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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Stenciling A Bedroom Wall

Even though we’ve been embracing a clean-lined and colorful aesthetic lately, we can definitely appreciate all sorts of styles. And we’ve still got a soft spot for the warm, layered neutrals that we filled our first house with. So when Rhoda sent over this redo of her sister Renee’s room, it was like a shot of wow to a part of our design brain that we hadn’t exercised in a while. And we kinda want to curl up in what looks like a SUPER comfortable bed. Here’s Rhoda’s letter: Hi, Sherry & John! Just wanted to share my latest project: a redo of my sister’s bedroom suite. It’s a big space that had not been

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How To Grout Penny Tile

Let’s talk about grout, because with our penny rounds finally all installed, grout was next on the agenda. It has a way of taking things from in-progress to looks-completely-finished-oh-thank-goodness. Observe: So here’s how we got there. First I have a little “materials shot” for ya: Bucket of clean water Putty knife & another bucket to mix grout in Paper towels because, well, grout is messy Sanded grout (from The Tile Shop, $19 with discount) – ours is the Mobe Pearl color Rubber float (from Home Depot, $2) Flexible Grout Admixture (from The Tile Shop, $17 with discount) – this reduces grout shrinking and cracking Sponge. Woot! Oh and we used leftover rosin paper from Home

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Fab Freebie: Tool’s In Session

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And the random winner of lots of goodies from Liquid-Plumr is… Maria (who is actually applying for her PhD in global health diplomacy right now – a self declared “nerdfest”). Congrats! Raise your hand if you’d like a $150 gift card to Home Depot and a 145-piece tool set? Okay, hands down. We can’t see you anyways. But one of you is going to score those supplies along with two of Liquid-Plumr’s latest clog-busting products. It’s all part of their Tool School, which puts Toolbelt Diva Norma Vally behind the teacher’s desk and includes how-to videos like the one below. Enroll now and

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How To Print Kid Drawings On Fabric

Okay, okay – so we’re taking a breather from our usual kitchen-related reader redesigns to share a super cool project on a smaller scale. Well, if you call a project that involves 120 hand-drawn monsters a “small” undertaking. Now I’ve got your curiosity piqued, eh? I’ll let Jen explain: My son Daniel is a prolific artist and I wanted to showcase some of his sketches and decided that I would do so on a duvet cover. He designs his own Pokemon, complete wtih names, types, and evolutions and he chose those for the project. Here are his design sheets: I photographed each chosen design. Then in Photoshop I erased all extra marks around the edge,

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Tips For Adding A Penny Tile Backsplash

Monday’s backsplash post kinda dove straight into the middle of the project, so we thought while we were back to share our progress we should rewind a smidge to explain a bit more about the process for anyone else out there who wants to tackle something similar. First we had to prep the room. So everything came off the counters. Then down went the rosin paper (from Home Depot). It was recommended by our counter installation guy when we mentioned we were doing a backsplash. It’s basically like brown construction paper, but with an added moisture barrier that keeps any thinset drips from seeping through. We covered each of the counters with cardboard (for extra

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Fab Freebie: Boxing Match

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org has done it again and crowned an oh-so-randomly selected winner. That lucky person is… Doris Johnson (who can’t contain her love for her puppy, Finn. She even included a link to his picture!). Congrat Doris… and Finn! It’s no secret that storage boxes and trays are pretty much our jam when it comes to organizing. And this week someone will be taking home the motherlode thanks to Rubbermaid’s new Bento series. Beyond just being pretty chic looking, the boxes have flexible dividers inside that pop out if you need to corral smaller items within and the trays – and also

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How We Take Better Blogging Photos

We’re not the best photographers, but we are trying to get better as we go. And that’s why we find ourselves doing things like this in the middle of homespun photoshoots. See how neon blue it looks behind me in that picture? That’s because when shooting our artificially-lit kitchen, any natural light looks like that. Usually not a problem, except when some window light shines through and makes a subtle blue splash on the freshly painted cabinets that we’re trying to take pictures of. Sherry doesn’t always notice these things, but they drive me crazy. See the blue-ish light reflecting off the doors and the side of the peninsula? It’s taunting me. So with the

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Opening Up A Closed In Kitchen

Since we’re clearly in a kitchen state of mind, we had to share Kacie and her husband Kyle’s makeover. With the help of their parents, they took advantage of their home’s open floor plan and created a sweet and much-more-functional spot to fry up some eggs in the morning. Here’s Kacie’s email: My husband and I just finished our first remodel! When we moved into our house one year ago we knew we were going to redo the kitchen and the flooring. The kitchen was completely closed in and all of the cabinets were poorly placed – there was only one usable drawer! I absolutely love to cook and this was not a cook’s kitchen:

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Christmas Gift Ideas For Husbands, Wives, & Kids

Let’s get into what Santa brought us. This was an exciting Christmas because in all of our seven December 25ths together, we’ve never woke up in our own beds to open the presents under our own tree as a family (i.e. we’d always traveled elsewhere). We did meet up with a bunch of relatives later in the morning to open gifts as one big crazy Petersik family, but we snuck in some present opening time as just the four of us earlier in the morning. Especially since Santa brought one little Petersik something extra special this year (as mentioned in great detail here)… Along with her play-kitchen Clara got lots of clothes, books, toys, and

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Fab Freebie: The Simple Life

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Random.org is wishing a very happy new year to TWO of you by selecting you as our winners. And those lucky people is… KC (who after a recent move to a smaller space would really love to pare down her home to the bare essentials) and Katie (who needs to gets her computer files organized since she can’t find anything). Congrats! Since ringing in the new year usually means ringing in some resolutions about simplifying or getting organized, simplify 101 might come in handy. They offer online workshops (as well as free guides) to help folks get organized, stay focused, and reach their

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December Superlatives

Holy cow, is it really going to be 2012 on Sunday? December flew by. So before it scoots away for good, we like to take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff for kicks. This month we were all over the place as usual, but focused a lot of our time on the kitchen along with tackling a few other projects in rooms like the living room and the hallway while shoving a decent portion of holiday fun in there too. So let’s take a walk down memory lane,

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Fab Freebie: Gotta Hand It To You

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org, we’ve got a Merry (belated) Christmas prize going out to… Kristin Aune (who made t-shirts for both of her kids, ornaments, buckeyes and has been trying to perfect her fudge pie recipe). Congrats! Wahoo. Hope you guys all had an awesome holiday weekend (you can see a sliver of ours here). As we mentioned on Friday, we’ll be stopping in with one quick post each day this week (amongst family hosting, feverish book-deadline writing, and priming & painting all of our kitchen cabinets). But we couldn’t wait to share today’s giveaway that we wrangled after seeing so much amazing stuff

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