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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House Crashing: Quaint & Vine Covered

Holy cow you guys, I’m crazypants excited to share Bonnie’s sweet vine covered barn in Santa Ynez, California. It’s a home with some much happiness and charm squeezed in, I think anyone who drops in would feel right at home. So let’s drop in, shall we? Here’s sweet Bonnie to welcome us. I wish we could have crashed her in person to meet her ourselves, but her photos were too good not to share, so this is one of our more rare “virtual” house crashings. Let’s step inside, shall we? Her office area is set up right near the entryway, and everything from the desk and chair (both from Ikea) to the cool ladder in

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Our Chart Topping DIY Music Video

It’s pretty clear from all the embedded music videos and song-reference-titled posts that John and I are music lovers. John even mentioned that he sings a lot in this post and we all know that I was a wee bit enamored with a certain rapper in my youth (an obsession that drove me to say the word “phat” on national TV). So when a musician friend here in Richmond casually invited us into their studio to mess around… well something magical happened. One thing led to another, and we ended up pouring all of our DIY passion into a DIYed song for you guys. Full of life lessons, house trials and tribulations, design rules that

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Window Shopping At Pottery Barn Outlet

First things first, we did a little spring cleaning so we have a fresh little header and a lighter-and-brighter site background up in hurr. Hope you guys love it as much as we do. Update: if it looks wonky on your computer, try refreshing and then clearing your browser’s cache/cookies/data :) Speaking of apologies, it’s been way too long since our last window shopping adventure. As most of you know, these aren’t paid or perked or anything – we just walk through a store with a camera and take photos of whatever inspires us for you guys. This post is actually long overdue (woops) but now that I’ve uploaded the pics and sat down to

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Adding A Timer To Our Kids Play Kitchen

Here’s a little recap of a few small projects and updates that we tackled – all in less than ten minutes a pop. Let’s call it a “tapas” post since they’re all bite sized morsels. And happily, they all actually worked, which isn’t always how it goes (sometimes the occasional this-should-be-quick project morphs into how-on-earth-is-this-taking-so-long?!). First we have some wooden tattoos I made. Yup, I bought these two little temporary tattoos (they say “breathe” and “delight”) at the same holiday craft fair that we mentioned here (they’re from a local artist named Suzanne, who actually chatted with me about how you can put them on various things beyond skin). They had just been sitting on

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How To Make An Easter Egg Bowling Set

The other day I was chatting with Clara and I asked her a few questions just for fun (the girl has some serious opinions). Her response to: “what do you think the Easter Bunny’s favorite colors are?” was: “green and blue.” It was a completely matter-of-fact delivery. Not a doubt in her mind. Then, just to see what she thought, I asked what she thought the Easter Bunny did when it wasn’t Easter and he wasn’t busy delivering eggs. How did he pass the time? Her answer: he goes bowling. Awesome. And then that night when I was sitting on the couch after I tucked her in, it gave me an idea… what if I

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Hanging A Round Mirror Over The Bed

It’s been a dang long time since we’ve done anything in the guest room, which we scrambled to get ready for my mom’s stay over two years ago. Can you believe that was two years ago? Crazy. Anyway, we’ve always thought that the grabbed-it-that-day-in-a-panic mirror over the bed from Target could stand to be a little bigger since it blends into those dark walls so much and the reflected circle that it sports seems a little tiny for that big bed under it (even if we beefed up the trim or added starburst-like details around it we worried the actual size of the mirror was still a little piddly). And you know we’re no strangers

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State Of The Uterus Address, 2013

And now for a bonus Friday afternoon post (aw yeah, I’m a rebel without a cause). Every day on average I get about five readers either asking if I’m pregnant or straight up “calling it” via comments, email, twitter, pinterest, instagram, or carrier pigeon. Which adds up to answering that question – and crushing the dreams of those calling it – around 150 times a month, and a whopping 1,800 times in the last year. The prego-chatter has even hijacked a few comment threads on posts about non-uterus-y topics like room updates and tour infographics. Holy bump-watch, batman! We haven’t seen one of those around here since 2010. First I’ll get one little detail out

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How To Hide The Cable Box With A Remote

When we last left off with our little media cabinet we had cleaned all of the grime off (with a Magic Eraser of all things) as well as removing the musty smell from the drawers with vinegar, but we mentioned that we still wanted to hide the cable box in one of the drawers somehow, and also had to seal the wood with something to lock in the color and shine. Well, we finally got ‘er done thanks to some technology and some good old fashioned elbow grease. So here’s how we went about getting that cable box off the ground. We drilled a bunch of large holes in the back of the top middle

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Painting Our Kitchen A Soft Blue Color: Colorado Gray

Can I get a kitchie kitchie ya ya da da? (name that song) Also, we painted the kitchen. SURPRIIIISE! We’ve mentioned that we’ve been flirting with the idea in our last two Listy McListersons (here and here), and when Nonna came to hang with Clara this past week we jumped at the chance to tear the kitchen apart and get to it. Just to keep it real, we grabbed this shot to demonstrate that when one room is getting love, some nearby room is getting dumped. It’s like saying “kitchen, will you accept this rose?” and meanwhile we’re sending the dining room packing (with a bunch of extra baggage). There’s usually one of these “displacement

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House Crashing: Sisterly Digs

We can’t believe it’s been five years (!!!) since we house crashed John’s sister Emily. And since they’ve completed a lot more rooms (we crashed them right after they moved in), we can’t wait to share the goods. Oh and their front door is Cornichon by Martha Stewart. Every time we pull into her driveway it makes me smile. Here’s that cute family of ours now. You might remember that Emily lives with her hubby Todd, three kids, and a pretty sizable pooch named Tuck – so this is a hard working house with a big dog, a four year old, a tween, and a teen running around. We love that it always feels welcoming and

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How To Save Money On Electrical Work

Ok, so we recently had some work done. Nope, not calf implants, but you’re close… How about can implants? Also known as recessed lighting. And we went for a pendant injection while we were at it (when in Rome…). Actually the wide shot shows more of the chaos that ensued just to get the room ready for its close up (we removed half of Karl The Sectional and pushed him across the room along with rolling back the rug and covering the floor with drop clothes under each work area). Can you believe we’re well into year three of living here and we’ve never had overhead lights in the living room (except for one small

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Updating A Thrift Store Doll’s Cradle

Psst- We’re still at work on the living room (you got a preview of that mess project here) so we’ll be back with those details on Monday (barring any unforeseen catastrophes).  Woot, it’s Friday y’all. I’ll pause while you celebrate with a desk/cubicle/subway/couch dance. Speaking of rejoicing, for every time that we share heavier DIY related projects (laying a stone patio, building a deck, renovating our kitchen, or even adding board & batten) there are always a ton of little updates that we tackle – sometimes for less than $5 in under 5 minutes. Which explains why our Projects page is full of those things too (you know we love a smorgasbord). So after sharing

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