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 | |

The 9 Best Greige Paint Colors (According To Experts)

“Greige” is that sweet spot between gray & beige, giving you a paint color that’s both trendy and timeless. In fact, we’ve been on the greige bandwagon for nearly 20 years – well before we’d even heard that term! But finding the perfect greige can be daunting. There are 100s of neutral paint colors that could be considered greige, so we’ve waded through dozens of expert round-ups to see what colors come up over and over again. Yes, I made a spreadsheet. And yes, I liked it. It’s no surprise that our favorite greige paint showed up on these lists. But the greige color that ranked #1 was a bit of a shock to us!

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Hosting An Outdoor Movie Night – All Of The Equipment You Need For Under $200

I’ve daydreamed about buying a backyard movie set-up (projector, screen, etc) for several summers now. But the logistics and potential expense always stopped me… until last month! And now I feel silly for waiting, because we pulled it off with just 3 pieces of equipment that cost less than $200 total! That’s cheaper than the cost of some projectors… or a few family trips to the theater! And now we can host unlimited movie gatherings with friends (we’ve already had two in the last two weeks!).

[ Read More ]

| By | |

The 12 Best White Paint Colors (According To Experts)

Want to know the most universally loved white paints? Well, we scoured 100+ white paint colors featured on more than a dozen “best white” lists to figure this out. I even made a spreadsheet! These are the 12 white paint colors that came up over & over again. They’re trusted by everyone from interior designers & architects to builders & bloggers alike. So let’s dive into why experts recommend them and how you can pick the right white paint color for your home. Why Designers Love White Paint White is a classic choice for trim, ceilings, and even cabinets. But white paint on your walls? That’s when the strong opinions come out! Critics write off

[ Read More ]

| By | |

5 Things We Loved On Our Family Vacation to Dallas, Texas

We’d never really thought of Dallas as a “vacation” destination, but there’s so much to do there that we barely scratched the surface on our recent trip! We ate lots of good food, explored fun neighborhoods, and found more kid-friendly activities than we had time for. So here’s a quick recap of some of our favorite Dallas destinations. Plus some things we want to come back and see next time!

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Use A Pressure Washer: A Beginner’s Guide

You may think pressure washers are complicated, expensive, or hard to control. But good news – they’re not! Pressure washing is an easy, affordable, and TOTALLY AWESOME way to keep your outdoor spaces looking clean and fresh. This is a comprehensive start-to-finish guide for anyone ready to get their pressure washing feet wet (maybe even literally). We’ll cover set-up, spraying tips, surfaces it works on, and more. Trust us, even we were intimidated the first time we tried pressure washing over 10 years ago. The cumbersome gas-powered machine we rented for a day was so big it didn’t even fit in our car! So I TOTALLY understand anyone with PWH (pressure washing hesitation). Our Favorite

[ Read More ]

| By | |

A Weekend In Serenbe, Georgia

Serenbe is a small “New Urban” community about 45 minutes south of Atlanta in a rural town called Chattahoochee Hills. It’s sort of a mix of an upscale-feeling suburban development and an eco-conscious resort in the countryside. We recently took a 3-night trip with our kids and had a great time exploring, eating, and spending time in nature!

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Make An Ikea Pax Wardrobe Look Built-In

Since our bedroom used to be a living space, it came with absolutely zero closet space. This was obviously a big downgrade from the fancy walk-in closet in our last house. BUT ALAS! Watch how we built in some floor-to-ceiling Ikea Pax wardrobes to create just as much storage as our last closet AND make them look like they’ve been there all along… For comparison, our last home’s walk-in closet was an 8′ x 6′ room. Each side had one 29″ wardrobe in the middle flanked by two 19″ wardrobes on each side. That’s 67″ of linear closet space along each wall, for a total of 134 inches. In this home, we used the exact

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Get Rid Of Fruit Flies – Using Stuff You Already Own!

Got little bugs buzzing around your kitchen? Congratulations, you may have fruit flies! Don’t fret. These annoying pests are pretty common but luckily, it doesn’t take a lot of money, supplies, or effort to get rid of them. In fact, you can probably find everything you need in your cabinets! We recently had a fruit fly problem in our home (the first time in over four years here – we have no idea what brought them in). So I seized the opportunity to test 7 different methods of eliminating them. Yes, there were copious notes taken and even a spreadsheet. So today I’m sharing the best fruit fly traps and how to make them.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Build Easy DIY Garage Shelving

When we needed some heavy-duty garage shelving for our new shed, we turned to this shelf tutorial from our friend Ana White. Shelves like these stand up to the weight of heavier items like power tools & paint cans and, most importantly, are also SUPER straightforward to build – even for beginngers! We ended up loving this technique so much, we’ve since repeated in the shed at our beach house (seen below) and the small shed at our current hosue. They’re such an easy DIY project and I find them FAR superior to most store-bought garage shelving units. Making these long shelves with generous spacing between them to creates flexible storage with easy access to

[ Read More ]

| By | |

A Weekend Getaway To Ocean Springs

Never heard of Ocean Springs, Mississippi? Neither had we! But it caught our eye on round-ups like Southern Living’s 15 Most Adorable Small Towns and USA Today’s 10 Best Coastal Small Towns where it ranked #1. So a few months ago our family decided to check it out for ourselves. It did NOT disappoint! We actually considered detouring through Ocean Springs on our weekend trip to New Orleans two years ago. But now we’re glad we didn’t shortchange it with a quick pitstop and gave it a full trip of its own.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Downsizing Update: Almost 5 Years Later

In November of 2020, we published a post called “What’s It Like To Downsize” after living in our smaller home for 6 months. We covered a range of experiences – like the good things about moving to a smaller home (owning less stuff! saving money!) and some of its challenges, especially in the initial stages of downsizing (paring down! figuring out storage!). We still agree with everything in that post, but it had only been six months… and since it has now been over 4.5 years (!!!), we feel like we have a few more to add about the long-haul downsizing experience. Let’s get into it. I won’t recap our entire decision to downsize (you

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How We Manage Renovation Stress: 5 Tips

Big renovations are exciting and fun, but it’s no secret that they can also be really stressful – especially when it’s one of those expensive, weeks-long, life-interrupting renovations like a kitchen or bathroom. Things go wrong, budgets get broken, timelines go haywire, and somehow there’s always dust everywhere. EVERYWHERE. So since we’ve renovated 7 houses over the past 17 years, we thought it might be helpful to share our best tips for preparing for & minimizing renovation stress.

[ Read More ]