Young House Love

Home Decorating, DIY Tutorials, & Shenanigans

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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A Before & After Look At Our (Only!) Bathroom

By now we’ve shown you every room in our new house, with the exception of this one: our bathroom! And as you’ve probably heard us say, it’s our home’s only bathroom (which has really not been a big deal so far at all – for which we’re extremely grateful). The funny thing is that although there’s only one, it wasn’t even functional when we bought the house. The sink vanity had been torn off the wall, the water was shut off to the entire house due to various leaks, and there was not a functioning sewer or septic system attached to the house at all. As in, even if the toilet flushed, it wouldn’t have

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#181: How The Other House We Considered Came Back Around

There were two houses in our neighborhood that we seriously considered, and today we’re sharing a truly random occurrence that involves the house we didn’t buy. We’re also sharing what we learned from our astrocartography readings. What did the stars say about our move to Florida? Were our readings dead-on or completely off? And what random sentence about a certain mammal made Sherry extremely excited? Plus the tale of a simple outdoor project that took months longer than it should have and the purchase that made us change our tune about outdoor furniture. Also, Sherry did something embarrassing again. What’s New Here’s a look at our new fence that we had installed between us and the

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Five Quick & Easy Updates To Our Kitchen

Quick note: if you missed the update to last week’s post that went up a few days after it was originally published, you can catch up on that here. When we moved in one of the subcontractors said they’d been wondering why we didn’t tear out the old cabinets and mismatched appliances and pink laminate counters and redo the kitchen before we moved in. But if you’ve followed us for a while, you know the answer. We like to live with a kitchen for a nice long time before changing the layout or doing any major upgrades like replacing the cabinets or counters (in our last house we waited three years for our big renovation).

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How To Paint A DIY Wall Mural In Your Home

The big, colorful mural we recently painted in our daughter’s room was one of the most fun and impactful painting projects we’ve done in a while. It was a combination of both careful planning and some last-minute improvising that was so easy to do, even the kids broke out some paintbrushes to help. Plus, it extremely was budget-friendly too. The whole thing was painted by hand, just using regular ol’ paintbrushes and rollers. No fancy paint sprayers. No projector. Not even any painter’s tape! So today we’ll talk you through: How to plan your wall mural The materials needed to paint the mural A step-by-step process for painting Why you can’t really screw this up!

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How To Make A DIY Channel Tufted Headboard

After using our favorite method to make a simple headboard for our son’s room last week, we actually had enough leftover materials to try out a new trick in our daughter’s room – which yielded a completely free headboard for her. Three cheers for $0 projects, right? Especially since she helped us settle on the design and make it, so it’s not only cozy to lean back on (you know that function is my love language), but she’s also super into the finished result because she had a hand in it. Literally. Before we dive into that how-to, we realized you haven’t seen how her room has shaped up since we moved in. In case

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How To Build A DIY Bedside Bookshelf

We recently shared how we created the wraparound fabric headboard in our son’s room, but today we wanted to tell you about the custom bookcase we constructed at the foot of his bed. It was a great DIY project to fill that space, while also giving him some super-convenient bedside book storage (plus a secret hidden compartment!). It was a remarkably easy build that anyone could do, plus you can customize it your particular space! Why Create Custom Book Storage? This is the smallest room in our small house and his bed fits nicely against this wall with just enough space at the end for some custom storage. Before building this bookshelf, his book were

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An Easy Upholstered Daybed Headboard

Last week we shared the current state of our bedroom and today we’re sharing a fun project in our son’s room: a DIY upholstered headboard that turned his bed into a cozy nook for lounging, reading, and – of course, sleeping! It was an easy way to make his bed more comfortable and look more custom, so we’ll give you the step-by-step process for creating a wraparound headboard of your own! We definitely have plans to add more color in here, but for reference, this is what his room looked like when we first laid eyes on the house back in February. Popcorn ceiling, wall-mounted drying rack, bows drawn on the damp drywall (all of

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What Our Bedroom Looks Like Now & What We’ve Got Planned

Yesterday marks two months since we moved, and our bedroom was probably the last room to make the transition from “dumping ground of things to unpack” to “comfortable space that feels like ours.” So here’s where things are currently – and what’s still ahead of us (including some bad photoshop to give you a peek inside our heads). If you recall from our before tour, this space was originally a living room (with another much larger living space upstairs with a nice big deck off of it). Since we quickly realized that we’d rather share that larger room & deck as a family, and sleep on the same level as our kids, we knew this

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Some Quick & Extremely Functional Laundry Closet Shelves

We mentioned on our podcast a few weeks ago that we had to quickly implement some storage systems in our new house just so we had a spot to unpack everything. Like there was a point on Day 3 or 4 of unpacking where we were faced with the reality that nothing else could get put away until we added some shelves to the narrow hall closet next to the bathroom and this laundry closet. As soon as these shelves & our new counter were up, we were amazed by how much we could store. This closet is a complete workhorse (and dare I say a showhorse? I mean look at those bottle brush trees).

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#180: Decorating In The Era Of Zoom

The sudden boom of video conferencing in all of our lives is giving us a new window through which to view our homes (and the homes of others – from coworkers to celebrities and news correspondents). So what does your Zoom background say about you? And what lengths will we go to when it comes to altering them to make sure nothing weird gets seen by everyone else on the call? We also realized in hindsight that a family trip earlier this year had a pretty major effect on our decision to move to Florida. Plus we explain the big shiny object on our kitchen counter – and Sherry divulges an embarrassing story from her

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Breathing Life Back Into Our Quirky Outdoor Shower

Our Cape Charles beach house quickly taught us the value of an outdoor shower. By giving people a spot to rinse off before coming inside, it keeps sand off your floors and out of your plumbing. It took us a couple of summers to get that outdoor shower fully enclosed and functional (you can see it here in this post), so it was a nice perk that our new Florida house already had one ready to go. Well, if you consider non-functioning plumbing and grime-covered walls “ready to go.” This space kind of baffled us at first. It looked like some sort of open-air sauna thing. And maybe it was just all of the dirt

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#179: A Funny Byproduct Of Having To Buy Fewer Products

The perks of downsizing continue to show themselves, including a recent realization we had while shopping for curtains and blinds. It was a pretty dramatic contrast of how shopping for this house is different than our previous ones, and it highlighted some exciting freedoms that come along with that. We also take a look at how pandemics of the past have shaped the way our homes look today, including the origin of things like powder rooms, white kitchens, and higher bed frames. Plus, what we really think of our fancy new Frame TV – and can your birthday really help you pick the right plants? What’s New Here’s a photo of our new curtains in

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