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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#149: The Episode That Made Me A Plant Lady

We’re sharing how our bathroom reno went from zero to fifty percent (that’ll make more sense when you hear what we did) and how we gained a ton of insight about the right layout and the right size for the vanity, shower, tub, etc. Also… the houseplant struggle is real, so we asked plant expert Carmeon Hamilton everything we’ve ever wanted to know about how to keep inside greenery alive (and happy!). She shared her favorite easy plants for beginners and even laid out when to water, re-pot, and fertilize your indoor greenery (we were like: wait, we should be fertilizing?!?). Plus, we’re shouting out a super handy multipurpose tool that we loved so much

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#148: How We Keep Our Lives & Projects Organized

People are always asking how we keep our projects and our household organized (“do you make lists? use an app?! help me!”) so today we’re outlining the three tools that we use every day. Some are digital, some are old school, but the most important part is that they help to keep us on the same page (sometimes literally) about our projects, purchases, and more. We’re also sharing the near completion of a long overdue outdoor update that almost sent one of us over the edge… of the roof. Also, could it be true that some people don’t have a de facto “side of the bed” every night? WHAT?! We have questions. What’s New That’s

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#147: A Summer Living In A Smaller House & Smaller Town

What happens when you move into a smaller house in a smaller town for over two months? That’s what we found out this summer when we stayed at our beach house to manage the duplex rentals – AND IT WAS THE BEST SUMMER OF OUR LIVES. The smaller home and smaller town lessons that we learned really stuck with us when we returned home – and they have already inspired us to make 4 changes to our life and habits back in Richmond. So even if you aren’t planning to move or downsize, there are some things you could experiment with too. We’re also sharing why we’re fiiiiiinally starting a long-awaited renovation in our house,

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5 Lessons From Our Summer As Airbnb Hosts

We talked on this week’s podcast about how our first rental season at the duplex wasn’t perfect, but it went pretty darn smoothly, all things considered (you can hear a bunch of specific stories, nerve-wracking moments, and things we learned in that episode). Over the course of this past summer, we hosted 23 families thanks to it being a duplex. Two bookings were always happening simultaneously, and the house was fully occupied with guests every night from mid-June to Labor Day. We joke that going from managing zero Airbnbs to two was kind of like going from having zero kids to having twins – it literally felt like we were plunging ourselves into the deep

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#146: What It Was Really Like Renting Out The Duplex

We survived our first summer as Airbnb hosts to 23 different families over the course of the last three months – and, more importantly, so did the duplex itself! But our first rental season wasn’t without hiccups, high anxiety moments, and surprisingly frequent learning opportunities. So this week we’re taking you behind the scenes of a jam-packed few months of learning the hospitality ropes while juggling guests and (more literally) a very full jug of laundry detergent. Sherry also celebrates the end of a long “personal renovation” and we share how something simple led us to rethink our approach to cooking dinner. What’s New I know Sherry’s enduring Invisalign saga has been the topic of

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The Real History Of The Pink House (There’s A Twist!)

This all started because we wanted one of those cool “Historic District” plaques on our beach house. Spoiler, we got it…and one for the duplex too! But the process turned us into amateur sleuths, history-buffs-in-training, and (more predictably) people who paint their front door a new color while they’re at it. So here’s the story, along with a mini porch update, and some tips & advice for uncovering the history of your home too. Ever since we bought our beach house three years ago (yes, three!) we’ve been jealous of admired the official “Cape Charles Historic District” plaque on our neighbor’s house (the blue one between the duplex and the pink house in the photo

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DIY Shiplap Wall Plank Treatment ($31 total!)

Many moons ago we promised to share the DIY play-by-play for this shiplap-esque, paneled wall treatment because it’s ridiculously easy and GLORIOUSLY BUDGET CONSCIOUS. As in, it cost less than two boxes of my favorite light bulbs. Or dinner at Chipotle. Yes, those are my units of measure. But the point is: it was only $31! I mentioned in our backsplash post a while back that we opted for a different treatment on the stove wall in each of the duplex kitchens because it felt too chaotic to continue our patterned tile on two walls, so we chose something subtle yet wipeable AND easy to maintain (you can see the both duplex kitchen reveals here). Also cheap

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Organizing Our Beach House Shed

Earlier this summer we shared how we made over our beach house backyard in one giant post that covered the entire year-long process of taking it from a gnarly jungle to compact-yet-relaxing little oasis. It’s a very small space, so we worked really hard to squeeze lots of function out of it – more on that here – and back when we shared that post, many of you asked for photos of the inside of our pink shed along with details about what we store there. So today all of your shed-poking-around dreams are about to come true. When we shared that backyard before & after fest, I confessed that the inside of the shed

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How To Paint Decorative Oars For Beach House Decor

When we shared the duplex backyard makeovers last month, I promised more details about how we made the decorative oars that hang on each shed. So today I’ve got a detailed tutorial for you (including how NOT to screw up your attempts to make them outdoor friendly) along with a few other “hacks” you guys asked about. The oars actually were not part of our original plans. But after the sheds were built we nixed our plans to run electricity to them (for cost reasons – and because they really don’t need it). But the empty space where we’d planned to hang a light above the door needed… something. That something became oars after a

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Our Beach House Backyard Makeover

Just when you thought we were done with backyards (we shared the duplex backyards last week) we’re back with yet another… backyard! And this beach house backyard has been a long time coming, and it started out in an incredibly lackluster state – so we’re excited to show you what we did back there. It might be one of our favorite updates to date – especially since this backyard is really small but it all feels super functional and useful for our family – we’re out there all the time! And it’s about 1000% better than where we started. There’s a lot to see because we squeezed in SO MUCH into a relatively small space.

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#145: The Home Features People Wish They Didn’t Have

This week we’re digging into a survey that reveals the top homebuyer regrets – as in what features their homes have that they ended up not loving (and the results may surprise you!).  A new study also concluded some shocking-to-us things about millennial dads versus their baby boomer counterparts – and we have some big feelings about one aspect of the results. We’re also sharing a crappy situation (literally) at our beach houses, and the weird measures we’re taking to resolve it. Plus, more design norms from around the world and our picks for summer entertainment. What’s New Since I’m not about to show you a bunch of bird droppings, in that photo above you

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#144: When You Don’t Even Recognize Your Own Shopping Habits

We recently made two big changes to our shopping habits that are having both positive and negative repercussions. So we’re sharing what we did, why we did it, and how we’re trying to course correct a few pitfalls that popped up. We also got a refreshing reminder that it’s liberating to acknowledge that you don’t have to be good at everything – especially in a social media world where everyone else seems to have it all figured out. Plus, we share a big hiccup that was narrowly avoided at the duplex, an organizational tool that we’ve fallen hard for, and Sherry’s deep feelings for a certain crunchy green snack. What’s New If you want to

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