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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July Superlatives: Trips, Trucks & Toads

Ack. It’s August. Which means it’s almost September which means summer’s almost over which means it’s practically Christmas. Insert panic attack here. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I still can’t believe it’s August. So it always helps us keep the ol’ momentum up and avoid burning out by slowing time down for a second to take an appreciative look back on all of our happenings from last month along with some bonus never-before-seen stuff. It may not stop the Earth from rotating (only Superman can do that, silly) but it definitely inspires us to keep plugging away! Plus it makes browsing our archives a lot easier (you can read back through January of 2011 right

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How To Build The Base Of A Deck

“Can’t we just lay some decking already?!” That quote’s an homage to this kitchen post from last December about all of the little annoying prep steps we had to squeeze in before we could get down to painting cabinets – and I feel like we just hit the same stage in the deck project. Which means we’re making progress, but we’re impatient little DIYers. After getting all of the joists set in place we were soooo excited to finally lay down the decking… until I realized I had a bunch of nitty gritty details to take care of first. Womp womp. But not to worry, you’ll actually see decking going down at the end of

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Fab Freebie: All That’s Fit To Print

***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** And our random winner is… Robyn R (who’s in luck because her fantasy printer prints photos – which she says would save her so much money). Looks like your dream is about to come true, Robyn. Congrats! Having a wireless printer is one of our favorite tricks to keeping our office looking put together (well, if you ignore the messy stacks of paper on our desk). So we jumped at Epson’s offer to give away one of their most versatile new models – the $499 Epson Stylus Photo R2000. It’s built for creative types, not just because its 8-ink process shoots out glossy archival prints

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Updating A Bathroom With Marble Tile & Beadboard

When we opened this reader email, our first thought was that someone had stolen photos of our guest bathroom and just adjusted the color to turn our yellow tiles green. Seriously, how similar are they (our yellow guest bathroom is here on our house tour page)? But it turns out Susanne was just lucky enough to have a real-life green-tiled bathroom of her very own. Here’s her letter. Hi John & Sherry! We just completed a total DIY renovation of our 1956 en-suite bath. Prior to the renovation, the bathroom looked a lot like your yellow bathroom…. lovely green tile up to your eyeballs (well, your eyeballs when you’re 5’2″). Three different patterns of green

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Fab Freebie: A Splash Of Color

*** This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** After quite a color-filled few days here on YHL, random.org has selected our winner as… Daffodil (whose kitchen gets almost zero natural light, so she painted it a cheerful bright yellow). Congrats! And I think we have an idea of what color sink you might be choosing… Jonathan Adler has been a big inspiration to us lately, especially as we learn to embrace more color in this house than our first one. And as excited as we were by his new color-filled collaboration with Kohler, we were even MORE excited when Kohler agreed to give one of you a new kitchen sink and faucet

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A Dreamy White & Gray Bathroom With Box Molding

Okay, so maybe the red bathroom Melissa and Ian inherited with their house isn’t bad enough to deserve a nod to The Shining, but it was pretty killer on the eyes. Fortunately they remedied things with an awesome redo that they sent our way. Here’s their letter: Hi John and Sherry! We bought our second home up north in good ‘ole Canada in April of 2011 and started our DIY magic – or whatever you wanna call it ;) So far we’ve done 2 bathrooms, an office, a guest room, and our bedroom and I still feel like we have tons to do (I’m sure you know the feeling). However, we’re really happy with how

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Our Beach Vacation To Bethany Beach, Delaware

Last week we spent a lot of time reciting the first line of her song Starships: “Let’s go to the beach, each, let’s go get away.” Why? Because we were at the beach, that’s why. Surprise! And since a bunch of you have asked what we did for our fifth anniversary (which happened to fall over our family beach vacation) we’re here to fill you in. You know we love sharing lovey dovey stuff and road-tripping stuff alike. Last week was our annual family vacation to Bethany Beach along the Delaware coast (where we go with a bunch of relatives to spend time together as one big group). And since this year’s beach week just

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How To Move A Ceiling Light

Ever since we updated the light fixture in our bathroom back in April, one thing has been bothering us: its proximity to the shower curtain. Okay, two things actually: its proximity to the shower curtain AND the fact that we didn’t have the energy to remedy the situation back in April (when we switched out the old light for a new one and did some slight drywall patching and painting- nothing nearly as involved as relocating the fixture box by a few feet). So now that we’ve spent three months building up the energy to shift that light into the right spot, once and for all, we were ready to get going. The process began

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Fab Freebies: Them Bones

***This giveaways has reached it’s cap of 10,000 and is now closed – see who won below!*** Wow, you guys really have an appetite for great pieces! After less than 24 hours of giveaway madness, we have crowned our random winner as… joyfulcanary (whose favorite piece is a tie between her $30 thrift store China cabinet and her great grandmother’s Hoosier Cabinet). Congrats on your big win! You don’t typically think of chemistry students writing home design books, but then we learned one of Sherry’s brother’s old classmates at Columbia wrote “Good Bones, Great Pieces” with her mother. It’s a beautiful book about how to combine seven essential elements, er, pieces of furniture in any

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How To Add The Joists To Build A Deck

Alternate punny post title: Joist to the world. (I’ll pause while you golf clap) Good news! My dad made it back from my grandma’s house in West Virginia so operation double-up the girders and bolt them to the posts was able to commence with him at my side. As I started to tell my dad “Okay, you’re going to hold the board in place in the air while I drill pilot holes…” he cut me off and suggested we just put both girder boards on the ground, nail them together and that way they’d both rest on the notched posts – no air-hold required. Smart. I knew there was a reason I picked him as

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A Sweet Blue Boy’s Nursery Makeover With Bunk Beds

Sherry and I were totally charmed by this room that Anna made over for her two boys. Partially because we don’t have a son (well, we do have a furry one, but he doesn’t have his own room) – so it’s always fun to see decor for the other chromosome combo. And also because she squeezed lots of cool ideas and details in a room that could’ve easily been overlooked. So keep your eyes peeled for a chalkboard closet, a cozy desk space, and some stylish storage. Here’s Anna’s email: I just finished making over my two sons’ room and I wanted to share. Here’s what the room used to look like (on a messy

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Building Deck Posts, Notches, & Frogs

With my deck holes dug and officially blessed by the county inspection office it was now time to – well – fill them in. There must be some irony in there somewhere, right? As I had done when setting my fence posts last year, I started off by putting a couple of inches of rocks in the bottom for drainage since the deck experts in our area unanimously recommended it under the concrete that we’ll be pouring to hold the posts in place (we dug the holes at least 21″ deep, so that by adding 2-3 inches of gravel at the bottom, they still met the 18″ required depth for our county). Imagine my surprise

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