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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Fab Freebie: More Than Words

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below (along with some sweet discounts)!*** Before we announce our winners, let’s first get to two consolation prizes: discounts! Get 15% off your WordGarden order with code YoungHouseLove15 and get 15% off of your Everywhere We Look order with code YHL15. As for our two winners, random.org has selected… Leah (who “definitely” loves typographic art) and Rebecca A. (who loves books and typographic art – which seemed to be a trend). Congrats ladies! This week’s pair of prizes (for a pair of winners, no less) come from two Etsy sellers who have a way with words. Namely, they turn the written word into stylish

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How To Add Built-In Shelves Next To A Washer & Dryer

Laundry room update? Don’t mind if I do. To jog your memory, so far we’ve replaced the washer/dryer, taken down window shutters & cluttered shelves along with frosting the door (all here), filled some ceiling cracks, and painted the room the same color (Benjamin Moore’s Sesame) as the kitchen. And voila, we’re all up to speed. Well, if you really want to be up to speed, now it looks like this: But let’s back up so I can blather on about how those shelves came to be. Even during our initial walk-through of this house we decided to maximize that sliver of space with some built-ins to add a lot more function. Did we mention the

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A Weird Milestone

We passed a weird milestone on Wednesday. On the surface, it just marked seven months of living in this shouldn’t-call-it-new-anymore house. Then we realized it also marked the point at which Clara has spent more of her life living here than at our first home. We always knew our first house would just be a foggy blip on Clara’s memory radar, but passing this milestone feels like it’s actually happening. The house that we spent renovating/loving for over 4.5 years meant so much to me and Sherry – it wasn’t just our first home, it was our wedding venue, our DIY testing grounds, our inspiration to start this blog, and where we took our baby

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How To Use Polymeric Sand To Block Weeds In Our Paver Patio

Let’s talk about crack sand. You know we love to save a buck wherever we can. Sometimes to a fault. And as any scrimper knows, sometimes it can bite you in the a-dollar-sign-dollar-sign (a$$). Though I’m not sure we ever expected that we’d wish we had splurged on “the fancy sand”…but that was the case after living with our finished patio for a few weeks. If you recall, we used some leftover paver sand to fill the cracks between the stones instead of spending the $95 that the stoneyard would’ve charged for a delivery of the polymeric stuff (which has some cement-like qualities to help keep it in place and block weeds a little better).

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Celebrating Our Fourth Anniversary

See what I did there? If our 4th wedding anniversary were a movie sequel I’m sure that’s how the title would be treated on the movie posters (and yes, it would be dubbed a blatant rip off of Scream 4). Anyways, as is the tradition, we’re dropping in with our little rundown about how we celebrated four years of marriage last Thursday (see our three year anniversary post here and our two & one year anniversary post here). This year it kicked off, as most days do, with breakfast. I made this particular breakfast (Strawberry-Orange Stuffed French Toast with Raspberry Butter) as an homage to our so-good-we-took-my-picture-with-it (here) favorite meal during our Alaskan honeymoon. Of

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Fab Freebie: Matchmaker, Matchmaker

 ***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Our winner, thanks to the willy nilly matchmaking skills of random.org, is… Sharon (who’s hoping to be matched up with a piece of art to finish off a master bedroom renovation). Congrats! Art.com is full of affordable stuff to help solve Naked Wall Syndrome (like these horse prints that we recently purchased) so we’re psyched that they’re giving away an $250 gift card to one of you lucky folks this week. They’ve launched a new tool called Match My Image that promises to come in handy next time you’re hunting for the perfect piece. You just upload an image – maybe of a

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A Beach Vacation To Duck

What’s the perfect cure to a paint and primer hangover? A trip to the beach. And what’s the perfect way to spend your fourth wedding anniversary (yup, today’s the big day)? Why sharing those beach photos of course (since we’ve pretty much covered our wedding/anniversary stuff in the last three years of Wedding Week). Off we go… In honor of the long holiday weekend, we said goodbye to our freshly grellow-ed kitchen and hello to sand and sun thanks to a little road trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We usually do the beach thing in Delaware at my parents’ place, but since my siblings, cousins, and I insist on having babies and

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Switching Out Our Bathroom Light

Let’s talk about a not so quick fix. Between patio building and kitchen makeover-ing, Sherry and I like to “treat” ourselves to a few quick and easy projects that keep the ol’ morale up and allow us to catch our breath (so we don’t burn out or throw things at each other). And one fast & easy job that we’ve had planned for a while was swapping out the fixture in our guest bathroom for something more us. There was nothing particularly wrong with what was there, per se – but it was a bit more traditional than we’d pick ourselves (so we figured donating it to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore would give it

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Fab Freebie: The (Not) Wedding Week

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** Thanks to random.org’s very arbitrary matchmaking skills, our winner is… Lawren (whose favorite wedding moment was when her cousin’s pocketed dress stored tissues to hand the groom when he teared up during the vows). Congrats! Hope everyone’s having an awesome Fourth of July. We’re enjoying some family time but wanted to drop in with this week’s giveaway, so here ya go. Thursday marks our 4th wedding anniversary, which typically would make this “Wedding Week” around here. But since there’s not much left of that dead horse to beat (we’ve already shared every last detail about our wedding, honeymoon, traditions, how we met, how

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Is A Single Sink Better Than A Double Sink?

As our arms continue to recover from our recent kitchen priming and painting marathon (shared here this morning) we thought we’d take it down a notch or two with a post about sinks. That’s right, it’s like a slow jam following a spirited chicken dance or an energetic Macarena. One thing’s that been fascinating about owning our second home is comparing its features to our first home and noting pros and cons (especially as we think about what improvements we want to make). There are many things that we prefer over our previous digs – like the larger rooms, opens hallways, en suite master bath, etc. And of course some things that make us miss

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Removing Cabinets & Patching A Vinyl Floor Tile

Sherry’s junk drawer switcheroo was actually just the beginning… the beginning of our kitchen makeover. At least the first phase of it. With our self-imposed six month waiting period running out earlier this month, we finally started putting some plans into action last week (we like to force ourselves to live with things for a while before doing anything drastic – you know, so we’re sure to remove/demo/open the right things after some thought). The plan: to do sort of a “Phase 1” kitchen makeover where we work with as much of the existing kitchen as possible first (aka, keep the cabinets, the countertops, the vinyl floor, the paneling, the beams, etc). Then down the

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Live From Our House, It’s Saturday Night

Yup, it’s another random weekend post about stuff on tables (remember this one from a few weeks back?). I have a new mission in life: to keep our kitchen table clear of junk. Okay, maybe “mission in life” is a bit strong. This goal ranks far below real life missions like to be a good husband and father, put food on the table, and avoid aspartame (I’m mildly allergic). But just like my resolution last fall to make the bed everyday for a month, I recently decided I was fed up with how our kitchen table was increasingly becoming a not-so-temporary landing pad for shopping bags, unread mail, sewing supplies (notnaminganynamessherry) and other clutter. Meaning

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