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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Hanging Bamboo Blinds

It’s Gettin Hot In Hur, So Add Some Bamboo Blinds. I am, getting so hot, I’m gonna put some blinds uuup. Picture me singing that while installing each of these four blinds. On repeat. While John rolled his eyes. Actually it was less about heat and more about that ever-elusive p word: privacy. Just during the day (we don’t use the sunroom at night) but it’s hard to make a room with an entire wall of windows feel private and cozy. So we reasoned that bamboo blinds + the fence that we added outside for our patio (which you can see through the windows here thanks to this photography trick from Kate) just might do

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How To Make A Fabric Shade

Surprise! We painted the guest bathroom this weekend! The walls, the trim, and even the ceiling. And double surprise: we went with a fresh clean coat of white (Decorator’s White by Benjamin Moore). Bet you didn’t see that coming… Why’d we go white? Well the old paint was dingy (see the difference in the pic above?), but we’ve decided to embrace the yellow tile instead of yanking it all out gut-job style or painting or reglazing it. It’s completely original 60’s tile that’s in great shape – and the color is happy and cute so we’ve decided it’s charming. Especially with our fresh white (albeit bare for now) walls – which will allow us to

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How To Remove An Overgrown Vine From A Tree

(Punny alternate post title: Heard It Through The Giant Non-Grape Vine) Ok, so remember the ol’ crazyvine that was putting the squeeze on an oak tree in our backyard that we mentioned last fall? It’s a scene straight outta Jumanji. About half a year ago we cut the base of the vine… … in an attempt to kill it and rescue our oak tree from its death grip. And then it just sat there, a la Rose in Titanic. It never let go. And things took a turn for the ugly when the leaves and branches got all dry and dead. So after 6 months of waiting for it to give up the ghost and

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Decoupaging A Box With Kid Art

Now that Clara’s old enough to hold a tiny paint brush, get down with some Mod Podge, and rock out with a nail gun (just kidding about that last one), I thought doing the occasional project with her would be a good time. And I’m not gonna lie, this project is still fun without a kid (and can definitely be done with adult-made art or even some awesome decorative gift wrap or wallpaper), so let’s slap a “no children necessary” label on this baby. As for the how, first my trusty assistant and I perused some of the art that she made at school (she loves to paint) to choose the one that she liked

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Ten Tips For Smoother Travel

* We’re sending lots of love to everyone in Boston (our cousins were at the marathon but are thankfully safe). Back in October we hardly would have called ourselves traveling experts. Honestly we only took a flight once every few years (we went to Alaska for our honeymoon in 2007 and didn’t get back on a plane for a family vacation again until 2012 when we went to Hawaii for our five year anniversary). But thanks to our book tour, we’ve been on lots of flights. 29 of them in four months to be exact. So while we still can’t quite claim expert traveler status yet, here are a few things we learned about planes

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Adding Bamboo Blinds To The Office

Notice anything different when you peek into the office from the dining room? Hint: check out the window region. We got these guys at Home Depot for $22 each (they’re 35″ bamboo blinds with the name Miranda on them if that helps identify ’em in the store) with the hopes that they would finish off the windows in the office and tie into the thick wooden desktop and the jute rug that we have in there. In our first house we had bamboo blinds in a bunch of rooms and always planned to bring them into this house as well (we mention them a lot in our Listy McListerson posts like this one) – just

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How To Make Wooden Play Money For Kids

Clara really seems to be into the concept of money lately. Not so much for using it to pay bills, but using it to count, stack, and stash in her pockets/purse. I’ve been digging up quarters and handing them over left and right (she’s thankfully well past the putting-things-in-her-mouth stage) but they always get lost. So I have one question: is there a vortex in our house that eats socks and loose change? Is Burger secretly saving up to buy a jar of peanut butter? Seriously, it’s a mystery. So instead of being fifteen bucks down after a few weeks of play, I figured I might as well attempt a little DIY alternative. Ok, and

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Eighteen Tips For Working Smarter, Not Harder

I’ve received a bunch of comment requests for an update on how we’re doing when it comes to finding the ever-elusive work/life balance that we’ve publicly proclaimed that we want to get a handle on this year (we never aspired to work nights, weekends, and even on vacation – and we only have ourselves to blame). So we thought it was a fun subject to tackle while we’re working away on the front porch (can’t wait to share an update for you guys tomorrow!). The scallops are a-tumbling down and the columns are getting boxed in. But back to the whole work/life balance battle. The first step in the not-working-every-second-of-every-day thing for us was definitely

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How To Hang A Shelf Over The TV

Ding dong, the bare spot above the TV is dead. Remember how it used to look like this for a few years? And then we graduated to a bigger tv and kept an eye out for the right media cabinet for another year or so. And then we finally got here with the help of a $59 cabinet that we found at a thrift store… Whew. So glad it’s NNM (nekkid no more). Don’t mind that power strip on the ground, I’ve since shoved it behind the media cabinet to hide it. Dang it feels good to be a gangsta have a shelf there. We actually debated a bunch of options for above the TV

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Art For Under $50

Ok, not the whole world, but a good smattering of it. For those of you who watched our house tour video yesterday, you’ve seen a shot of these babies in action (and by these babies, I mean eight freshly framed prints that we hung in our hallway above the board & batten that we added). But here are some close ups with all the how-we-did-it deets. It was a really easy project actually. First, we bought an awesome calendar at Anthropologie on sale after the new year for $13 (gotta love how calendars go half price the second that January begins) but we had zero intention of using it in the traditional sense since we

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At Long Last, An Updated House Tour Video

It’s been over half a year since we shared our last video house tour, and since a bunch of you’ve been requesting an update, we finally cleaned the whole house shoved everything into our closets and made an all-one-take video. At first it seemed like we didn’t have that many new things to report, but then we realized that there were tons of changes since our previous tour (a freshly redone hall bathroom, a storage-room-turned-playroom, new lighting in the living room and dining room, lots of sunroom updates, a new fireplace facade and a fresh color in the kitchen, hallway board & batten, etc). So without further ado, let’s walk around the house together. I’ll

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Art And A Bookcase For The Guest Room

Remember this “Things That Are Awesome” print that we got at a local craft fair last Christmas by an amazing artist named Rachel (here’s her shop) with the intent of hanging it in the guest room (you know, so everyone can study all the things that are awesome while they stay)? Well, we finally got it framed and hung. This is actually an angle of the guest room that we haven’t shown for a long loong time. As in, this post from two summers ago is the last time we shared it. And then a year later we grabbed that big mirror and hung it over the mantel in the kitchen and a while later

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