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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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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How We Sold Our Second House By Owner

Holy cow, did we just sell our house? (I’ll pause while Sherry flails around since that sentence is a trigger). Now that we’re through the inspection & the appraisal (and the closing date is officially on the calendar), we’re finally at the point that we feel safe enough to shout it to the interwebs (we waited until this point to share the “we sold our house” news last time too). Of course nothing’s guaranteed until we’re all signing on the dotted line in early June, but so far, so good… First, some background: Sherry was set on selling our house FSBO (For Sale By Owner) again. She argued that we stood to save nearly ten grand –

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A Kitchen With Dark Gray Lower Cabinets & White Uppers

As much as we love a white kitchen, there are so many other fun options out there, like my sister’s wood cabinets + white appliances combo and “tuxedo” kitchens (a combo of dark and light cabinets). So when Rita’s makeover landed in our inbox, we couldn’t believe how much she changed her space for the better, and especially liked her two-tone cabinets. Here’s her letter: Hi Sherry and John, We recently finished renovating our kitchen. The challenge was creating a kosher kitchen (two sinks and separate spaces for meat and dairy) while keeping it looking clean and uncluttered and keeping the cost down. The original kitchen was beige-on-beige laminate with very little counter space. The

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Fab Freebie: Come To My Windows

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And this week’s lucky winner is Amy (who says she has an “unhealthy addiction to my iPhone, between email, Facebook, Pinterest etc. but I put it away for family time.”) Congrats! Whether it’s googling around for a tutorial, answering comments on the go, or making a list of project materials on our phone, gadgets have definitely wormed their way into our DIY routine. So we thought one of you might enjoy being hooked up with over $700 worth of Microsoft’s newest Windows devices – a Surface RT and a Windows Phone. The Surface is like a tablet, laptop, and e-reader in one –

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How To Stain & Seal The Deck

With our power washing done we could finally stain and seal our deck, which we completed and re-furnished on Tuesday (literally hours before our first showing!). But let’s rewind to where we left off yesterday. We mentioned that after finishing it in late August we were told to give the pressure treated wood 2-3 months to dry out before sealing any of the moisture from the treatment in (apparently sealing or staining PT wood too soon can lead to terrible results). So by the time staining was advised, it was too cold out to apply the stain. But even after spring rolled around and we power washed, it still wasn’t quite ready. What was standing

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Using A Pressure Washer To Clean Wood, Brick, And Cement

Note: This post features a heavy-duty, gas-powered pressure washer we rented from the store. To see how we now use a $99 electric version we own, please see this Getting Started With Pressure Washing post. Guys. I have a new favorite thing. And no, it’s not a pint-sized plastic vehicle. Yup, we took our spring cleaning to the proverbial next level and rented ourselves a 2000 PSI pressure washer (just got it at the Home Depot in their tool rental department). For 80 bucks and thanks to borrowing my dad’s Kia to haul it, this puppy was all ours for a day. I was happier than a hip hop hamster. I had never used a

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Aquatoberpril (A Water-Drinking Challenge)

Don’t worry, I don’t know how to pronounce that blog post title either. It’s just a nod to the fact that my  “Aquatober” challenge – where I try to spend the entire month of October drinking water instead of soda and other sugary drinks – has extended itself all the way through April. Hence, Aquatoberpril. In my original post about Aquatober I noted that I have varying success every year I try to detox myself (and my wallet) on all of the soda I consume (it’s my liquid vice of choice). Some years I don’t make it the full month. Some years I make it a bit further. Well, this time I’m still going strong

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We Bought A New House!

So, funny story about the house below. We bought it and we’re moving in. We know this news probably evokes a whole range of reactions. Excitement for new makeovers. Sadness for leaving our current house. Curiosity about all of the logistics. Confusion. Anger. The inexplicable urge to do The Carlton. Starting this story requires rewinding seven years, back to our first house hunting experience in Richmond in the spring of 2006. We had just moved from New York City and Richmond real estate felt very spacious and very cheap by comparison. It made dreamers out of us. We checked out a bunch of neighborhoods, and fell for an awesome old area with nice big wooded

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How To Build A Garage Pergola

Parking our car got a little more scenic this weekend with the completion of our carport pergola. Or, cargola (pergolaport?) if you will. Last week we talked about dressing up our carport with the help of some pergola plans from Workbench Magazine. The plans took a lot of the guesswork out of it, but there was still plenty of actual work. All-in-all it took about 4.5 days of work (the half day was spent picking up the materials, which we talked about here) but I’m gonna boil it down to one simple post. So here we go.   What you need to know is that there were four main parts to this building project: 1)

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A Dark Gray Nursery With A Tree Mural & Striped Curtains

This nursery that Dave and Carrie created for their daughter had us smiling from the second we saw the first picture. Not only is it bold and playful, it also has some sweet personal touches and a lot of handmade/DIYed goodness going on. Here’s their letter: Hey S & J, We recently welcomed our first child into the world, Everly Harper. Before we even knew Ever (that’s what we will lovingly call her), we knew we didn’t want a typical nursery for her – and we definitely didn’t want anything close to what the room looked like when we bought the place. My wife was inspired by a woodland themed nursery that we found through

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