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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Making A Compost Bin From Pallets

Ever since we started composting back in 2008 at our old house, we’ve enjoyed doing it (snaps for free fertilizer, reusing “trash,” and getting some subtle encouragement to eat more compost-able foods). But our composting adventures have been somewhat limited by the size of the DIY compost container that we made 3 years ago (we did eventually make a second bin, but it’s nothing like those bigger composting systems that we’ve seen at stores or in DIY magazines). Even back in 2008 when we created our little bin, I initially wanted to make a more “legit” system out of shipping pallets (like I read about here and here) but hunting down and transporting a bunch

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A Visit To Ikea

First off, this post wasn’t paid for or perked by Ikea. We just wanted to share a recent pilgrimage. And we like them (especially with this cool announcement). Anyway, some people say you can tell a lot about a person by looking in their purse, their closet, maybe even their iPod. But what may give you a good peek into our lives is a look into our car trunk… after a trip to Ikea. This was the scene after a recent trip. It was our first since my parents moved out of the same area as the Ikea (which is about 90 minutes away) meaning no more quick stops after a family visit. Clearly, we’ve

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How To Plan An Office Makeover

Two things first: We updated yesterday’s door-painting post with further-away exterior shots for everyone who requested those (and also updated our header- woot). Sherry knows she owes you a door hardware post (she’s editing pics and writing it up for tomorrow) but just to keep you dizzy, now we’ll dive into some office stuff. Told you we were all over the place these days! Hot on the heels of our recent nursery furniture shuffle, we decided it was high time that we got shifty with our nothing-has-changed-in-eight-months office sitch (functional or comfortable aren’t words we’d use to describe that space thus far). Actually, adding a file cabinet was the first step (other than that it’s

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Fab Freebie: Talk About Home Improvement

*** This contest is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org got his random on and selected our winner as… Tracey @ Tropical Happiness (who just moved into a new house last week so she has lots of shopping to do). Congrats! For everyone else, keep that chin up – you can still enter the Hometalk $500 Lowe’s gift card giveaway through Sunday. You may already know that Hometalk is a community of home improvement experts (including some familiar HGTV faces) and fellower DIYers sharing home and garden projects, advice, and even contractors. And for this week’s giveaway they’re majorly hooking someone up… to the tune of a $500 gift card

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How To Hide Your Printer

So as much as you guys gushed over our temporary string handles for our new Effektiv file cabinet (note: this is sarcasm), we did scoop up some actual hardware that we much prefer. They’re black glass handles that were originally $9, but Hobby Lobby (aka Schlobby Bobby) was having one of those perpetual 50% off sales, so they were $4.50 a pop instead. As I mentioned here, I was a bit nervous about installing them, since it was up to me to make sure they were all centered and level (Sherry + measuring = meltdown). So I triple-measured and even made myself a little guide out of card stock. First, I figured out that my

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How To Add File Storage To Your Home Office

We haven’t given our office any love in the entire eight months that we’ve lived here (other than deciding that it was no longer the dining room and shifting that into the old formal living room nearby). Pretty much our moving day MO was to: plop old office furniture down, work away, and ignore the fact that the rug’s crazy-off-center and you can bump your head on the old dining room chandelier. Sad times. But the lack of love given wasn’t for lack of trying. We’ve been keeping our eye out for two similar/identical secondhand filing cabinets for, oh, eight whole months. So we were starting to lose hope after about twenty five visits to

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Ceramic Dog Flashbacks

To make room for our DIY-ed clothespin light, first we had to give the current fixture the ol’ heave-ho: Well, not literally. Since there’s actually something kinda charmingly retro about that puppy, we wanted to give him a new life somewhere else in the house instead of sealing his fate (aka: donating him to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore). That’s where this hallway that leads to the guest room, hall bath, playroom, and nursery comes in: Clearly our hallway screams “nothing to see here folks, move along” for the time being, so there’s certainly a lot to be improved upon. But our attention kept going to this 18″ wide (I’ll pause while you digest just

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Fab Freebie: Channel No. 125

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below! *** Random.org has done it again and selected our winner as… Chelsea (who loves the smell of coffee in the morning). Congrats! The only fragrance we’re giving away this week is that of sweat and elbow grease (yummy, right?). Because this week’s prize comes from Channellock, who not only makes some of our favorite tools but is also celebrating 125 years of forging them right here in the USA. So they’re giving away 1 + 2 + 5 tools (that makes 8, btw) to one soon-to-be-sweaty guy or gal. That lucky lady or lad will be getting a five-piece Tool Roll, two

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Our Finished Laundry Room Makeover Before & Afters

With the addition of a light fixture and shoe storage this past week (and deciding to nix a window covering for now and just frost the window when we convert the carport into a garage), we just had one last item on our tig ol’ bist (which is how I would imagine Missy Elliott would say “big ol’ list”): Frost the side door for privacy <– seen here Remove the narrow shelving that gets blocked by the open door <– seen here Remove the old shutters that block much-needed light <– seen here Craigslist the old un-energy efficient stacked top loaders and snag a killer deal on new Energy Star front loaders <– seen here

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We Got Professional Photos Of Our House

The following images make me wish I could carry a professional photographer around in my pocket at all times. But since I can’t, at least we had the pleasure of having one over for the afternoon. Local-ish photographer Andrea Hubbell (she’s from nearby Charlottesville, VA) is doing a series of “living spaces” photo shoots and asked if we wanted to participate for fun. Since we’re (a) not too camera shy – at least when it comes to our house and (b) always excited to see our home through someone else’s eyes (especially someone a lot better with a camera), we gave an enthusiastic yes. And boy are we glad we did. Not only was Andrea

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Adding Shoe Storage By The Door

We couldn’t do all of this work in the laundry area and just ignore our sloppy shoe situation. Since the side door into our laundry room is our most-used entrance, it’s also the dumping ground for most of our footwear (since we try to keep shoes off in the house).  Up until now, our “storage solution” has been a shallow woven basket from Bed Bath & Beyond about five years ago (that and a pile next to it – not pictured, because I don’t want to ruin the illusion that we’re not complete animals). This system actually worked fine at the old house since the basket stayed in the sunroom, where it sort of fit

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Hunting Around For Clothespins To Make A Chandelier

Sure it’s Sunday, but how about a little bonus behind-the-scenes tale of hunting down clothespins for the Pinterest Challenge light fixture that we have in the works? Other considered titles: “The Petersik Clothespin Tour of Richmond” “Wow, I’m a really patient husband.” “Sorry environment, we vow to plant three trees to make up for all that driving” Okay, so here’s the deal. When we first started our clothespin light fixture (first mentioned here), we snagged four bags of clothespins at Ben Franklin just to get us started. We knew we’d need more, but we didn’t want to go crazy buying them until we decided on a pattern and had a better sense of how many

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