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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A DIY Busy Board With Latches For Kids

Happy New Year y’all! Who’s making resolutions? We’re mulling ours over today (you know Sherry loves a list…). But let’s get to the subject at hand. Being last minute “elves” for Santa. See, Clara’s play fridge wasn’t the only homemade gift that she opened this year. Because the weekend before Christmas we decided to make her a little latch board of her very own. And now we’ve finally gotten our act together to share the tutorial with you. So oh snap (pun intended), here it is. We first learned about latch boards when Clara’s cousin Elsa got one a year ago – she’s a year older – and we heard how much she loved it

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Fab Freebie: Under The Sea

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And the randomly selected person who’s starting their new year off with prize is… Jennifer (who answered this week’s question with a Canadian folk lyric – which I had to look up, mind you: “Lukey’s boat is painted green, Ha, me boys!”). Congrats Jennifer! Raise your hand if you know what a bathymetric chart is. I didn’t before this giveaway, but it’s basically like a topographic map for what lies underwater. But the more important thing to know is that the married duo behind Below the Boat turns these charts into gorgeous, laser-cut, hand-assembled works of art. They’re beautifully intricate and fascinatingly detailed.

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Handmade Holiday

Does this totebag from Richmond Threadlab look familiar? If so, it may be because you caught our Instagram feed a couple of weekends ago when we hit up our local Handmade Holiday Craft Show (just like we did last year). The fair is a bi-annual craft-stravaganza put on by the Richmond Craft Mafia (we went to their Spring version earlier this year too). It’s always filled with tons of cool artists, crafters, and other handmade magicians from the Virginia-ish region. And thanks to most of them having Etsy shops, you guys can sort of virtually shop along with us. So here’s some the cool stuff that we came across, starting with some of the new

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A Sweet Art Studio Makeover By Chris Loves Julia

Psst- We did it. We survived hosting our very first Christmas dinner at our house. So of course Sherry’s hyper and giddy about sharing all of the photos and details next week (we’re spending the rest of the week with the family, but we’re dropping in with a little post today and another one for you tomorrow too). Hope you’re all enjoying the holiday! When it comes to Reader Redesign submissions, sometimes it’s the room pictures that really get me, sometimes it’s the story behind the room, and sometimes it’s both. That’s why we loved the tale Julia and Chris’s studio tells… and the result is pretty sweet too. Here’s her letter: Hey John and

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DIY Christmas Card Photo Ideas

Here she be, all ye merrymakers of the world: our 2012 family Christmas card. Obviously it’s a play on the tradition of leaving some milk and cookies out for Santa, with a nice dose of the reality that unattended food at our house doesn’t stay unattended for very long. By some miracle we were able to get this shot without having to Photoshop the two of them together. Usually Clara is all up Burger’s grill – meaning that Burger bolts before the first shot is snapped. But apparently they play well together when there are treats to be had. These are just some outtakes from our little photo session, which we actually didn’t start until

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Live From Richmond, It’s…

…the third week of December! Okay, maybe that’s not as catchy as the opening to SNL, but for all y’all (yup, I said it) who follow our Instagram pictures (and who have requested the videos to match the wacky photos that we posted below) here ya go. Yes, we never thought we’d actually type a sentence like this, but we’ve had a busy week in the live television department. See, it sounds crazy. Also, about that pic on the right… we didn’t try to match the set. That just happened. And it was hilarious. By coincidence, two local Richmond stations actually invited us to appear on their programs – ahem – their LIVE programs, this

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Turning Bookcases Into Built-Ins & Painting Them

I know what you’re thinking. Do John & Sherry want to marry built-ins? The answer is yes. What can I say, we’re just suckers for them (function + form = jackpot) so it was no surprise that Hilary’s project of turning cheap Craigslist bookcases into an architectural feature had me at “Hey there.” It was just such a smart use of space and such a wise way to adapt something pre-made (and affordable) to work for the room. Here’s her letter: Hey there John + Sherry! My husband and I moved into our little cape cod in Jersey just over a year ago. In the first year we tore out the old flooring, laid all

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How To Make A Play Refrigerator From An Old Cabinet

Remember how we DIYed Clara a play kitchen last Christmas? Well, it was such a hit then (and still is – in fact it’s probably one of the only toys that she plays with every day) we immediately knew that we should add to it. More kitchen = more fun, right? What can you add to a play kitchen like ours? Well, it was clearly lacking a frigid kitchen staple. You know, a refrigerator. So we quickly homed in on that as an easy way to upgrade Clara’s setup. And the decision was made even easier by the fact that we had another cabinet leftover from the kitchen remodel that we had been hoarding saving

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2012 Holiday Gift Guide: For The Guys

When Sherry made a mood board of gifts that kids and ladies might like, there were actually a bunch of requests for a guy-gifts version from me. Color me surprised. But who am I to deny the people what they want? (cut to me muttering quiet profanities while trying to make a mood board). The good news is that ten hours later I emerged victorious. Fist bumps for everyone! I won’t even pretend that the items below will tickle every guy’s fancy (do men even having “fancies?”), but here are a dozen items that I wouldn’t mind finding under the tree… 1. This HOMAGE NYC tee, which I’m actually wearing right now. I treated myself

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Fab Freebie: Christmas Lights

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** This week’s early Christmas present is going to… Nancy (who says she “could certainly use some new lighting” and her favorite holiday glow “has to be my fireplace.”) Congrats Nancy! As much as we love holiday lights, indoor lighting is something that you stare at every day of the year. So if you don’t love your lighting situation, this is one way to “dude, get on that” without spending any cash. See, recently we were voted one of Lamps Plus’ top home blogs of 2012 (how flattering!) and it came with a $500 shopping spree prize… but you know we don’t take freebies

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Beauty Queens, Bouncers, Crafting, & Stick Dogs

Hooray, our publisher has finally locked down a few upcoming dates that you guys have been asking for and even added a few more tour stops, so we’ll spill those beans at the end of this post! But before we get to what lies ahead, it’s time for our once-every-two-weeks tour recap of our most recent stops (the last ones of 2012 before things kick back up again in January). After our whirlwind week away in mid-November, we had Thanksgiving week off and then were back on for two separate stops in Washington, DC and one in our hometown of RVA. The first was at the FLOR store in DC. The tight footprint of a

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How To Change Your Outlets

While our sunroom mojo was still running on high from accomplishing our most daring painting task to date, I quickly followed up with two small electrical updates to the room. The first is seemingly minor, but to us makes a world of difference in making a room feel new: updating outlets. It’s something that was especially helpful in a room like our sunroom where the off-white outlets just look dirty against the white trim. A basic new outlet and cover plate can run you as little as $2-3 so it’s not a pricey update – even for an outlet-riddled room like ours (there were nine in here). And the task of replacing them is pretty

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