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 Decorate More Confidently

Happy hump-day afternoon, y’all! I made you guys a little something. I realized that while many of our posts are tutorials or projects or planning or shopping related (how we built this, what fill-in-the-blank we found on craigslist, how we painted that, etc) only around 2% of them have touched on the heart of the whole DIY thing: just doing you and having the faith/courage/conviction/confidence to go for it when it comes to creating a home that you love. So if you’re feeling stuck or second guessing yourself (goodness knows we do that!) these simple words from people far wiser than ourselves might be all that you need to pull the cord and go for

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House Crashing: Perky & Personal

When Julia invited us to crash her house, which she describes as a typical cookie cutter Pennsylvania house on the outside (she’s not allowed to change much, even the color of the front door), we fell in love the moment she virtually let us inside. Here’s Julia now. She lives here with her husband Jarrid, her 10 year old son, her six year old daughter, and her three kitties. Their house definitely feels like a nice mix of quirky and fun with elegant and classic choices. Soft neutral walls with white molding are mixed with a cardboard deer head and a pretty crystal chandelier. You can see her living room peeking out down the hallway

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Hanging A Moravian Star Light In The Foyer

Dude, things just got real in the foyer. We found this light at the local lighting outlet here in Richmond called The Decorating Outlet for $135 (down from $455 at Shades of Light, just because it had been returned). I had always pictured something big and architectural in there – most likely in an oil-rubbed bronze finish because there are a bunch of ORB doorknobs going on in the foyer and I thought it would look nice. Thankfully John was game too since the guy’s down with geometry and shapes and stuff. UPDATE: Here’s an incredibly similar moravian star pendant on Amazon since the Shades of Light version is currently out of stock.  Boom. The foyer

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Easy DIY Bouquets

Happy Friday, y’all! What is it about sunroom ceiling demo that gets me all hyper and clammy? Yes, that’s continuing today (we’re still opening things up and waiting on some expert advice) but I promise we’ll have an official update for you guys on Monday! And now, just for good measure, more exclamation points!!!! In the meantime, I figured after a big week of sunroom demo, whitewashing, sunroom rebuilding, and more sunroom demo, it was high time for a budget blooms post. We used to do these every month, and then I fell off last year. And then I got back on the wagon and fell off again later last year. But I’m baaaaaaack! Not

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Easy Ways To Save Money

It’s been way too long since our last Save It post (like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one to name a few), so the other night I was thinking about a few things that we just don’t buy, and how going without those things probably adds up to saving a decent amount of cash-money. And it doesn’t feel particularly martyr-ish of us – it’s normal and easy after years of living this way. So it feels less like “going without” and more like “streamlining and simplifying.” We’ve mentioned a few of these things over the years, but I realized there were others that I never really thought about

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How To Whitewash A Brick Fireplace

Did you know you can give your whitewash your brick fireplace with paint you already have around the house? We were able to give our fireplace wall a fresh look in under a day and with no money spent! We don’t mind unpainted, exposed brick, but in all of our houses it’s been an unattractive orangey-brown brick – not that pretty rustic red brick you find in New York apartments. So in previous homes we’ve straight-up painted those walls because we LOVE the look and texture of painted brick. But after seeing a few whitewashed brick walls over on Pinterest and reading a few tutorials online, we decided to give whitewashing a spin this time. We

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The Best Thrift Store Finds

As many of you guys know if you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, Katie B and I did some thrift store trolling while we were in Destin last week. Which is pretty much a tradition at this point (check out our past adventures here and here). We didn’t have our video camera on hand, but we snapped a junkload of photos for you guys. So without further ado, here are my finds – and you can see Katie’s over on her blog if you’d like. I’ll lead with my favorites: these amazing woven twin-sized headboards. They were $29 each and I am COMPLETELY regretful that I left without them. Picture them painted white –

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Painting The Living Room Edgecomb Gray

We’re back from our week at the beach and excited to dive back into things! We were so lucky to have great weather and even got to squeeze in some window shopping and a thrift store trip, so that stuff’s in the hopper. Other than that we were beach bums and pool bums just soaking up the sun. Allow me to keep it real and mention that there were three kids under the age of four, so there were also meltdowns and even a cookie-tossing incident, but it was a great trip. We really loved Destin! Back to the salmon living room walls that are no more. After rolling back the carpet and covering a

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Priming A Bright Wall Before Painting

Remember when our living room was salmon? Well, not anymore… That’s just the primer coat, so we’ll be back on Monday with the full details of what color we chose, why we picked it, and a whole bunch of prep info, in-process pics, and of course the all-done afters. Today’s the last day of our Florida road trip, so we’re doing our best just to soak up the sun before our 14 hour drive back to Richmond. But I’m not going to lie… remembering that we’re not returning to a pink living room is definitely making us more excited to mosey on home. It always feels crazy to eke out a last minute project before

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This One’s For Clara

John and I have realized that our Florida road trip has somehow given us a little house perspective. As much as we’ve been loving the new house (nearly two months after our move I still find myself going up the stairs and whispering “duuuuude, we have a second floor”) and as much as we’ve been feeling more settled with every wall that we de-wallpaper and paint, leaving our second house was definitely bittersweet. It’s kind of hard to explain, but somehow while traveling it’s more obvious to us that we still remember every nook and cranny of that place, and our new house still feels sort of unfamiliar and mysterious. We don’t quite remember every

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Road Trip In Progress…

True to our 2011 resolution, which inspired us to sneak off to Maui last year, this year we’ve road tripped down to Destin, Florida so we can soak up some rays and recharge our drill DIY batteries. Turns out even if you love painting and sanding and stripping wallpaper, it’s nice to step away from the primer and the sawdust to reboot for a week with your family. And since we had already driven down to Atlanta last week for the Haven Conference, we figured why stop there when the beautiful gulf coast was a half-day drive away… Destin was our destination of choice because our good friends the Bowers have said such great things

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An Outdoor Tour Of Our New House

As is the tradition, each year we like to take a video camera and walk around the house to capture what’s been done outside (and what’s still desperately waiting to be tackled – which is almost everything at our new house). You can see last year’s here, and the one from 2011 here. And by “we take a video camera” I mean “John takes a video camera” because I’ve been banned from holding any sort of recording device since I tend to Blair Witch everyone (yup, it’s a verb when I do it). Enough jibber jabber. Let’s walk around the house together: Hopefully that little video answers the “what’s going on outside?” questions from you

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