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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How To Build A Console Table

After victoriously completing the two end sections of our three-piece DIYed console table (explained here), I turned my attention to the middle portion. You may recall that this piece will be entirely hidden between the other two (and sandwiched between the back of the sectional and the wall) so I could’ve gotten away with a very simple platform on which to lay the long tabletop that will span across all three pieces that we’re planning to make out of our already-around reclaimed pallet wood. But we figured that would just be wasted space, so we took the less simple route of creating some hidden storage in the middle piece. Allow my sketch to explain: Who

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A Tiny House Painting As A Moving Gift

Something big happened last week: my parents sold the house I grew up in. They’ve been planning to do this for a while, so it’s not a shock or anything. It’s also not as depressing as it could be since they’re selling it so they can move to Richmond (right now they’re about 2 hours away in Northern Virginia). My parents are both retired and have been planning to downsize for a while now. They picked Richmond for a bunch of reasons, including that four of their five grandchildren live here. So all in all, we’re really happy about the news. But there’s still something major about the closing of this particular chapter, so allow

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Fab Freebie: The Devil’s In The Details

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Thanks to the devilish randomization that is random.org, our two winners are… Steph (who was just talking to a colleague about the two tattoos she has…for now) and Alason (who’s thinks her little butterfly tattoo on her back makes people assume she’s a bad girl). Congrats ladies! Since you guys seemed to enjoy last week’s spring cleaning related giveaway, how about another? Your house can’t possibly be all cleaned up yet can it? This one comes from the folks over at Dirt Devil who are gonna hook two of you up with a tattoo. But you’re not going to disappoint the

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Buying Wood And Building A Console Table

First things first. Thanks for being such great sports about our little April Fool’s Day prank (seen here). Sherry was giggling the entire time she made that crazy nautical themed doggie mood board (at one point Katie Bower called and I actually heard a laugh-snort or two as she shared her little “project”). And it’s safe to say that every single comment – ranging from those of you who fell for it and those of you who knew it was a joke from the first sentence – made her day. Which made mine. Happy wife = happy life. In fact things were so copacetic around here that I was inspired to start my next big

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Thrifting in Huntington West Virginia

A few weeks back we packed up the car, went over a few rivers, and through a bunch of woods to go see my 89-year-old grandmother (aka Granny) in Huntington, WV. It was primarily a weekend of eating and baby holding (is there anything better?) because we were joined by my parents, my cousin Erin, and her 2-month-old son Finn. But we managed to squeeze in a few side adventures that we thought you all might enjoy… which we would’ve shared sooner if most of the pictures weren’t stuck in photo purgatory on our old point-and-shoot camera (we finally found the camera cord that we lost during the move this weekend). Here’s the obligatory “Clara

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Fab Freebie: Get Your Soapbox On

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – check back soon to see who won!*** Good news – everyone can get 10% off Mrs. Jones Soapbox products using code YHL10! Even better news (for two of you), random.org has chosen our winners as… Jenna (who can’t wait to clean up and declutter her office) and Erica (who’s excited to clean her garage of all the winter cobwebs, salt and dirt). Congrats! Spring is (mostly) in the air, so we figured this week’s freebie will excite anyone who is setting out to do some spring cleaning and doesn’t want to disturb the fresh spring air with the scent of chemical cleaners. Since we’re not ones to

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Getting Cheap Dining Chairs From Craigslist

We finally scored some chairs for the dining room, thanks to this craiglist ad emailed to us by our friend Sandra (muchas gracias!). You’re probably thinking: what are they thinking?! Parsons chairs? Yup, that’s exactly what we’ve wanted since day one. Thirty bucks? Yeah baby. Weird green and blue swirly pattern? Um… no comment. But since the price was right (we actually bargained them down to $25 per chair, coming to $200 total for all 8) and the shape/lines were right (they’re solid and very well-made) we figured it was time to pounce (with some reassurance from a few online tutorials about dyeing fabric, making slipcovers, or reupholstering parsons chairs). So in the end we

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Fab Freebie: The FLOR Seasons

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!*** And the one lucky winner (as selected by random.org) is… Laura (who says “Me likey fall. The air smells so fresh and clean!”) Congrats! Everyone’s favorite modular carpet square maker is back for another giveaway, and this time it’s bigger and better than their awesome 2009 prize. This time FLOR is gonna hook our winner up with enough tiles to build a custom 8 x 10′ rug – which also breaks down to be enough tiles to create a runner and a smaller area rug if that’s more your style. Oh, you’ll be able to pick from ANY of their 100+ colors and

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An Antique Wood Dresser

As we PS-ed in last week’s rug post, our hunt for a new master bedroom dresser recently came to a surprise end. We’d been trying to find something to replace this old Malm dresser that we’ve had for 5+ years (we literally bought it on an Ikea stop the day we moved from NYC to Richmond in a big red minivan) which will soon go live in the guest room. It’s clearly too small for the wall. It’s not 100% functional anymore (the middle drawer got little wonky during the move) and it has a few visible battle scars from bouncing around our last house (at various points it lived in our bedroom, our guest

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We Made The Washington Post!

Considering that delivering The Washington Post was my first real job (because what 6th grader doesn’t like getting up at 5am everyday?), it’s kind of an “is this real life?” full circle moment for me that my current gig (this blog) has landed us in the pages of that very same newspaper. My dad (a.k.a. my newspaper delivery partner) has never been more proud. We had no idea it would be such a big write up (with a giant cover picture in the Local Living section, but after we got over our vanity (is my hair weird? does Clara look cute?) we couldn’t believe how awesome it was. Who are we and what did we

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Spring Flowers Are Blooming

Spring is in the process of sprung-ing here in Richmond and we’re boiling over with excitement. Warm weather? Yes please. Green trees? Bring it. Flowers blooming? Duh, winning. So to those of you who aren’t on the brink of spring yet, we thought we’d send a virtual dose of the season – courtesy of some photos of what’s starting to happen around here – like the little buds that are showing up on the hydrangeas that we’ve inherited. Spring is especially exciting this year because we get to be surprised by whatever magically decides to pop up around the new house – and we finally get to see what our property looks like in all

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