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.

| By | | 81 Comments

October Superlatives: Better Late Than Never…

We’re nearly a week away from December, which makes rewinding all the way back to the beginning of October a little strange, but since a few book tour stops threw our productivity for a loop this month, our usual wrap-up of the previous month (in yearbook-style superlatives) is coming to you a bit late (ok, way late) in the middle of Thanksgiving break. As always you can read back through January of 2011 right here in just 21 posts instead of 700. Oh yeah, and we’ve also snuck in a clue about Monday’s giveaway at the bottom. Hope you guys are having a great Thanksgiving weekend with the fam! Most Adventurous: Sherry, for braving our

[ Read More ]

| By | | 270 Comments

Making A Thanksgiving Gratitude Chalkboard

You probably know of our little Thanksgiving tradition of filling up our homemade “Thanks Jar” with gratitude notes throughout November. We wanted to keep the tradition going this year, but our book tour kept us away most of the month and it got away from us. So this weekend we decided to sneak this tradition in right at the buzzer… while putting a new spin on it thanks to our new chalkboard. The word art at the top of the board was a joint effort. Sherry searched something like “pretty script” on Pinterest and tried her best to imitate what she saw for the word “thanks.” A curlicue here. A flourish there. Then I got

[ Read More ]

| By | | 4,149 Comments

Fab Freebie: Save Room For Cake

***This giveaway is now closed. See who won below!*** Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Our lucky winner this week is… N Shirley (whose favorite dessert “to both make and eat is Virginia Apple Pudding – even makes the whole house smell good!”) Sounds delicious. Congrats! We’ve had a few questions about why all contests aren’t open to international readers, so here’s that info for you. We actually ask every single vendor who approaches us to do a giveaway if they’ll ship internationally and we remind them that the more folks are included, the more exciting it is for everyone. We LOVE you all and always want to open our giveaways to as many people as possible! It

[ Read More ]

| By | | 789 Comments

NYT, RVA, Chi-town & the T-Dot

Quick note: Tomorrow (Saturday) we’ll be in Dallas at 11am at the West Elm on 5307 East Mockingbird Lane for cookies, cocoa and a book signing (more info here). We’d love to see ya there! We’re back with a little book/life/tour update (#warning it’s long). Admittedly, it’s sooner than we had originally planned (our last one was a week ago), but lots has happened and we’re just brimming with news and pictures so we’ve basically overflowed. Somebody get a mop. Or maybe a tissue. Because we’ve gotta start with some crazy awesome / amazingly humbling news. We just learned that our book has become an instant New York Times bestseller. I can’t believe I just

[ Read More ]

| By | | 264 Comments

Paint Storage & Pegboards In Our Basement Workshop

Go navy! Please don’t misinterpret that previous sentence as a taking of sides in the long-standing Army / Navy feud. I’m 100% neutral on the rivalry. And if anything, my dad was in Army. But what am I doing stirring up trouble? This post is about the basement (and it’s up early since we’re on a flight)… so let’s dive in where we left off: this hot mess of a shelf. This is where we’ve been storing haphazardly placing paint cans and other paint-can-shaped items. It has been the very antithesis of organization for the nearly 24 months that we’ve lived here. In fact, these are two boxes of items that haven’t even been unpacked

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,794 Comments

Fab Freebie: Roll On Some Royalty

*** This giveaway is now closed. See who won below!*** Sorry for the late notice (travel is messing up my winner picking mojo!), but the random winner of this stencil prize is… Jen (who once “made a chevron painting with instructions I found on Pinterest and it turned out great”). Congrats Jen! The love of stencils that first blossomed when we did our office walls only grew stronger when we tackled a couple of stenciling projects for our book (on pages 26 & 282). So in the spirit of sharing the love, this week’s prize comes from the maker of the very stencils that we used in all three cases – Royal Design Studio. We’re

[ Read More ]

| By | | 390 Comments

Weathering New England

Quick note: Tomorrow (Saturday, November 10th) we’ll be in Chicago at the West Elm on 1000 W North Avenue for cookies, cocoa, and a book signing at 1pm (arriving on the early side might help ya get a jump on the line). More info here. We’d love to see ya there! Who’s ready for our once-every-two-weeks recap of our book tour-y adventures (here’s the first one)? Just us? Okay. Here we go anyways! #warningitslong As most of you know, weather has been kinda crazy in the Northeastern part of the country lately. Between Hurricane Sandy two weeks ago and this spontaneous Nor’easter this week, well, things have been a little crazy. And it just so happens

[ Read More ]

| By | | 218 Comments

Staining A Dresser With A Decorative Flower Pattern

We just flew back from Boston (and boy are our arms tired, har-har) but since we shared our freshly painted bathroom with you guys this morning and we didn’t want to leave you hanging with just one post, we got this Reader Redesign together in the airport for ya (throughout all this travel, we’re doing out best to keep blogging as usual). I know we typically share full room makeovers, but this furniture upgrade had such a creative twist that we had to pass it along. We loved that Beth and Nick rescued this old to-be-trashed buffet with the help of some wood stain applied in an unexpected way. Here’s what Beth had to say

[ Read More ]

| By | | 396 Comments

Painting The Bathroom Elephant Gray By Benjamin Moore

We’re about to hop on a plane back from Boston (which is thankfully not canceled, despite the snowy weather), so this post is up a little early for ya but your comments might not pop up for a little while. Anyway, we’ve debated potential colors for the walls in this hall bathroom from almost the day that we moved in. For a while we were on the deep blue train, but after putting that in the adjacent guest bedroom, we’ve been going back and forth between several other options. Dark? Light? Colorful? Muted? We finally found our focus when we put that bright fish painting on our whitewashed shelf. Suddenly we had a direction. Toned-down-but-not-completely-neutral

[ Read More ]

| By | | 10,008 Comments

Fab Freebie: Book Worms Rejoice

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** So many book-hungry people out there! This giveaway hit its 10,000 cap within 24 hours, so we’re already back with a winner. The lucky worm is… Melissa (who keeps her favorite books in a bedside cabinet, a living room end table, and on a special display shelf in the family room. She believes “all good book nerds have them in all parts of the house!”). Congrats Melissa! Our book release is officially here! Woo hoo! And we’re celebrating by giving away books this week. But not just our book. Lots o’ books. In fact, some of them will even come signed by some pretty awesome

[ Read More ]

| By | | 224 Comments

How To Hide A Cracked Tile With A DIY Shelf

Aw yeah, it’s hall bathroom time, baby. We have about five phases of updates that we plan to share as we go, so here’s phase one. We’ve been hiding something in our hall bathroom. What? You thought that giant empty frame was just there because it looked good? Nah. To better understand this skeleton in the closet atop the toilet, might I refer you to this 20-month old post by Sherry entitled “Sometimes I Go Crazy.” It’s about how Sherry got a wild hair and busted out one of several extraneous towel bars that were un-centered/overkill/everywhere in our hall bathroom. Thankfully we were able to cover up the resulting tile scab with some new trim,

[ Read More ]

| By | | 330 Comments

25 Tips For Buying And Selling On Craigslist

After a bunch of you requested a post about this, we’re finally writing a loooong rundown about how we use Craiglist to score affordable secondhand finds as well as to sell things we no longer need. Sherry scratched the surface with a few tips on buying back in this post, but we wanted to share more info that was specific to interacting with sellers/buyers and writing up your listings, so here it goes. Craigslist can definitely be intimidating for first-timers. It doesn’t boast the glossy interface that makes using sites like Facebook feel so welcoming. Plus, some few-and-far-between but no-less scary crime stories are enough to make anyone wary of it. Even Sherry and I

[ Read More ]