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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Fixing A Leaky Underground Oil Tank

Surprise! This was the scene at our house yesterday: Allow me to explain. We decided to test the soil around our home’s underground oil tank (we have oil heat) a few weeks back to assure any interested buyer that it’s in tip top shape. Much to our horror, it wasn’t. Soil tests came back indicating that we had a small leak. We felt like somebody punched us in the face. Here we are with our rain barrel and our compost bin along with all of our energy star appliances and our cloth diapers in an effort to be green while our oil tank has been oozing nastiness underground without our knowledge. Shudder. Luckily we learned

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Fab Freebie: Merry Maxx-mas

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** You know we love a deal. Especially around the holidays when it’s so easy to bleed money. Which is why we’re psyched to have two of our favorite discount stores, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, here to help us kick off the whole holiday shopping scene by handing over two $50 gift cards that can be spent on gifts, festive seasonal decor, or whatever else tickles your fancy. We’ve always loved snagging cheap finds for our house at both stores – like the nailhead trimmed ottoman in our bedroom (from T.J. Maxx) and just about every pillow in our den (from Marshalls).

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Fab Freebie: Paint Me A Picture

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** The winner of this week’s giveaway can literally make that request. Because Swedish-born Virginia-based artist Erica Eriksdotter is giving away a commissioned painting worth up to $350. That’s right everyone, put on your fancy pants because soon you could be telling your friends smugly “oh yeah, that beautiful painting over there? I commissioned it.” We really like the color in all of Erica’s work, and we love that our winner will be able to guide the color and design of their custom work to fit their home perfectly. You can even pick the best size for your space (from a 12

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House Hunting: Strange, But True

House hunting has been a fun adventure and, like any adventure, it took some weird twists and turns. So we figured since we highlighted some of our close-but-no-cigar finds (here, here, here, and here) we should take a second to share some of our no-way-no-how finds as well. Because they were actually pretty darn entertaining. First, we encountered a mammoth split level. From the outside it looked like your usual split-level home. Until we got inside and realized it had SIX floors. Yes, six. That’s six times the number of levels we’re currently used to. Granted the top (attic) and bottom (basement) weren’t entirely finished, but still – wow. You can thank my brilliant artist’s

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How To Host A Moving Sale

Apparently gathering over 100 things to get rid of didn’t take as long as we thought (see the full list of purged items here), so we got all crazy and decided to host a last-minute moving sale this past Saturday (just to get rid of stuff while we still had that no nonsense iron will- you know, before we caved and decided to keep a few things around). We took about two weeks to plan our last yard sale, so making the decision to hold this one just two days out was a bit nerve-wracking, but the days aren’t getting any warmer, so we figured why waste time? Plus, hosting a yard sale isn’t rocket

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Fab Freebie: The Target Lady

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** I love today. Not just because it’s my 29th birthday, but because we are giving away a gift card to (drumroll, por favor)… TARGET! We don’t really need to waste time reminding you guys how much we love Target (we’ve got about a million posts like this and this to prove it). I even created this graphic to try to convey how excited we are: Can you handle that enthusiasm? And while I always love a good opportunity to reference SNL’s Target Lady, this time I’m going to mention a different woman paired up with the red bullseye: HGTV’s Sabrina Soto.

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Fab Freebie: Love Is Blinds

*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!*** Sure, we’d all love to gaze out of our home’s windows at some breathtakingly beautiful vista. But in reality, some windows are portals to the back of the neighbor’s fence, an unwelcome glare, or even the view of a man walking around in his tighty-whities all night because he doesn’t realize his curtains are sheer (true story from my New York City days – yup, just like the naked guy from Friends). All the more reason to appreciate window coverings, like these beauties from Next Day Blinds: This week Next Day Blinds is shucking out $200 to one lucky lad

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