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.

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How To Stencil A Floor

We did it! We stenciled our bathroom and closet floor and it looks awesome. So worth the effort. And so much better than the carpet that was there before. Remember when the floor in our closet and vanity area looked like this? And then we ripped up the carpet to reveal the subfloor and they looked like this? Well, five hours and $24 later, it looks like this! Our actual bathroom has tile (where the shower/tub/toilet are), but this is a separate vanity area along with an adjoining closet – which both had old carpet that we couldn’t live with for one more day. So we yanked it up and decided to have some fun with

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How To Make A Canopy Bed With Fairy Lights

Update: Holy cow, you guys are full of so many fun ideas today! I’m having trouble keeping up with comments since they’re rolling in so furiously, but please know I’m reading them all and loving all the suggestions! Happy Friday! We’ve been all over the place this week, painting the walls/trim/ceiling in the bathroom & closet, diving into some basket craftiness, de-wallpapering our biggest room yet (the 21′ long kitchen), and now we have a little Clara-room update along with some photoshop percolating as we plot our next move in there. But first, here’s the tiny (and twinkly) addition: Things just got a little brighter in here… Ever since we hung her canopy, we’ve thought

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Are “Phase 1” Projects Just A Waste Of Money & Time?

Q:  You’re putting time and energy into this “temporary” job for your bathroom (not to mention some money), so why not just go ahead and do the full gut job? I know you guys watch money really well, but isn’t this not the most cost-effective in the long-run? :) – Karen A: This is a great question, and we thought it would be fun to elaborate on the subject. Because it’s safe to say that we love saving a buck, but we also like showing an old house some love and making it feel like home, so here’s our take. First of all, I think a lot of people think like Karen does – in

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Using Soap & Water To Remove Wallpaper

Let’s talk about what we’d like to accomplish before this baby comes for a second. In our first house when we were preparing for Clara’s arrival, over those nine months we tackled a few rooms that were still on our redo list (mainly the full bathroom and the nursery) since so much of the house was already done (our kitchen reno was all finished, the hardwood floors had been redone, we had opened up some walls and closed off others, etc). This time around, there’s a baby on the way but this house is much less finished than our first one was, so our goals before baby are more about getting it to a nice

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How To Paint Baskets

This marks the third Tuesday in a row that I’m sharing a crafty-ish project (remember I made a little fall wreath two Tuesdays ago, and stenciled a pillow using a metal grate last Tuesday?). So I thought it would be fun to try to do something crafty each week (aiming for every Tuesday, but knowing that some weeks life throws me curve balls like a sick kiddo or a project that doesn’t work out, so it might be a little loosey goosey sometimes) and call it… wait for it… Weekly Crafty. I’ve always liked sharing small crafty ideas (there’s a whole category devoted to them on our Projects page) and I think it’s a nice

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My Chat With Jonathan Adler

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Nate Berkus and Jonathan Adler more than anyone else in the design world (although I have sizable girl-crushes on Sarah Richardson and Candice Olsen) so when I got an email asking if I wanted to hop on a phone interview with J-Ad (as I like to call him in my head since we’re besties) well, I momentarily lost my mind. I debated saying no (I’ll definitely get awkward and squeal-y and make him think I’m nuts) but after chatting about it with John, he convinced me that a 15 minute call with Jonathan Adler might end up on my highlights reel of this whole blogging “career” when

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How To Make A Sweet Hand Print Birdhouse

I wasn’t planning to post about this little craft that Clara and I whipped up together, but then we got a photo of John’s Granny grinning and holding our creation and I couldn’t help but put together a little post about it over here – just so we’ll always remember it. Here’s what we made: a sweet little birdhouse, complete with Clara’s hand-prints on the roof. It was originally painted dark red all over (from HomeGoods, where it was $4.99) but Granny is just such a sunny lady that we thought it would be a fun activity to paint it some happier colors and mark it up with some Clara-hands before sending it off to

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Finding A Restoration Hardware Table For Cheap

(You’ll get the meaning of that post title in a minute) Exciting news, guys – we finally found something to take the spot of our too-small pedestal table in the eat-in part of our kitchen. And we’re happy to report that it’s a lot more proportionate – and functional! – for the space. Now we can seat six or even eight people in a pinch, which has already proven to be useful with our big families (and my spread-out-all-the-tear-sheets propensities). Of course we’re still on the hunt for dining chairs so these are just for the meantime, but man, it’s such an upgrade to have room for adult sized plates again. Just try not to

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How To Stencil A Pillowcase

This is a heartwarming story featuring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow about getting crafty with a pillowcase, some fabric paint, and a metal grate, hence that pun-tastic title. I don’t know about you, but I always seem to have one or two extra pillowcases around. We only have one set of sheets per bed, but I think since I buy two extra pillows for every bed (and therefore need extra pillowcases) I must see them on sale and grab them without making sure I really need them (hence the over-abundance). Really, it’s sort of a mystery to me since I’m the girl who won’t buy tomato sauce or toothpaste unless I’m sure I’m out, but

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The 411 On Baby #2

Holy cow, I think you guys had even more questions than the last time we did this after announcing that Clara was on the way! But it was fun to dive in and answer as many things as we could before hitting 4,500 words (because honestly that’s pushing it, even for us). So here are a whole lot of answers for you sweet folks who had us beaming all day on Wednesday after our little bun announcement. We have so much to be thankful for, and you guys are definitely on the list. Will you find out the sex of the baby? Are you taking a blood test to find out early, like Maternity21? Do

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How To Make A Fall Wreath

I don’t know if it’s the crisp autumn breeze or the explosion of all things pumpkin on Pinterest, but a few days ago I woke up jonesing to make a fall wreath. Yes, some people have chocolate cravings, but I have craft cravings. Come to think about it, I also have chocolate cravings. Is there a correlation? Someone needs to study this. Some of you have even been requesting more small crafty projects (like these) which have always been in the mix, but lately we’ve been so busy painting, stripping wallpaper, & renovating the sunroom that little homemade updates seem to have fallen by the wayside. But not anymore. The truth is we’ve missed them

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Blogiversary 6: Rugs Under The Rug

We’ve shared a few behind the scenes posts about how we take on side gigs, like this one about how our lighting collection came together, and this one and this one about our experiences with writing a book. So we thought it would be interesting to share a side gig that didn’t work out, despite putting lots of behind-the-scenes hours into it. You know we like to share the good, the bad, and the ugly – so why hide something that ended up being a big ol’ bust when we can tell you guys about it? Without naming names, a very nice company that makes wool/cotton rugs approached us and said “Let’s do a Young

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