Despite its original February 4th due date, our big bundle of sectional joy arrived ahead of schedule. Being our first Ikea sofa, we were a bit taken aback by how many different boxes our Karlstad came in. But since we’re no strangers to assembling our Ikea purchases we dove right in…and even made a time lapse video of the longer-than-we-expected process. For those who can’t watch the video (maybe you’re being sneaky at work?) here’s the important stuff: the final pictures of Karl in place. We’re especially enamored with the fabric, which is nice and durable (it’s completely impenetrable to Burger’s claws, which is always the goal). And the dark color is perfect for hiding

[ Read More ]

| By | | 229 Comments

Our Kitchen Cabinet Knobs Are Eyeballs

Something about the knobs in our kitchen make us feel like we’re being watched. Maybe you don’t see it, but after staring at them for the last few weeks, they’re starting to look a little something like this to us: My favorite is the pirate. But something’s definitely going to have to be done sooner or later. We feel like we’re living in that crazy Geico commercial – only without the good fortune of a stack of money sitting nearby (with some techno music blaring in the background). Speaking of which, we highly recommend playing the Geico commercial below while looking at the picture above. It really enhances the whole experience. Now we can’t eat

[ Read More ]

| By | | 558 Comments

How To Make No-Sew Bedroom Curtains With Fabric And Hem Tape

Alternate post title: Look how domestic my wife is. I don’t know why I’m writing this post since Sherry is the mastermind/executor of this project. Maybe just to brag about her mad ironing skillz? I just watched the baby and approved comments while she did her thang for the better part of the day yesterday. The first step was cutting our 12.5 yards of our on-sale $8.49/yard yellowy green fabric (more info on that here) into perfectly sized panels for each side of the two bedroom windows (leaving enough leftover for one closet panel). Lucky for us, the living room rug made a great guide for keeping our cuts straight and our corners square. Especially

[ Read More ]

| By | | 140 Comments

Decorative Bedroom Pillows

We promised a post about the project that kept us busy yesterday, so we’ll be sharing that as soon as we can get the pics uploaded and sized (we had to wait until this morning to shoot afters in the daylight). Until then, here’s another pillow post (notice a theme lately?) that we’ve owed you for the past week. We mentioned during our failed shower curtain attempt that our trip to HomeGoods wasn’t entirely fruitless. But we just realized we never elaborated about the, er, fruit. So here we go: we found this bold pair of greeny-gold pillows that practically screamed “I want to date your duvet.” So we introduced them: They were just $24

[ Read More ]

| By | | 182 Comments

Using Fabric Swatches To Choose Bedroom Curtains

Curtains. We need ’em for our bedroom. After all, we’ve got some good momentum going in this room and we can’t wait to get more color in there (excuse this pic taken before the mirror went white): After debating things like a deep blue or a shimmery silver color, we agreed that we wanted to DIY some curtains (using this method) that brought out the golden green leaves on our new duvet. We also agreed that we didn’t want to do something too patterned because it would just compete with the large-scale print on the bed (and it is a bedroom so we want it to feel somewhat restful instead of energetic/cray-zay). So with a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 364 Comments

A Soft Gray Color For The Living Room: Moonshine by Benjamin Moore

Feel free to sing the title to the tune of the famous Dolly Parton song. Or our new favorite version by SNL. Anyway, painting our living room yesterday sure was quite the task of endurance, especially given various breaks for Clara-tending and blog-tending. In fact, it took us exactly 12 hours, from 9am to 9pm to fully complete the project. Good news – the living room is officially Moonshine’d. Better news – so is the hallway (what can we say, we were on a roll). But the day got off to a slow start. Between Sherry squatting the first blog post of the day to answer a bunch of questions, Clara needing some breakfast, and

[ Read More ]

| By | | 447 Comments

How To Choose The Right Gray Paint Color…

We usually feel pretty confident in our ability to pick a paint color. But something about choosing the perfect gray color for two major living areas in our house made me extra nervous (we’re going to use the same color in the future dining room, main hallway, and living room for some nice continuity). Sherry had a field day ribbing me about my paint paralysis. I was literally second-guessing every swatch we looked at. “Sure, I like it… no I don’t, I hate it.” Yeah, that was me. I blame my neurosis on having selected a hideous gray tone to paint my middle school bedroom (I picked it because I liked the name – Cannonball

[ Read More ]

| By | | 136 Comments

The Best DIY Tools

We’re psyched to be a part of Mrs. Limestone‘s “Junk Drawer Overhaul” series, where a few bloggers will be sharing how they’re kicking off the new year right by re-organizing their messy kitchen junk drawers. We bent the rules a little bit and shared how we organized our tool drawers (which are also located in our kitchen). But it wasn’t really a drawer re-organization since our tools had just been piled in the corner of our office after we moved. Nice, right? You can read more about how our screwdrivers and hammers went from “yikes” to “that works” over on A Brooklyn Limestone In Progress. And an interesting thing happened while organizing our tools. In

[ Read More ]