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: A Happy Casual Farm House

You guys know Lesli, right? She’s a friend of ours who lives in out in the country (Greenwood, Virginia) and happens to be an amazing painter (you might remember our giveaway with her). She has an awesome blog and a sweet old house – complete with extra high ceilings that we covet and 100+ year old details that make “old farmhouse” the dream for so many people (us included). So we can’t wait to show you around. Let’s get to snooping… Almost every item in Lesli’s home has been loved back to life. Like the old bench that sits in her entryway, which she got secondhand for $50 and painted a fresh new color. All

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What We Look For & Look Past While House Hunting

Q: I have a house-hunting question for you. What do you look for? What do you look past? Help! My main complaint of all the older homes that we’re looking at in our price range is that they all feel dated, but that seems to be what you guys look for. How do you know which dated houses are worth buying and which ones are lost causes? I keep worrying we’ll end up in a money pit! – Aviva (not the one from Housewives of NY). A: First of all, I’m glad you clarified that you’re not NYC Aviva. Haha. And second of all, we actually get this question a lot. So when it comes

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How To Make A DIY Window Shade in 15 Minutes

Remember when John mused about who would win the bathroom race (he wanted to frame out the mirror and I was on the DIY window shade train) here? Well, chugga chugga, baby. Momma won. We got the fabric at an outlet called Mary Jo’s a while back (here’s an affiliate link to it on amazon for folks in other areas). We threw Clara a wormy birthday party with her two favorite colors – pink & orange – so when it came to picking out the fabric for the hall bathroom, where we log some serious potty and bath time with her, I couldn’t resist adding some fun with the bold patterned fabric that featured a few of Clara’s favorite

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Birfday Bidness

As you guys might know, last Thursday was John’s 31st birthday and West Elm in Houston whipped up this amaaaaaazingly DIY-riffic cake for him. #edibletapemeasure #umyeahtheressawdust Every year we write birthday posts about what we got each other and this year John actually got (well, is getting, since I’m letting him pick it out) a nail gun (more info on that when we get it). So because I don’t have photos of him holding up various presents like we’ve shared in former years like this post from last year) I thought I’d over-share slash cheese it up on a Tuesday afternoon with a little brain dump of seven things I love about John (surprise, honey!).

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TV In The Bedroom? We Say Yes.

We’re bringing someone else into the bedroom. And it’s… gasp… a TV. We were originally anti-TV-in-the-bedroom, so we know it’s not for everyone (and it’s downright sinful to some) but we only have one TV in our entire house – in the living room – and this guy was just sitting unused in the playroom (ever since we upsized the living room one since he wasn’t large enough to actually see from the sofa)… so we’ve gone and changed our minds. Haha. There’s actually a real reason behind the decision: more and more we’ve been thinking about how we have issues with work/life balance and it’s hard for us to “shut off.” Which is why

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How To Frost A Window

We wish we had a giant bathroom update to share, but we’re at that phase of the project where some of the bigger things have been checked off (building a shelf, painting the walls) and a few little mid-point upgrades are on the agenda since we’ve been flying around a lot lately (10 flights in 11 days!!). But now that we’re back home, the next bathroom installment will be bigger (either framing out the mirror and making a shade from some amazingly bold fabric that I’m obsessed with) so hopefully this tides you guys over. And since I hate to mention “amazingly bold fabric that I’m obsessed with” without showing it to you… behold: Remember it

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Finally, Now We Can Show You The Playroom…

Quick note: Tonight we’ll be in Minneapolis at the West Elm on 3879 Gallagher Drive for cookies, cocoa, and a book signing at 6pm (we hear this parking lot is small, but there’s a larger lot at a nearby Macy’s as well as a ramp that leads to a parking garage which should hopefully help – as will getting there early, carpooling, or getting dropped off). More info here. We’d love to see ya there! Remember how you guys were asking us to take photos of the holy-cow-that’s-crazy playroom packed with secret book projects, stuff for our yard sale, and future projects so we could share them when the book was finally out? Well, I don’t

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Our Top Decorating Tip: The Middle Makes No Sense

So many people ask us how we know we’re going in “the right direction” in the middle of a project. We try to describe our method as one big study in trial and error, with course correcting and tweaking along the way, but we also haven’t talked much about how we try to at least come up with a general plan in the beginning of a project, and then we try to stick to it loosely as we go, since it gives us a “path” to follow. Why? Because (sing it with me): the middle makes no sense. It’s a phrase that John and I toss around a lot as we go and we realized

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House Crashing: Lesley & Jeff

We can’t wait to share this house crashing adventure because you’ve actually seen how Lesley & Jeff live…. but that was over 4.5 years ago (before they had two sweet little boys and moved into a new home for their growing family). It’s actually a mid-century split level house in a charming woodsy neighborhood right here in Richmond, and of course Lesley and Jeff have completely made it their own. But first, just to refresh your memory, here’s their first house – which we crashed all the way back in 2008! But back to their new place. You guys might remember that Lesley is a master of making ugly things into assets. For example, she

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How To Make A Fake Roman Shade

Alright folks, you know I have a love affair with fabric, so when I realized I had never attempted to make a roman shade (even a fixed one that’s just for looks) I knew I had to get on that. So here’s how I got my fake roman shade on. First of all, is this bare kitchen window begging for some fabric action, or what? It actually leads into the sunroom, so it didn’t need anything functional to draw/close, which is why I opted to go the faux shade route (actually all of the bamboo blinds in our first house remained open since I loved the light flooding in, so if you’re not a shade-drawer,

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House Crashing in Cincinnati!

Quick update: Today we’ll be getting cozy in Boston at the West Elm on 160 Brookline Avenue for cookies, cocoa, and a book signing at 6pm. More info here. We’d love to see ya there! We shared a sneak peek of this House Crashing adventure in our post about Cincinnati, and we finally sifted through the 200+ photos that we took to get this post together for ya. So let’s let ourselves in, shall we? Did you see the little welcome note right on that happy yellow door? So cute, eh? And I love the three glass panes in that door. As for who lives here, meet Rick and Jessie. They were literally the sweetest

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When Acorn Crafts Go Terribly Wrong

Ack, we’re painting the hall bathroom, and we can’t wait to finish, shoot pics, and share them with you guys! But since that’s still in progress, I thought this stellar example of things not always working out might make you guys smile. We always get asked “what happens if you try something and it doesn’t work?” and I always say “we blog about it, of course!” You know, like this and this and this. We love sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we can totally relate to a failed craft project or ten. So here we go… In Richmond it has been raining men. If by men I mean acorns. Seriously, those

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