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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Fourteen New Interior Door Knob Options

Right before we installed the hardwood floors upstairs, we mentioned how we sprayed all of the blue trim and doors upstairs here… … but they’re now naked when it comes to knobs. We’re no strangers to ORBing things like we did here, but a lot of the doors here were rusted and pitted and some were even jammed/didn’t turn/didn’t lock. So in this case, it really makes sense for us to replace them with something befitting of our freshly painted six panel doors. On one hand, it was a bummer to have to shell out loot for new knobs, but on the other hand the doors are in awesome shape and look like new with

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Furnishing Our Living Room With Our Ikea Sofa

So… the living room. First it looked like this: Then it looked like this: Then it looked like this: And now it looks like this: Although the salmon pink walls, orange-brown bricks, and all of that dark wood trim & paneling is a far cry from our vision for this room down the line (we keep changing our minds, but today we’re dreaming of something like this for the brick, coffered ceilings like this, and this for the paneling someday) it definitely feels a lot homier already. You know, with a couch to sit on instead of a pile of non-sit-on-able furniture. Oh and we shared this picture on Instagram/FB a few nights back, but

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Our Last Day In Our Second House

We love being able to look back at the empty photos of our first house, because while they’re definitely bittersweet, it’s so much fun to reminisce. They’re a great reminder that a house is only a house, and it’s the moments that you’ve shared with the people (and the chihuahuas) that you love that really make it a home. So we wasted no time snapping empty photos of our second house. And although I thought “without furniture all these rooms will pretty much look the same” the funny thing is that none of them do. So it’s nice to know that we left our mark on this sweet home of ours. Here’s the dining room/office

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Other Houses We Looked At Before Buying Our New One

Back when we were house hunting in 2010 we shared a series of posts that each profiled a different house that we looked at (you can see them here, here, here, here, and here). And even though our hunt is over this time around, we wanted to revisit 9 other houses that we casually toured (many of them just on Open House days) before we met The One. So we had fun driving around snapping pictures for you and reminiscing (“That was the one with the phone in the bathroom!” “That was the one with the family of deer in the backyard!”). The Lake House: The first house was very modest in size and located

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The First Day In Our Third House

We love being able to look back on Day One at our previous house (as clammy as the photos make us) – so we took a second to walk around our new house on Day One (in this case, the day all of our big furniture finally got moved over) and snapped these lovely photos. What do you guys think? Gorgeous, no? Our work here is done. The living room: The kitchen: Other side of the kitchen: The office: The dining room: The guest room: The hall bathroom: The spare room: Clara’s room (here’s us frantically trying to get it ready so she had a place that felt like home – and a place to

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What We Did To Sell Our House Faster By Owner

Ok, so today our house looks like this. So – spontaneous decision! – while we get settled and find our underwear, this week is going to be moving week! Turns out you guys still wanted to hear a whole lot about the sale of our current house. So let’s do the dang thing. Here’s what we plan to cover in honor of Spontaneous Moving Week: How we staged/sold our house (including a glance at our real estate flyer, a list of what we changed before showings, etc) What we made when we sold our house vs. what we put in- budget breakdown included! Empty house pics (dude, it’s trippy to see your house all echoey

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A Fresh Start

We’re spending today packing things up, and although we thought it would feel monotonous and tiring, it’s oddly exciting. Even the act of wrapping a bunch of cups in newspaper feels like “IT’S HAAAAAAPPENING! We’re really DOING IT!” Can you believe Clara looked like this last time we moved? Three birthdays (and a significant amount of hair) later, my baby’s gone. Sniffle. But there’s a pretty cool kid (complete with an arm tat) in her place, so it’s a fair trade. Life will change with this big move, and our blog and our process for the new house might feel different to you because we’re approaching it, well, differently. More than any other house that

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A Full Rundown Of Home Makeover Projects & Links

Packing up our current house and new-house-floor-laying continues… … but we didn’t want to scoot outta our beloved current house without one more updated Listy McListerson full of everything we’ve checked off and a few things we’d love to have done if we were staying here longer (those are bulleted at the bottom). #warningitslong Just for fun, here’s the very first list that we shared for this house back in 2010. I love how plans seem to evolve as you live somewhere and figure out what we love/want as you go. It’s also really funny how quickly your eyes adjust and you forget what you started with, isn’t it? Seriously, a week after we knocked

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How To Make Fabric Tea Bags For Kids Tea Parties

Guys, I did it. I broke out the sewing machine to make something for Clara’s third birthday. It’s a little tradition of ours to make her something instead of buying it since she gets a ton of store-bought presents from family and friends. I even used her big ol’ stash of monthly photo fabrics, which have also come in handy for making her a quilt, a table runner, a beanbag, and even a birthday banner (remember that epic battle of woman vs. sewing machine?). It all started when I saw these fabric tea bags on Pinterest and thought they’d be really fun for Clara’s play kitchen since she’s so into making food and pretending to

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Taking Down Those Old Curtains

Yup, we finally called it. The old floral curtains couldn’t last another day. So we made a few jokes about Kim Kardashian’s Met ball dress and got ready to say goodbye. They looked pretty fancy, but they just weren’t our style, so it was time to take them down and make a nice little donate pile for Habitat for Humanity. The funny thing is that when we got up on chairs and lifted them down, we discovered that these babies were pinned and even screwed right into the window at times! Cracked us up. I mean, we’re no strangers to using fabric remnants and wood braces screwed into windowsills, but seeing white pushpins sticking out

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A Dragon Themed Kids Birthday Party

Who smells smoke? Don’t panic, that’s just Clara’s dragon party, rollin’ into town (er, the internet?). Note: you can’t really smell this party through your computer, so if you smell smoke, please look into it. This year’s party was lower key than our last two (here’s her first birthday party, and her worm party from last year) and even though it was rainy and wet outside, eight kiddos and twelve adults jammed out inside. It was fun. And Clara made me cry. She’s just so big and sweet and hilarious and I’m the luckiest mom in the world. Plus, dragons. I mean if that’s not a trump card for a party, I’m not sure what

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