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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How To Install A Pull Out Trash Can

Thanks for all of your thoughts and suggestions on the beginnings of our pantry project on Tuesday. We’re kind of swimming in ideas for what to do, but for starters we knew we wanted to take everything out (even the door off its hinges) to begin the process of priming and painting. And, thanks to the conversation between Sherry and I that Tuesday’s post sparked, one thing that won’t be going back into the pantry is our trash can. Instead, it’s gonna go into this cabinet right here. This the cabinet on the end of our peninsula, facing in towards the prep area (as opposed to the eating area). Just ignore all of the pantry

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Adding Extra Shelves And A Microwave To The Pantry

There’s a party in my pantry. And everyone’s invited. Although, it’s not really a party. And the pantry is far too small to host any sort of gathering. Hmmm. This invitation is going over just about as smoothly as Brick Tambland’s. But back to the pantry. See it there, hiding in the back of the kitchen by the fridge? This is the only “before” I could find of it with the door open. By all the wallpaper and brown trim I could’ve sworn this was from before we moved in, but something about it being stocked with our mess of food tells me this is post-move. #sherlocking Regardless of when the photo was snapped, you

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Fab Freebie: Cupid’s Bar

Valentine’s Day is Friday and since we can’t take you all out to a romantic dinner for two, we’re giving away $500 worth of jewelry courtesy of BaubleBar. Their site is well stocked with an ever-updating array of necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings, and even some handy storage items. You can shop by what’s trending, what’s new, and even by what’s on tap from their notable “guest bartenders.” Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter. It might take a second to load, but it should eventually pop up below this paragraph. And there’s a chance to win another $500 over on Style Me Pretty today, too. This giveaway is open to residents of the United States

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How To Make An Annual Family Photo Book

This week has already been pretty word-heavy with two big construction tutorials and a laundry saga, so we thought some lighter fare was in order – especially since a bunch of you have been asking if we made a family photo book again this year, and if so, when we’d share the details. Well, in the ever esteemed words of Madame Britney, “oops, we did it again.” In fact, the newest edition of the Petersik Family Yearbook landed on our doorstep this weekend. I have to say that we’re still so stunned at how thin-yet-picture-packed these books are. That picture above shows how five years of photos (over 2,400 of them!) can be stored in

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How To Build A Bookshelf

Today we’re going to show you how we built the bookshelves in our son’s room. It’s an easy project that we’ve since used to create custom shelving everywhere from our living room to our beach house pantry. But these bedroom shelves were our very first attempt at them and we absolutely loved how they turned out. This tutorial specifically focuses on building the actual shelves, aka the top portion of these built-ins. You can separately read about how we first built-in the cabinet bases (it’s an Ikea hack!) and later finished them off with crown molding. But since not every bookshelf needs those features, we’re talking just about the shelving today. You also can take

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Fab Freebie: Seeing Red

A few years ago, our cousins took us into a fun home shop during a visit with them in Old Town Alexandria, VA called Red Barn Mercantile. The store had such a collected feeling of rustic weathered wares mixed with modern, often quirky, accessories and gifts – including a great selection of Dash & Albert rugs, which we’re always drawn to. So when they recently approached us to offer up a $500 gift card to anyone in the world, we couldn’t say yes fast enough. And they’re also giving 20% off to everyone with the code HOUSELOVE at checkout. Please use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter (it might take a second to load, but

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How To Turn Ikea Dressers Into Built-In Bookshelves

It’s been a busy but productive week in the nursery built-in department, so I’m going to cover a lot in this post. Hang on to your hats, crank up your favorite Swedish electropop, and be prepared for some nitty-gritty detail on how we began the transformation from free-standing Ikea dresser to built-in dresser/bookshelf combo (that’s not a finished result on the right, by the way, it’s just photoshop). As you might recall, we bought two FJELL dressers because they were the size we needed and they were made of solid wood. But they did need a little additional help when it came to giving them a built-in look: None of these issues were insurmountable, but

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Our Toilet Leaked Through The Ceiling Below

Lemme tell you, our bathroom’s wallpaper wasn’t its only problem-to-be-remedied recently. So brace yourself while we weave a little plumbing tale that spanned over the last few weeks (in fact it just wrapped up a few days ago). You know how we solemnly swear to share the good, the bad, and the ugly? Well, this one can be filed under “the bad” and “the ugly” with a side of “the gross.” So for everyone’s sake, we’ll leave out the graphic pictures. During the process of buying this house we noticed a very small, dried out water stain on the ceiling in the living room, right below where the bathroom was. We and the inspector concluded

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Picking Art For The Kitchen

The other day I was working away in the office and Sherry breezed in and stole some paper from the printer. I didn’t think much of it… until a few minutes later when I walked into the kitchen to find this. Well, this and Sherry grinning at me and batting her eyelashes. I soon learned that these large succulent photographs that she’d been eying for some time from West Elm had gone on sale (boo, but it looks like they’re back to full price now). It’s more than we typically spend on art, but they’re very large (almost 30″ wide and tall) and the price included the big glass frame – so Sherry took the

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Fab Freebie: Add To Your Collection

“At last, I have all of the furniture, accessories, and items for my home that I’ll ever need” said no one ever. Okay, maybe just said Sherry never. But if you’re like her, then we’re sure you’d find some worthy way to spend the $500 that Home Decorators Collection is giving away this week. Whether you shop in one of their stores, online, or by catalog, they cover just about every nook of your home – from furniture and bedding to lighting and rugs – they even have stuff like bathroom vanities. And they like to run deals too (today lots of stuff is 10% off with free shipping). Please use the Rafflecopter widget below

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The 5 Best Power Tools For Home DIY Projects

You guys often ask about our must have tools for DIY projects, and the truth is that it still catches me off guard that I’m The Guy People Ask About Tools. Growing up I remember taking trips to Hechinger (anyone remember those?) thinking “who would ever willingly go to a home improvement store?!?” And when my dad gifted me a set of screwdrivers in high school I wondered what the heck I’d use them for. But here I am today – 32 and the proud owner of more tools than I can count (and still fewer than I’d like) – including some of those same screwdrivers from my dad so many years ago. Home ownership

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Built-In(security)

We have a nursery update for you guys in the form of two new purchases that we brought home, assembled, and will now attempt to customize. After this planning post we pictured ourselves diving right into constructing our two custom built-ins to flank the crib, but then we realized that before we could actually start on those, we needed to make some decisions about what we wanted them to look like (base cabinets with doors and a bookcase top? lower cabinets with drawers instead? dressers that we could top with shelves and molding? tall armoire-ish things for each side of that wall?). So after a lot of inspiration-room browsing and comparing measurements/product choices on a

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