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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Demoing & Reframing The Laundry Room

Let’s talk about knocking out a few walls and framing a few new ones, shall we? For two weeks we had virtually no progress in our laundry area, except for rethinking our approach and considering contractor bids. So by comparison, things happened so swiftly over the last few days that it nearly put our heads on spin cycle. What started out looking like this… …is now looking a bit more like this. Yowza. Let’s rewind to early last week, when it clicked that maybe we could do more ourselves and sub-contract certain jobs out instead of relying entirely on one contractor and his team. As you may recall from this post, Option 4 is our

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Beginning The Laundry Room Makeover

After much deliberation, our laundry area is finally seeing some action. Well hello there, washer…. shall we take this to the bedroom? No literally, we took it to the bedroom. JEALOUS? Seriously though – it has been a busy week around here (mostly with unrelated book stuff) but we’ve managed to get some dust flying upstairs too. Long story short, thanks to a lot of thought (and a lot of encouraging comments from you guys) we’ve decided to do more ourselves, while managing some pro sub-contractors directly. Our second contractor estimate (after the initial $5,000 one) came in at $3,300, which was a more digestible number, but he had an impending vacation – and actually

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Painting Our Garage Doors Urbane Bronze

Favorite project ever! Okay, not really at all. (I just couldn’t help trying to match Sherry’s enthusiasm from yesterday’s post), but this is a nice simple way to update basic garage doors so they look a little more stately. Back when we had our house’s exterior patched & painted right after moving in, we opted not to get the garage doors painted since we knew it was a task that we could easily tackle ourselves. Well, 12 months later and it’s finally done. These two doors were sporting the same cream color that the old trim was before it went white, which wasn’t a very good look since it was nixed everywhere else. So we

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Fab Freebie: So Flexible

Here’s your chance to win a new paint sprayer plus $200 toward your next paint project. The Wagner FLEXiO 890‘s base provides the power and also acts as storage for everything, making it quieter and lighter than a traditional airless sprayer. At the other end of the 11.5ft hose is the handle, which includes controls for both the strength and size of the spray. And you can use the quick-change nozzle to swap in the fine finishing attachment for more flexibility. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available to residents of the United States,

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Our Laundry Room Makeover Plan

Thanks for all of the laundry room ideas last week, guys. We spent a lot of time mulling over every last suggestion, and even got some quotes for a few things (like moving the hookups, the doorway, and possibly bumping out a wall). One common alternate suggestion (we’ll call it “Option 3”) was to take our original Option 1 and rotate the laundry appliances 90° so that it’s out of sight. Then we could put access to the storage room on the back wall so there wouldn’t be any more of that walk-through-one-room-to-get-to-another-one issue. It was an interesting idea for sure. We hadn’t considered it before because, well, it would require moving all of the

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How To Spray Paint A Brass Chandelier

Continuing the recent trend in our house – Clara is the latest family member to get a ceiling fixture in her room. And methinks Sia might break out in song about it (“from the chan-de-li-eeeer!”). If it looks familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it before in our dining room. Well, a previous incarnation of it at least. We’ve always been intrigued by this chandelier, which was here when we moved in.  The finish wasn’t totally our style, but the swirls and flat arms (it almost looks like an intricate paper chandelier) always made us think it could be a good candidate for Clara’s room. The main problem was that it was too big. Even without

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Fab Freebie: Light Saber

‘Tis grilling season. And Saber Grills will be sending one of their high-end grills someone’s way, along with $100 to help kick-off their next cook-out. The winner can choose between two stainless steel grills: a full-size Saber model ($999) or its built-in cousin ($1,199). They’re created by outdoor cooking experts (hence their collection of recipes), so they’re designed to get the most flavor out of your food with things like infrared heating for quick and efficient cooking. Plus they boast cool features like commercial grade stainless steel and halogen lights on the hood for nighttime grilling. Neighbors are about to be jealous. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second

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Beginning Our Laundry Room Renovation

There’s nothing like having a newborn to make you appreciate having a nice spot to do laundry. Ours functions just fine, but I’d say it still falls a bit short of “nice” in the looks department. So we’ve decided it’s major overhaul time. Things have made minor progress since the beginning. Blue trim was painted. Old blue bi-fold doors came off. Flooring was replaced. Hallway walls were painted. And, oh yeah, we unexpectedly had to buy new appliances. I actually bothered to spray those bi-folds white back when we painted the trim and doors upstairs and they’ve been living in the storage room ever since. Once every few months Sherry and I talk about re-hanging

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Writing Our Second Book

We’ve been mentioning our second book off-and-on for several months now, usually followed by promises to give you some details soon, so we’re finally fulfilling that promise. How did you get a second book deal? Our original deal with our publisher, Artisan Books, was for two books, so we’ve known since signing on with them in 2011 that we’d be doing a follow-up to our first book, which came out in November of 2012 (more on that whole experience here). When will this one come out? Right now we’re working towards a fall of 2015 release – although that depends on lots of factors (many beyond our control) so it’s not set in stone yet.

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Fab Freebie: Earn Your Stripes

Well, more like win your stripes, since Dash & Albert is offering up a $500 gift card to one lucky winner. We’ve been fans of their stylish and logic-defying ability to combine softness and beauty with indoor & outdoor durability, having used them in our own home (remember this patriotically-titled post about our stair runner?) as well as in our showhouse. They’ve got lots of classic patterns and on-trend colors that reach beyond rugs to items like pillows, ottomans, poufs, and even bags. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph). This giveaway is available to residents of the United

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Hanging A Collection Of Frames All Over The Wall

Our master bedroom has moved leaps and bounds over the last few days in terms of not looking like a big empty room with a bed in it. And by leaps and bounds, I mean frames and curtains. And more frames. Plus a few more frames after that.   Before we started putting a bunch of holes in our walls, this is what the room looked like (and what it has pretty much looked like since we painted it nine months ago). It was in desperate need of curtains at the very least, but we’re not done with those yet, so just ignore those and let’s talk about the frames.   We had long talked

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Adding Outdoor Sconces To Our Back Porch

There’s something illuminating going on in our sunroom. And I’m not talking about the fireflies Clara is constantly trying to catch and befriend (she told me the other day that she wants one to live in her room FOREVER). Befriend? Imprison? Potato, potahto. Yep, our sunroom – er, veranda if you’re nasty fancy – is finally sporting some lighting, courtesy of the new fixtures that we added to the posts in the four corners of the room. Our original plan last summer had been to install light kits on the two fans in the room, but we never found fan lights we liked… and then we slowly warmed up to the idea of sconces around

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