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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Painting The Front Door Fabulous Red

When two of our lovely readers sent us pics of their very own transformations that we inspired by our blog, we couldn’t have been more excited. So without further ado here’s Erin’s new CB2 pendant hanging proudly above her dining area. She went with the green version of the linen colored light fixture that we hung above our very own dining room table. Perfect, no? Elvira in DC also sent us a few pictures of her fantastic front door transformation. Here’s her entryway before a little color intervention: And her punchy new door thanks to a few glossy coats of Fabulous Red- the same Valspar hue that we used to makeover our brick rancher’s front

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Digging In A Slate Path That Leads To Our Front Door

It’s been so long that I betcha forgot about our front walkway project, didn’t you? You can get a full refresher here, but the gist is that we ripped up our shoddy old path and used leftover slate to piece together a bigger and better walkway to our front door. It was a weekend full of work and we left off with the simple task of digging all the slate into the ground. Here’s a pic to jog your memory (before the big dig): That simple task of digging in 48 pieces of stone turned into a four-day back-breaking adventure, all in hopes of engineering a wobble-free perfectly-graded welcoming walkway to our house. Which is

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Adding A Firepit To Your Home

This is the most amazingly easy way to add a little fun to your yard (no matter how small) and spruce up your space in mere minutes. Two chairs + a metal firepit = the best seats in the house. Check out our new set-up. And you don’t even need to have grass. You can set ’em down on pavers, concrete, a deck, a patio, or even a clearing in the woods. So carve out a corner and surround a firepit with as many chairs as you’d like. Firepits have never been more affordable- take home this basic version for $69.99 or adopt this copper beauty on sale for $119. Then it’s time for a

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Extra! Extra! Read All About It.

Guess whose mugs graced the new Home & Garden section in Richmond’s local paper this morning? I know. We couldn’t believe it either. Last week we were just sitting around minding our business when, totally out of the blue, The Richmond Times-Dispatch contacted us. They wanted our help relaunching their newly expanded Home & Garden section by featuring our DIY table project in their new column appropriately named “I Did It Myself.” Needless to say, we were ecstatic. To read the online version, click here. And if you’re visiting us thanks to the article- howdy! We have lots of exciting before and afters and tons of archived DIY projects and mini-makeovers, so feel free to

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Digging Up Old Slate To Make A New Leveled Path

The front of our house continues to transform (goodbye scalloped porch, hello red door), and this weekend we worked up the energy to tackle the jacked up front walk. Why? Because this is the jagged and trip-inducing path that we inherited with the house. Talk about an ankle sprain waiting to happen: We like a rustic cottage-y path, but ours was narrow, wobbly and not quite the inviting introduction to our front door that we envisioned. Plus, the previous owner had a thing for ornamental grass and wooden borders that were seriously cramping our style. So this weekend we dug it up to make way for a bigger and better version. Here’s what it looked

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Making Some DIY Sentimental Map Art

We wanted to elaborate on our response to a question Alyssa asked on Wednesday about the framed map in the photo below: What you see in the white frame on that shelf is a card included in the City Walks: New York boxed set. For those those not familiar with the City Walks series, they’re small boxes that include 50 “adventures on foot” through different cities across the globe. That means you get 50 unique cards outlining different walking tours, complete with a map, directions and fun facts about the things you’ll see along the way. I got the New York edition as a gift when I moved there but had no idea what to

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Our Spring Break Trip To Madiera Beach

As we revealed on Saturday, we spent the last week soaking up the sun on a tiny island off the west coast of Florida called Madeira Beach. We’ve returned to Virginia with slightly tan skin, a boatload of shells, and tons of fun stories to share… starting with the tour of the totally sweet cottage we stayed in all week long. From the start we knew we wanted a unique, tropical experience, so we avoided the ubiquitous beachfront hotel and sought out something more private (and dog-friendly). That’s how we stumbled upon the Island Paradise Cottages of Madiera Beach – the affordable and stylish answer to our lodging needs just steps from the beach. Island

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Our Messy Detached Basement

Ok, so between all the pics and video tours you may think you’ve seen every inch of our house. On the contrary our dear readers. We have an entire room that you’ve never been privy to. Until now. You see, under our sunroom is a private entry basement. This means that the only way to get there is to walk outside and down a few steps. And since it’s not exactly easily accessible (or easily seen) we’ve been using it as more of a dumping ground than an extra room. We hesitate to show you the chaos that inhabits our little basement, but here it goes: Now granted, this isn’t exactly a finished room, so

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How To Pick Granite Counters

At a recent open house, our suspicions that a last-minute countertop switch saved our kitchen were confirmed when we saw this kitchen with a granite countertop in Blanc Noir- the style that we almost chose: In fact, we did choose Blanc Noir, but when we viewed the full slab (as opposed to a tiny sample that Home Depot provided) we pulled a last minute switcheroo from Blanc Noir to Pashmina. And this open house kitchen was all the proof that we needed to be sure that we absolutely without question made the right decision. Here’s our granite counter in Pashmina for comparison: Our fears that the Blanc Noir granite would be more busy and patterned

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If This Were Your Bookcase…

…what color would you paint it? We adopted this snore of a bookshelf in Manhattan about three years ago and it’s one of about ten pieces that made the move to Richmond with us in a minivan. We’ve always treated it like an “until we get something better” piece because there’s nothing terribly special about it, but somehow it has lasted this long, so we figure it’s about time we make it work. We’re going to give it the ol’ Young House Love paint job (the wood is a little too red for our house anyways). And seeing a pretty painted green bed on google gave us the confidence to try something other than white…

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