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 | | 120 Comments

Our Chihuahua’s First Teeth Cleaning

Burger had his first dentist appointment today. We had to leave him there all day since the “procedure” required putting him under. I guess it’s easier to clean a dog’s teeth when they’re not biting you every five seconds. Go figure. Although Burger just turns into a big puddle of wimp at the vet. Here he is whining at the door as we waited for the technician to take him away. We were sad all around. But healthy teeth = healthy dog. And we want Burger around for a nice long time. Happily, the cleaning was a success. We learned that chihuahuas have notoriously bad teeth, but Burger seems to be an exception. It was

[ Read More ]

| By | | 504 Comments

Upgrading An Old Chandelier With Paint & A New Shade

Alternate punny post title: The Updated Light Fixture Blues. That’s right, we’ve got the blues, but we’re far from sad about our “new” light fixture in the office. We just opted for indigo blue spray paint and added a giant drum shade to our old brass friend. Hence the blues joke. But you’ll get a closer look in a minute. Patience, grasshopper. As a refresher, here’s what was there before (remember to ignore the lack of height due to the too-small frames leaning against the wall instead of proper hanging art and those we-probably-won’t-keep-them lamps on either side of our new desk). Our office was originally our house’s formal dining room, hence the whole formal

[ Read More ]

| By | | 4,080 Comments

Fab Freebie: Lowe-ded With Ideas

***This giveaway is no longer expecting entries – see who won below!*** Random.org once again spun its wonderful wheel of randomness and selected our two winners as… Amy @ Larryspearslive.com and Amanda Deerr. Congrats ladies! Raise your hand if you want a $50 Lowe’s gift card. Or better yet, give me a “hootie hoo.” And if the thought of being one of two lucky winners doesn’t instantly get your brain spinning with all of the potential projects that you could tackle, Lowe’s Creative Ideas will happily fill your head with… wait for it… creative ideas. You may already know of the free Lowe’s Creative Ideas magazines (if not, you can subscribe to ’em here), but

[ Read More ]

| By | | 271 Comments

Thrift Shopping In Delaware

Just as we did over Memorial Day, we used the long Labor Day weekend to squeeze in a few days at my parents’ beach house near Bethany Beach, Delaware. It was another trip full of family, food, and fun-slash-weird finds. And you know we love a good vacation/what-we-saw/what-we-bought post. And we actually bought two pretty big items that we’ve been trying to find for a while. Our weekend adventure actually began in Maryland. Specifically, here: It’s the Ole Sale Barn in Denton, MD. We’ve passed it countless times on our treks to the beach and have always been fascinated by it. The stars finally aligned on this trip (i.e. weather, holiday schedules, baby nap schedule)

[ Read More ]

| By | | 245 Comments

Framing Out A Mirror That’s Mounted On A Door

Let’s talk about a mini makeover that involved a whole lot of hiccups. It was alllllll the way back in January that we decided that this mirror on our master bathroom door could stay (unlike the one on our guest bathroom door, which got the heave-ho since the person on the toilet could see THEIR ENTIRE BODY in it). But we figured the bedroom mirror could stay (since it doesn’t force you to stare at your reflection while on the porcelain throne) on the condition that we’d create a thicker frame around it to give it more presence so it looked less like one of those big flimsy $5 mirrors that you bring to college.

[ Read More ]

| By | | 360 Comments

Removing Weeds From Our Paver Driveway

Perhaps this screenshot of our old header will give you a hint as to what we tackled in this outdoor update (which is most likely number 7 of 582, since we like to tackle outdoor stuff in bite-sized stages so we don’t get too sore/overwhelmed or blow the budget)… Yup, that’s the Camellia tree that we first mentioned back in March (you guys actually helped us identify it). It’s a beautiful tree, but we’ve always bemoaned the fact that it was growing just inches (maybe even just one inch?) from our foundation… which made us tres nervous about permanent damage if we allowed it to stay. After showing it to a few plant expert friends

[ Read More ]

| By | | 302 Comments

Making A Big Double Desk With Secondhand Cabinets

The transformation of $6 hotel nightstands into a built-in-wall-to-wall-desk-for-two continues. If you recall, we last removed the hardware, sanded, and primed them all in preparation for painting them white. But before painting, we had to do a bit of construction (we needed to attach them in pairs and built them up about four inches so they’d be desk-height). And before doing any construction we decided we ought to look at them in the space first… … which is clearly something that we should’ve done sooner (but they’re darn heavy, so moving them back-and-forth isn’t fun – which is why we plopped them down in the sunroom and moved on to sanding and priming). Oh well,

[ Read More ]

| By | | 858 Comments

Our Blog Makeover

Yup, after months of working on a little behind the scenes blog makeover (not kidding, this stuff literally takes us months) we’ve FINALLY let ‘er rip. Like any project, there were unexpected delays: mysterious coding glitches, inexplicable site crashes (thanks for your patience on those, btw), an earthquake and even a hurricane to round things out. But before we let another excuse get in our way, we decided to just go for it. It’s not 100% done. It may crash the site again. There could be a blizzard next week. Who knows. It’s actually surprising to us that we haven’t done this sooner. We’ve had the same exact blog look/background/layout since the spring of 2008

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,063 Comments

Fab Freebie: Sign Me Up

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org, our trio of winners are…Kristen (who just signed up for Pinterest and is already addicted, but hasn’t had the guts to do anything yet), Victoria DeVaugh-Geiss (who just signed her up for a gym with her husband) and Robyn (who sadly just signed up for unemployment after having been laid off). If you’re name isn’t here, don’t forget you can still get $10 off your Signs by Andrea order with code YHL10 through September 12th. Weathered old wood? Check. Simple clean lettering. Check. Personalized and hand-made? Double check. Signs by Andrea hit a lot of our favorite decorating notes, which

[ Read More ]

| By | | 458 Comments

Cabinet Hunting (No Store Left Unturned)

First of all- holy cow. We just had a crazy earthquake a few minutes ago. Very strong! It was completely unexpected for our area (we’ve never had a strong one before). The epicenter was right outside of Richmond (only about 35 miles from our house) and it registered about a 5.9! We’ve even heard from friends up in NY who felt it. Miraculously nothing fell off the walls or broke, but the whole house shook violently and it was insanely loud (we all gathered under a steel-enforced doorway and stared at each other). So yes, we were all shaken up by it but very thankful that we’re ok and hope that everyone else who experienced

[ Read More ]

| By | | 371 Comments

Finding Secondhand Cabinets For $6

Last weekend we journeyed two hours north to Arlington, Virginia so Clara could have some quality time with her cousin Elsa (and apparently so my cousin Travis and I could rock some daddy-plaid, shorts, flip flops, and matching Kettler bikes together (the latter of which were both his, found for a huge deal on craigslist). While there, Elsa’s mom, Cat (who is Sherry’s BFF that we introduced to my cousin back in 2007 – and now they’re married with two kids) took us to this cool shop in Old Town, Alexandra called Red Barn Mercantile. It had tons of beautiful stuff, but what caught our eye most was this bowl of vintage printing press letters.

[ Read More ]

| By | | 3,996 Comments

Fab Freebie: It’s A One-derful Life

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org, our four winners are…Kathryn (who wants to know how long this paint will keep, since she’s in an apartment now), Kristen: Turning A House Into A Home (who wonders if it’s better to dust or vacuum first), Alisa Decatur (who’d like to get to the bottom of her daughter’s summer-time procrastination) and Kassie (who wants to know how much painting she’ll be doing when she buys a house). Congrats ladies! Toss on some old clothes, because four of you are about to get painting. This week’s giveaway will cover everything you’ll need, starting with $60 worth of Olympic ONE paint.

[ Read More ]