Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Posts by Sherry Petersik

Sherry Petersik is one half of the duo behind the award-winning home improvement and do-it-yourself design blog, Young House Love. Together, she and her husband John 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.

| By | |

House Crashing: A Jaw-Dropping Old House Transformation

It goes without saying that we’ve always been suckers for a good before & after (show me someone who isn’t and I’ll show you someone who hates fun). But thanks to our adventures in 100-year-old-beach-house-renovations over the past few years, we’re especially fond of seeing people bringing old houses back to their glory. Oh the things you’ll find behind the walls! So when Mandy shared photos of her and her husband Joe’s project in nearby Charlottesville, VA, we were basically cooing over them like two pigeons discovering an old pizza crust on a New York City subway platform. Even without furniture (they fixed it up and then sold it before even needing to furnish it)

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Four Tips For The Best Secondhand Finds

I take pride in some very strange things. Being able to cartwheel into a pool for example. Or knowing every single word to old commercial jingles and 90’s rap songs. Or the fact that John and I, two righties, somehow made two lefties, which clearly means they’re brilliant (not sure how I can even take credit for this phenomenon, but I do, as well as the fact that our kids are super tall, which is amazing to me as a 5’2″ lady). But one thing I don’t really think about much is my secondhand furniture hunting mojo. I don’t think I have any magic luck or special searching skills. I would generally describe the key

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Fourth of July Party Recipes & Ideas

Every year on Instagram Stories I share photos from our friend’s insanely over-the-top party for the Fourth of July. And each year we gets tons of requests for a post with all the photos and links to the recipes she uses, so we’re finally giving the people what they want. Our friend Justine has been hosting these backyard soirees for years – and the only way to describe them would be: EXTRA. And we love her for it. She and her husband John basically just throw this huge party every year for all of us to gather and hang out with our kids and each other. It’s such a great time of year to get together

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How Each Side Of The Duplex Will Differ

We showed you our beach house style inspiration while the pink house was barely starting to come back together. And now that the duplex is at that same stage, we wanted to share our “vision” for its design – from materials and color ideas to specific room functions or features we’re thinking about incorporating. It’s never too early to start making the 10,000 decisions that a major house reno like this requires because your brain will practically start to smoke if you attempt to pick everything all at once. So from the moment we offered on the duplex, I’ve been keeping a huge Pinterest board to catalog all of the ideas that have popped up and

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Three Bedroom Makeovers For Three Deserving Kids

John and I had the chance to do the most fun and fulfilling project recently: designing new bedrooms for three amazing local kids who are currently going through cancer treatment. We’ve shared a few sneak peeks on Instagram and our podcast, but here’s our big photo-packed post with details on each of the rooms as promised for you guys! We couldn’t be more excited to share them with you. First, some background on the project. A few weeks ago the team at Biringer Builders reached out to us for help. They’re the custom builder we teamed up with back in 2014 to design a charity showhouse for Richmond Homearama (below are some photos of that

[ Read More ]

| By | | 94 Comments

5 Ways To Transport Big Items That Won’t Fit In Your Car

Updated 2018 If we had a dollar for every time someone asked “Wait, you guys do all this DIY but you don’t own a truck?” – let’s just say we’d be able to afford a big ol’ truck. But we love being a single-car household and for years owned a modestly sized Nissan Altima (we now have a small SUV, a Toyota Highlander). So over the years, we’ve definitely had to get creative when it comes to getting large items home – furniture, lumber, tools, etc. So if you find yourself unable to transport something with the vehicle you drive, here are a few ways that we’ve found a solution. Hauling Tip #1: Ask At

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Staging Tips For Selling (Or Just Simplifying!) Your House

How should I stage my house to sell? Should I take down all of my family photos? I’m not selling but I want my house to look good for company- give me some tips! Do I need to add a lot of decorative accessories? Or, wait am I supposed to be taking things away and decluttering?!  These sentences (and about 642 more) have all been slung at me every time I mentioned that I’ve been working on the side as a home stager for a local realtor for over a year. If you haven’t heard about that you can catch up – and get a few bonus stories and tips – by listening to podcast Episode #53, Episode 41, and Episode 88.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Updated Beach House Tour!

Although we’ve been sharing lots of little peeks of our beach house progress on social media, John and I realized it has been nearly THREE WHOLE MONTHS since we gave you a full tour of everything (since this video tour from back in December!). And not only have there been some big projects since then, like building in a pantry and constructing the bunk beds, there have also been a flurry of smaller updates that we haven’t posted about at all – some that we completed as recently as this past weekend. And thus, this post was born. similar chandeliers / dining chairs (ours are “gray”) / marble “vase” / range hood / glass pendants As usual, I’ll kick

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Our Son’s Bedroom Update

Our little man’s room is looking a little different these days, thanks to finally being done with the crib (our kids love a crib) and making a few other tweaks to the space while we were at it. He’ll be four this April, and he finally decided he was done with the crib earlier in January, which was bittersweet. We’ve had the same crib in our house for nearly 8 years (!!!) since our daughter used it before him for quite a while too. But it was also exciting because it meant his room was about to get some updates after basically being frozen in time for the past four years (you can read all

[ Read More ]

| By | |

How To Hang Frames Around A TV

Some say gallery walls are trending out in favor of larger scale art. Maybe. It makes sense that picture gallery walls on every wall (especially the ones with a ton of tiny frames) might feel a little less “new and fresh” these days. But I’d argue that a collection of picture frames hung together on the wall feels pretty classic if you stop and think about it. Watch Home Alone. They totally have a gallery wall going up their formal staircase in the foyer where Kevin sleds and hurls paint cans. But one spot I love for a gallery wall these days is actually around a TV. Why? Well, that big black box isn’t exactly gorgeous.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

When Renovations Make You Want To Scream

Our post on Instagram last night was admittedly a little cryptic. We were having an extra frustrating day thanks to two discouraging duplex-related blows that came flying at us rapid-fire, in the span of a mere 10 hours. We’ve always tried to share the bad and the ugly along with the good – like talking about blowing a timeline or breaking a budget (or a ceramic animal). Or when we can’t find the water meter for a month or we fail our irrigation inspection in three different and spectacular ways). Sometimes on “Bad News Day 1” you don’t really feel like getting into all of the nitty-gritty details because you’re still in that “repeatedly screaming WHYYYY?!?!?”

[ Read More ]