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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Fab Freebie: Art Meets Science

It’s not every day that you get an email from the country’s largest science museum, which is why my nerd-dar went off the charts after the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago reached out to offer up $350 towards some museum-worthy art. They’ve launched a photography shop offering dozens of museum images as fine art prints and wrapped canvases. The images cover everything from historic pictures and illustrations (some of my faves being old trade catalogs, like the “Types of Screws” chart below) to photos of museum exhibits and artifacts, like their iconic baby chicks, colorful architectural prints, or old timey bicycles. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second

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How To Add Pull Out Basket Drawers In The Kitchen

Remember how we had a trash compactor in our kitchen? Remember how we removed it waaaaay back in March? Well, we have officially filled the void with some slide out baskets. Only took us three months. Not that the hole it left wasn’t super attractive and crazy functional. I mean, if incorporating a “great Clara hiding spot” into our kitchen was the goal (and I put that in quotes because Clara’s hiding spots are frequently preceded by “I’m going to go hide in the [insert one of four usual locations here]”). So yeah, it’s time this hole worked a little harder. We debated a few options – like putting a trash or recycling bin there

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Hacking A Thrift Store Coffee Table With Blue Stain

You know we love ourselves some furniture tweaking… But first, guess what arrived?! I’ll give you two hints: this and the photo below. Admittedly, both are very strong hints. Maybe I need to work on being more mysterious. Despite Sherry’s promises to throw a ticker tape parade when our new outdoor sofa showed up, its arrival was unceremonious. Sherry was on a conference call. A big truck pulled up. I handed off the baby to Sherry and ran outside. A big box came out of said truck. Yada yada. Clara was out with Grammy, but when she arrived home she declared it “perfect!” and said “I love it!” and that was that. This is also the last appearance

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Fab Freebie: Ultra Handy

How does a fancy new tool and $500 sound? That’s what Dremel is dishing out this week with their new Dremel Ultra-Saw, a 3-in-1 tool that’s like their Saw-Max (which I own) except it’s cranked up a few powerful notches. In addition to making flush and plunge cuts in all sorts of materials (wood, metal, plastic… even tile and stone!) it can also do surface prep like grinding off old thinset or stripping paint off metal and concrete. And Dremel is throwing in a $500 Visa gift card so you can take it for a spin (literally) on whatever project you dream up. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a

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Adding Fjalkinge Bookshelves To Our Home Office

I’m The Fjalkinge Of The World! Our office has made perhaps its most significant functional improvement since we started talking about it back in March. We have six spacious shelves and six extra long drawers thanks to two tall systems that flank the desk. They’re balanced looking and full of function (our previously bare wall was sorely lacking). In short: we love them. And the soft close drawers are the icing on the office cake. It’s not finished (still want window treatments, a rug, art, a ceiling fixture, etc), but it’s inching a lot closer than it was a week ago. As weird as it sounds, I think it was having Teddy that snapped us

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One Year Into Living In Our House

This week marked our 1 year anniversary of moving into this house. So to celebrate that milestone (while we work on an office update to share on Monday) we thought we’d drop some infographics up in hizzere. YE-AH, BOY! As an homage to this stat-tastic “before” post, we picked out some fun facts and figures from the last 12 months-ish (and we dropped a preview of our in-progress office project in there for good measure). For a more all-inclusive rundown of the progress we’ve made over the last year, complete with before & after photos and links to each project, you can check out our (freshly updated!) House Tour page. Or if you’re in the mood

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How To Make Wall Decals

If Teddy ever forgets what letter his name starts with, he now has a whole wall to remind him. That’s right, it’s always “T” time in there. Har-har. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Sherry and I settled on a plan for a subtle accent pattern on the wall between the built-ins. Our original plan was to paint the Ts, like Sherry did for Clara’s raindrops. But after some of you suggested things like vinyl decals in the comments, we decided to give that a whirl instead. Vinyl has become a pretty mainstream option these days, especially for kids’ rooms. It’s removable and affordable, so we see the appeal. This tube – which is

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A Full Tour Of Our Showhouse On Video

Here we are, folks. After over a year of planning, second guessing ourselves, more planning, sweating, and filling our car with vases and egg chairs, we’ve reached the end of the Homearama Showhouse tour. So in celebration of completing this whole-house marathon of sorts, we’re kicking off this post with a whole-house video tour. Nothing too high tech. Just me stumbling through the house: Photo-wise, there are few rooms on each floor that we still haven’t shared/sourced for you. So let’s slide through the dining room, powder room, mudroom, guest room, guest bathroom, and the laundry room. We love dark wall colors in a dining space, so for this room we chose Kendall Charcoal, which

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Fab Freebie: Artfully Yours

Gallery walls just got easier. This week’s prize (for anyone in the world!) is $500 to Artfully Walls. In addition to offering a wide portfolio of art prints, they’ve got built-in tools for designing your own gallery wall arrangement. So selecting pieces, sizing and arranging them, framing them, and even testing out real paint colors in the background is nice and simple. Or you can browse their suggested walls, which are arrangements that their design professionals have already curated. They even come with recommended paint colors and hanging templates to keep it all frustration-free. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below

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How To Paint Your Garage Door & Utility Box

Do you guys ever get those irrational worries about how your house looks right before hosting a party? Leading up to Clara’s birthday on Saturday I was thinking random stuff like “I really should touch up some of the caulk in the sunroom before everyone comes over” like anyone would notice. And Sherry said “the patio table could use a fresh coat of paint” was running through her head when we were using a tablecloth anyway. But one thing that never crossed our minds was: “The back door is in pretty rough shape. Maybe we should do something about it before IT BECOMES THE PLACE WHERE KIDS PLAY WITH BUBBLES FOR HOURS.” Oh well. The

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Playing (Show)House

Before the Homearama show concluded this weekend, we slipped through on Friday with Teddy strapped into our baby carrier (Clara was with the grandparents) so we could check out the homes with visitors in them. It was fun to chat with show-goers, see our pantry getting filled up with food donations, and we even spotted a note someone left us on a notepad in the girl’s room of our house. But perhaps the most exciting thing we got to see in person was the People’s Choice Award that our house won! The votes were very close, and all of the other homes were so well done. It’s hard to put into words how much we’ve

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Beautiful Outdoor Spaces At The Showhouse

There are a few outdoor showhouse spaces that we haven’t shown at all in this entire yearlong process. Each of the seven showhouses were encouraged to include some fun outdoor spaces as well as indoor ones, so aside from the stuff you can see from the curb, there’s also a back porch and a back patio complete with a stone fireplace. The cool thing about these outdoor spaces is that they’re the places that we got to put our heads together with the builder and the architect the most – and they ended up being some of our favorites. The craziest thing is that our house won 1st place (i.e. the “Gold Award”) for both

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