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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Chaotic Christmas Home Renovations

We’ll admit it. We’re a little relieved that the holiday season is over. As fun and exciting as all of the hoopla is, December can be a stressful month with all of the last minute shopping, long distance traveling, family gatherings, and weather madness that come along with it… which is probably why lots of people called us certifiably crazy for adding moving-into-a-new-house to the mix. It definitely was a bit crazy of us, but it just dawned on me and Sherry that this wasn’t the first year that a major project fell over the holiday season. In fact, it’s happened for the past FOUR YEARS IN A ROW. Update: Five years in a row

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Fab Freebie: The Heat Is On

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll to the bottom to see who won!*** Is it hot in here or is it just these? Har har. But seriously, Air & Water offers a slew of heating, cooling and even humidifying products for your home, and this week one of you is gonna score one of these electric fireplaces on the house: Whether you go for the modern and colorful Mini Cube ($100), the large and traditional Lincoln ($300) or something in between, like the Danville or the Compact Electric ($130) you’ll be adding function and ambiance to any less-than-warm space. My mom actually has one like the Compact Electric and it was quite

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How To Frost A Glass Door And Avoid Bubbles

It’s no secret that the real improvement we need to make to our new laundry area is in the upgrading to energy efficient appliances arena along with adding some nice built-in storage to maximize that tiny room. But as we save up and plan for those upgrades, we took a few hours after Clara’s bedtime a few days ago to tackle some smaller items on our laundry list. Pun intended. First we went to work on the glass side door. You know, the one that gave everyone a straight shot from our carport, through the laundry area and into our kitchen (here I am being creepy and demonstrating the problem, which you can read more

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Day Fifteen

Yesterday marked two weeks of being in our new house, so we thought it warranted an updated glimpse into each room’s progress… or lack thereof. On one hand we feel very accomplished for having already tackled things like painting Clara’s room, buying and assembling a new bed, removing a bunch of bi-fold doors, raising our shower curtain, and unpacking everything – especially considering we were tied up with family stuff for a few days over Christmas. On the other hand, we’re still feeling pretty unsettled. Most of the important stuff has found a place in our new abode (not that it will necessarily stay there for the long haul), but the house is still riddled

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So Many Moving Boxes

We’ve dealt with box-y rooms, but this takes that term to a whole new level: What you’re looking at is what we lovingly called our “Box Graveyard,” aka the guest bedroom filled to the brim with all of our now-empty moving boxes and packing supplies. As disastrous as it looks, we have to admit that after trying to be so orderly about packing, it was somewhat cathartic to just toss the empty boxes into one big über-disorderly pile. Call it tapping into our wild side if you will. But of course we can only pretend to enjoy a mess for so long. So almost as soon as the last box was tossed there, I found

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Assembling Our Edland Bed From Ikea

Last you saw our new bed Ed – aka, the Edland four-poster bed from Ikea – he looked like this (read more about how we chose him here). He has since been assembled – and even slept on for one night. And thanks to the Skorva steel support beam (also from Ikea, which is mentioned as a must-have along with the bed in the “good to know” section) Ed can, in fact, hold the weight of 30 dead people (aka: our incredibly heavy mattress) plus the weight of two DIY enthusiasts, their beefy chihuahua named Hamburger, and their baby girl (when she’s in there for a morning snack). Constructing the bed was a remarkably easy

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Fab Freebie: A Simplified New Year

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down for special discount and to see who won!*** If the words “simplify,” “organize,” “declutter” or “make more time for [blank]” will be showing up on your resolution list this year, boy do we have the giveaway for you. Simplify 101 provides all sorts of fun interactive tips and online workshops to help you achieve those goals, and this week a trio of you will win TWO free workshops. Our three winners can choose from any of the following workshops being held early next year: “Quick + Simple Clutter Control,” “How To Achieve Your Goals And Create A Life You Love,” “Organizing 101” and “It’s About

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How To Hang Your Shower Curtain Higher

By the time we unpacked our shower curtain last week, it had been 48 hours since either of us had showered. And those two days were filled with lifting heavy objects, if you catch our whiff drift. So hanging the shower curtain was a welcome step in our moving process. What was not so welcome? This result: You know we love hanging an extra long shower curtain all the way to the ceiling to add height to the room (the 95″ waffle curtain is from amazon.com and the 86″ fabric liner is from Bed Bath & Beyond by the way). But the trick doesn’t work so well when the tension rod you inherit is too

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How To Remove Bi-Fold Doors

Our new place sure has its share of bi-fold doors. Like this pair sectioning off the future dining room and the main hallway (see a floor plan here to get your bearings): And this nearby set that closes off the hallway that leads to most of the bedrooms (we removed one door to get the daybed through on moving day): Then in our bedroom we’ve got another big set closing off the bathroom sink area… …and a single bi-fold door right next to it closing off the walk-in closet. That doesn’t even include all of the bi-folds that close off the other three bedroom closets. So basically… yeah, there’s a lot of ’em. And unfortunately

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Fab Freebie: Skil-ly Weather

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** I won’t lie. When the folks at Skil wanted to offer up one of their tools this holiday season, we had trouble picking out the perfect prize for you guys. Then they offered to give away a four-tool-tastic combo pack so we didn’t have to make that call. Nice, right? So this week’s winner will be scoring all four tools pictured above, which are officially dubbed the 18V Lithium Ion Cordless 4-Tool Combo Pack. Which means the drill, circular saw, reciprocating saw, and flashlight all work off of the same rechargeable battery. So here’s how you can snag this last minute

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Monday The 13th

You don’t even know the half of our moving day adventure. We glossed over it because we knew you deserved empty shots of our old place and pics of the new house’s interior – but we couldn’t let this story go untold. So take a moment to pantomime the buckling of your seatbelt and get ready to enjoy the ride. As we mentioned earlier, the day started off with an unexpected surprise: a snowstorm. And even though it wasn’t a Friday, the thirteenth of this month (aka Monday) surely lived up to its less than lucky reputation. Which is so not a good thing when it’s closing/moving day. Sure the snow was pretty, but it

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