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 | |

FAQs About Our New Floors

We’re working on a big post about our finished renovation (which we last talked about on the blog here). But I’m dropping in to answer questions about the new flooring that we chose for our entire first floor (except for the tiled bathrooms). They’ve been one of the most-asked-about details of our reno on Instagram, where Sherry shared this reno as it rolled along in our Stories. So today we’ll cover the what, why, and how of our new flooring. It’s our first time using this particular material, and we have some thoughts.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Every 2027 Color Of The Year (So Far!)

Once again, the annual Color of the Year announcements have started rolling out VERY early. And once again, one has already come out before we could make our official guesses (it’s only August of 2026!). So we quickly made our picks this morning. You can see them below in this post, and just like we’ve done for 2024, 2025, and 2026 – we’ll update this post every time a new one is announced so you can see all the COTY selections in one convenient place.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How We’re Organizing Our Digitized Photos

I’m honestly a little surprised by all the interest in my photo digitization project, but we continue to field questions about how I’ve organized our old family photos. So here are answers to the most often-asked burning questions about exactly how we sorted, organized, and backed up our photos throughout the digitizing process. I won’t claim to have ALL of the answers because there’s been some trial and error along the way for me. But below are the steps I wish I’d followed from the very beginning. There’s also a “rapid fire FAQ” at the end.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Install a Drip Irrigation System

Our neighbor recently asked for help adding a drip irrigation system to their new garden. My last experience with a DIY irrigation installation was pretty intense, so I was wary. But installing drip irrigation was the total opposite. It was easy, affordable, and fast. Plus, it only cost around $75 and took just a few hours to install. It’s also a much more efficient way to water your plants than traditional sprinklers – so there’s a lot less water waste.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Propagate A Pothos

Pothos plants aren’t just low-maintenance houseplants to own, they’re also some of the easiest to propagate! Propagation is a fun way to grow new pothos from your existing pothos plants, while also helping them stay healthy, full, and looking their best. And, since it requires no special tools or skills, it’s a virtually free way to grow your plant collection! We have, no joke, generated at least 12-15 free pothos plants using this method! You can even use them as gifts for friends and neighbors.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Our 7 Favorite Things To Do In Pigeon Forge & Gatlinburg

This year, we took our kids to the land of Dolly Parton, aka the Tennessee Smokies, for our recent Spring Break. It was a jam-packed week of family fun, food, and there was even a dusting of snow! There’s SOOOO much to do in this area of Tennessee – you’ve got Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park all right there. So we thought we’d hit the highlights and share our 7 favorite things that we did there. Why 7? Well, it’s smack dab in the middle of the numbers 9 to 5… We traveled with another family, so we had 4 adults and 6 kids with us, ranging from ages 11 to

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Spring Break Destinations for Families

Planning a family spring break trip can be challenging – especially if you’re looking for somewhere warm, unique, and not overrun with other spring breakers. But ever since we moved full-time to the unofficial spring break capital of the United States (aka: Florida’s Emerald Coast), we’ve become well-practiced in finding unique spring break destinations. So here are 8 places that we have loved visiting for family vacations.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Propagate Succulents

Succulents are some of the easiest houseplants to propagate because there are several ways to do it. Today we’ll show how one succulent can be turned into many (even a dozen or more!). So whether you’re looking to grow your own collection or gift some plants to friends, this is a fun and easy process to try!

[ Read More ]

| By | |

The Best Way To Digitize Old Photos

When I hyper-focus on a task, I’m known to go ALL IN. And that’s exactly how I approached the giant job of digitizing all of our old photo albums. We crowdsourced suggestions, took some deep dives into message boards, and Googled the heck out of it. From there, I narrowed our options to 5 photo digitization methods that we tested for quality, price, and speed. There was one clear winner for us, but also lots of other good ways to go about it (even free ones!), depending on your personal priorities. So I’m going to lay out everything we tried, and why we had a clear favorite.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

The Other Project We’re Starting…

Our big renovation project isn’t anywhere close to done (it just started this week, and Sherry’s sharing peeks over on Instagram in stories) but I’ve already embarked on another project that I’ve wanted to tackle for years: digitizing all of our old photos! It’s arguably less exciting than our renovation, but I’m genuinely eager to tackle this long-overdue project. And since we’re not the only ones who suffer from photo clutter, I plan to document my process for anyone else who is also interested in digitizing their photos. So I’ll be testing out a few digitization methods, and sharing tips along the way.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Every 2026 Color of the Year

The annual Color of the Year announcements are one of our favorite traditions to follow (and predict, with varying degrees of sucess). Each year, a lot of the largest paint manufacturers select a hue and/or palette they believe “captures” and/or “forecasts” design trends. Some are bold. Some are boring. Some are straight-up bonkers (who remembers the color we affectionately dubbed “hot dog”?). So we’ll continue to update this post as the 2026 COTYs are announced over the next six months.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

25 Holiday Gift Exchange Theme Ideas

Every year, people ask us for theme ideas from my family’s annual Christmas gift exchange. We first mentioned this tradition on a podcast episode in 2016 and now, nearly a decade later, we’re putting the full, updated list in an easy-to-reference blog post. So if you or your family are feeling stuck or overwhelmed by your holiday shopping list, see why introducing a theme might do the trick!

[ Read More ]