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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The Washer & Dryer We Picked: Stackable Whirlpool Duets

Our new washer and dryer are here! Which of course means that our old ones are not. Fortunately our plan to craigslist them worked out swimmingly (thanks for buying ’em Leslie Ann!) even if it did leave us appliance-less for a few days (as you saw in the video house tour). By selling them for $250 thanks to good old craig and his list, we in effect brought our already-super-discounted total down from $638 to $388. Although after the wall plug, the stack kit, and taxes it was closer to $460 spent. Either way, we’re still feeling crazy good about the deal – and we’re glad that so many of you were able to take

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Removing A Medicine Cabinet And Hanging A Bathroom Mirror

Our recent flurry of mirror-related projects means my repertoire of pun-riddled mirror references is growing thin. Our latest victim was the guest bathroom. We figured after swapping out the medicine cabinet in our master bath, that we might as well do the same in the guest bath. Especially since our guests won’t exactly need a medicine cabinet. At least we hope not. It was still functional, but had definitely seen better days (the interior metal cabinet was starting to rust- we think it was original to the house, which makes it almost 50 years old) and we figured we could do better than the plain silver frame. So two screws later it was off the

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Painting The Bedroom Light Teal: Carolina Inn Club Aqua

That’s the name of the new bedroom color. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it does look pretty good rolled on the walls. We finally made a decision to go with the middle band on the Valspar swatch at the top of this photo (though we got it color matched to Olympic’s No-VOC paint in a satin finish). We liked that it was green and a bit more saturated than a color we’d choose for our last house. Here’s one last look at the room paint-less (and mostly furniture-less). Oh yeah and look at poor semi-disassembled Ed the Bed. We had to remove one slat on the top so that he could slide

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Fab Freebie: Cut It Out

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** It’s no mystery that we think silhouettes are a great and graphic spin on the traditional framed family photo. So of course this week’s prize is right up our alley: a customized 8×10 silhouette portrait from Nella Designs. Nella Designs has a bunch of other fun items in her Etsy shop (like this 2011 desktop calendar that our winners will also be scoring), but it’s these prints made from photos of your family, pet, or even you & your significant other (in your choice of color) that really caught our eye. You can see more of the prints that she’s personalized

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Hanging A Bathroom Mirror In Front Of A Window

Our master bathroom came with a mirror dilemma. Instead of having the traditional mirror-over-the-sink set up, there’s a window (seen here on this moving day pic that we snapped before we removed those bi-fold doors). But although that picture makes the window look all glow-y and angelic, staring out at the house next door (it’s a side window) isn’t exactly ideal for brushing your teeth, shaving, fixing your hair, or walking by after a shower in the buff. Nor is that the first impression that we really want to make on the neighbors. So we knew we needed a privacy solution stat. We also needed a functional mirror solution too. The room is (ironically) far

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Christmas Gift Ideas For Your Partner

We realized in all of this new house hubbub we never shared what we gifted each other for Christmas. Fishsticks! (No, we didn’t give each other fishsticks, I’m just practicing our resolution to not curse around the baby anymore). Sherry wins the “best gift” award this year. In continuing her efforts to grow our art collection, she considered a couple of Richmond-themed pieces (including this one that we’ve always liked) and finally ended up getting me this awesome Richmond Type Map: It’s a colorful map of our fair city made up entirely of identifying text. See what I mean? The black grid is made up of street names and the colored area behind them are

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Chaotic Christmas Home Renovations

We’ll admit it. We’re a little relieved that the holiday season is over. As fun and exciting as all of the hoopla is, December can be a stressful month with all of the last minute shopping, long distance traveling, family gatherings, and weather madness that come along with it… which is probably why lots of people called us certifiably crazy for adding moving-into-a-new-house to the mix. It definitely was a bit crazy of us, but it just dawned on me and Sherry that this wasn’t the first year that a major project fell over the holiday season. In fact, it’s happened for the past FOUR YEARS IN A ROW. Update: Five years in a row

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Fab Freebie: The Heat Is On

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll to the bottom to see who won!*** Is it hot in here or is it just these? Har har. But seriously, Air & Water offers a slew of heating, cooling and even humidifying products for your home, and this week one of you is gonna score one of these electric fireplaces on the house: Whether you go for the modern and colorful Mini Cube ($100), the large and traditional Lincoln ($300) or something in between, like the Danville or the Compact Electric ($130) you’ll be adding function and ambiance to any less-than-warm space. My mom actually has one like the Compact Electric and it was quite

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How To Frost A Glass Door And Avoid Bubbles

It’s no secret that the real improvement we need to make to our new laundry area is in the upgrading to energy efficient appliances arena along with adding some nice built-in storage to maximize that tiny room. But as we save up and plan for those upgrades, we took a few hours after Clara’s bedtime a few days ago to tackle some smaller items on our laundry list. Pun intended. First we went to work on the glass side door. You know, the one that gave everyone a straight shot from our carport, through the laundry area and into our kitchen (here I am being creepy and demonstrating the problem, which you can read more

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Day Fifteen

Yesterday marked two weeks of being in our new house, so we thought it warranted an updated glimpse into each room’s progress… or lack thereof. On one hand we feel very accomplished for having already tackled things like painting Clara’s room, buying and assembling a new bed, removing a bunch of bi-fold doors, raising our shower curtain, and unpacking everything – especially considering we were tied up with family stuff for a few days over Christmas. On the other hand, we’re still feeling pretty unsettled. Most of the important stuff has found a place in our new abode (not that it will necessarily stay there for the long haul), but the house is still riddled

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So Many Moving Boxes

We’ve dealt with box-y rooms, but this takes that term to a whole new level: What you’re looking at is what we lovingly called our “Box Graveyard,” aka the guest bedroom filled to the brim with all of our now-empty moving boxes and packing supplies. As disastrous as it looks, we have to admit that after trying to be so orderly about packing, it was somewhat cathartic to just toss the empty boxes into one big über-disorderly pile. Call it tapping into our wild side if you will. But of course we can only pretend to enjoy a mess for so long. So almost as soon as the last box was tossed there, I found

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Assembling Our Edland Bed From Ikea

Last you saw our new bed Ed – aka, the Edland four-poster bed from Ikea – he looked like this (read more about how we chose him here). He has since been assembled – and even slept on for one night. And thanks to the Skorva steel support beam (also from Ikea, which is mentioned as a must-have along with the bed in the “good to know” section) Ed can, in fact, hold the weight of 30 dead people (aka: our incredibly heavy mattress) plus the weight of two DIY enthusiasts, their beefy chihuahua named Hamburger, and their baby girl (when she’s in there for a morning snack). Constructing the bed was a remarkably easy

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