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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Did We Make A Profit Selling Our Second House?

We answered this question after the sale of our first house (spoiler: we bought in the bubble and sold in the recession), so now we’re back to do it again – but this time the coins stacked a bit more favorably, thanks both to selling in a slightly better market and by not sinking as much into this house’s improvements (it helped that we didn’t need expensive upgrades like a new roof and windows this time around). We managed to sell this latest house for $23,000 more than we bought it for back in 2010. And our best estimate is that we put around $14,500 into improvements that stay with the house (i.e. not furniture

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Fab Freebie: Arhaus To Your House

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** And our randomly selected winner is… Alyson (who says they use their sofa for “cuddling with our dog while watching tv or reading. My day doesn’t feel complete without cuddle time!”) Congrats! Sit back. Put your feet up. Take a load off. Because someone’s winning a new couch this week, courtesy of Arhaus – up to over $2,500 in value! Arhaus covers a wide range of rooms (from dining to bedroom) in a wide range of worldly styles (from traditional to unique). So to showcase that spectrum, this week’s winner will get to pick one of three sofas: the curvy and tufted Club sofa, the

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How To Install Oak Hardwood Floors

Get on the floor. Seriously, wood, get out of those boxes and do your thing. Oh how I wish it were that easy. Turns out laying oak flooring takes some serious time. But man oh man is it gorgeous when it’s down. So it turns out wood-floor-laying, my friends, is time well spent (picture me saying that as confidently as Ron Swanson says “turkey can never beat cow”). Don’t mind the dusty little path emerging from Clara’s room. We still have a few more spots to sweep… As we mentioned here, we decided to go with solid oak hardwoods for the four bedrooms and the hallway upstairs since many rooms downstairs (plus the stairs) have nice

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Chip & Joanna’s Farmhouse Kitchen Reno

Something about renovating a farmhouse just sounds so idyllic to me. And Joanna’s farmhouse kitchen renovation doesn’t disappoint. She and her husband took it from closed off and dated to open and, well, check it out yourself… Hey guys! I live in Texas and my husband and I are in the middle of renovating our 125 yr old farmhouse. We have been married for ten years, have four kids, and have lived in 9 homes. All of which we bought, lived in, and flipped. After we move into the farmhouse, I am done. I hope. When my husband first showed me this house, I walked right out of it and said there is no way.

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Adventures In Hardwood Flooring

Late last week we were finally able to start installing our hardwood floors at the new house. It’s going well (we’re getting it done with our own four hands), but it’s proving to be a time intensive project – which is not necessarily the type of project you want to take on when you’re short on time (we’re scheduled to move in this weekend and would like to be completely done with four bedrooms and a long hallway by then – egads!). So once we’re breathing a bit easier and a bit further along, we’ll write up a play-by-play of how it all (literally) is going down. ‘Til then, enjoy this still-dusty pic of the

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Fab Freebie: Indie-stagram

*** This giveaway is closed – see who won below! *** This week’s lucky random winner is.. Keelan (who’s favorite picture of herself from her Costa Rican honeymoon, saying “my husband took it of me at the end of the trip while I was lying in a chaise lounge and I just look the epitome of happy – relaxed, tan and soaking in every minute of our adventure.”) Congrats! We’re spending today with our family for the Memorial Day holiday, but we wanted to drop in with a giveaway for you guys. Are you a fan of Instagram? A lover of gallery walls? A sucker for things that are fast and easy? Well, read on,

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April Superlatives: Inside, Outside & Acting A Fool

Um where did April go? The shower-iest month seems like a distant memory by now, but it was filled with outdoor makeovers, bathroom updates, shades a plenty, and even a bit of rapping. So we’re taking a moment to appreciate all the things that we checked off of our list as a motivator to hopefully make the coming months just as productive. Oh and you can catch superlative recaps of the last 2+ years here (in 27 easily skimmed posts instead of nearly 900 long ones!). Plus, we’ve got a little clue about what’s happening next week in the mix below… Most Photogenic: Next Monday’s giveaway, which should make all of you fellow Instagram addicts pretty

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How To Use A Paint Sprayer On Trim & Doors

If we’ve made one thing clear about our new house, it’s that we’re not crazy about the trim colors… Somewhere between the Williamsburg Blue and the Muddy Mauve, our painting hands began to quiver with excitement. Or was that dread? Not sure. We reasoned that while all of the carpet was up and before the new hardwoods went down, we should take advantage of the can-get-painted subfloor and go ahead and tackle the upstairs trim. Correction: trim and doors. Sixteen doors to be exact… which we removed and de-hardwared first for easy painting. Attempting to quickly paint four bedrooms and closets worth of trim along with a long hallway plus nine windows (with tons o’

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Making A Homemade Painted Fabric Background

Clara turned three on Tuesday (Threesday?) so we’ve spent the last few days marveling at this wonderful little lady before us and wondering where the heck the time went. And just like we did for her two previous birthdays, we marked the end of another 12 months by customizing the fabric backdrop for her photo project. You might remember that this tradition started on her first birthday, when we used my handwriting to create a pattern that we printed on fabric using Spoonflower (here’s how we did that). Spoonflower came to the rescue again last year, but we took advantage of Clara’s artistic abilities and converted one of her scribbles into the fabric that time

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Having Fun Painting Fabric

Someone hit the big 0-3 this week and that same someone is pretty excited about it! As you may have read over on Young House Love, to culminate this year’s photos we again let Clara help design a custom “fabric” for her birthday picture. This time around it meant letting her paint directly on two yards of white cotton fabric. And as usual, we wanted to share some of our favorite outtakes with you guys. Like this one, where we asked her how old she was going to be. Pretend you don’t see seven of those fingers. Here’s her Home Alone pose. There was also a nice amount of marveling at the glorious mess that

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Halfway Through May

It’s time for our monthly moment of thanks to the sponsors who make the other 30+ posts possible. Without them we might not have food on our tables or clothes on our backs (and hungry, naked blogging doesn’t make for good DIY morale). So feel free to check out some things that caught our eye this month, and peruse our usual round-up of discounts at the bottom of the post – plus a hint about Monday’s $500 giveaway! This “Splatter Stacks” print from Hoot Design Co. Because books make me happy. Shades of Light‘s dhurrie rugs, like this honeycomb guy that comes in five colors. Our pal Dusty’s DIY backsplash install as featured on The

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Fab Freebie: Talent Show

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** This week’s randomly selected winner is… Sheilagh (who’s talents lie in “all aspects of art and being crafty!”). Congrats! One of the most exciting parts of doing a project is getting to share the sweat-inducing results when it’s done. And that’s the idea behind HouseTalent, a free site where you can easily upload before pics, progress shots, and after photos of the DIYs that are going on in your digs. The friendly interface makes browsing other peoples’ accomplishments just as easy as uploading your own inspiration – from small furniture builds to major room overhauls. And to help you get some of your projects ready

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