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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Let’s Go Behind The Scenes (Waaay Behind)

Ahhh! Our book baby is officially out there in the world. Holy cow it’s crazy. We thought once the book was actually released this might feel real but it still feels like it’s a big game of make believe – despite all of these awesome photos that you guys keep tweeting and Facebooking to us (anything with a dog, a baby, or a funny face = awesomeville). And ever since those early days of cobbling this labor of love together, we’ve been itching to share some behind the scenes peeks, so it’s an understatement to say that the 27 photos in this post were burning a hole in our pockets for nearly a year. So

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House Crashing: Classic & Natural With A Twist

Quick note Book holla! -We’re publishing this post early since we’ll be at our stop in Wilton, CT this morning and then we’ll be at Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ at 5:30 pm (and staying as late as it takes to hang/sign/geek out with everyone). More details here. We’d love to see ya! A little while ago we took a road trip up to Northern Virginia to crash an awesome house that we thought you guys would love. It’s in a charming town called Herndon, and Michele and Nate poured some serious love (in the form of some serious work, time, and sweat) into their home. So let’s get our with the tour on, shall we?

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How To Match New Paint To An Old Paint Job

Let’s talk about the buffet again. Remember the one that we got for a steal off craigslist and parked in our entryway? Here he is now to jog your memory (sidenote: I think everyone should always pronounce jog as yog and jogging as yogging – it’s infinitely funnier). Dude was gorgeous, but he had a few little bumps and bruises that I wanted to heal. I wanted to play nurse with the buffet, ok? So file this under super speedy quick fixes – heck the whole thing only took about half an hour and ran me under $3. As for my materials list, here it is: Yup, all it took was a small craft brush

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Homemade Jesse & Slinky Dog Costumes From Toy Story

Dude, I did it! I semi-DIYed my very first Halloween costumes, and I lived to tell the tale. It actually wasn’t too hard (do you believe that I didn’t sew a single thing?). Holla! In case it’s not super obvious, Clara asked to go as Jessie (the cowgirl from Toy Story) and Burger gets to be Slinky Dog (also from Toy Story). Here were most of my supplies for Clara’s costume: a “cowgirl hat” from a local pop-up Halloween store red yarn and white duct tape from AC Moore flared jeans from Old Navy (you know I used a coupon and bought them on discount Tuesdays) The first thing I tackled was making a long

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Framing Keepsakes In Shadow Boxes

Maybe we should rename our site Young Shadowbox Love. They’re just my jam. I’ve stuffed them with everything from calendars with special dates circled… … to keys from all of our past homes… … to wedding paraphernalia. I think it just goes back to loving the idea of displaying things that make for happy memories instead of tucking them into a closet in a box that never gets opened. So pretty much from the second we started writing our book over three years ago I had my eye out for things that I could save and stick in a box to forever commemorate this crazy journey that we never could’ve guessed we’d ever be on.

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How To Make A Big Magnetic Chalkboard

It’s Tuesday the 30th… so it’s time to share this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge project (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). Huzzah! This time John and I tried our hand at making a large chunky-framed leaning mirror – except instead of it actually being a mirror we made it into a giant chalkboard (since chalkboard paint is probably the most Pinterest-tastic material out there, haha). By designing it like a large leaning mirror, it can move from room to room, and it can be a place where we write sweet notes, make lists, and enjoy Clara-scribble (we secured it to

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My Date With Nate

A bunch of you have been asking what I got from Tar-jay for Nate’s big weekend debut, and since I’m a die-hard fan (remember when our hands almost touched here?) of course I was the first girl at the store on Sunday morning right as they opened. Yup, even though we just got back from Cincinnati the night before, I’m a Noupie (Nate Groupie) so you can bet my buns were there, and they were excited. Then I went in. Womp-womp, no Nate stuff out. And when I asked where it was, the two sweet Target girls were all “Nate who?” Instead of extolling the virtues of Nate, which I totally would have done if

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How To Prep Your Lawn For Grass Seed

It’s like I have my own personal Alseed. Yes, that’s a True Blood reference. I totally called John “Alseed” the entire time that he seeded our freshly leveled and ready-for-grass backyard. Why? Because I’m corny like that. He rolled his eyes but secretly I think he liked it. What dude is going to complain about being likened to this guy? Although I tend to like my men tall, dork, and handsome. Which is why John = even better than Alcide for me (yes that’s the correct way to spell his name, I just went with Alseed for the pun). But back to the freshly cleared backyard (you can read about all the phases that led

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Painting A Thrift Store Wood Duck

We’re excited to share our Cincy adventures (we laughed! I cried! we got something confiscated at the airport!) and we’ve already started our Pinterest challenge project along with having a pretty cool before & after that’s almost done (just have to take pics and write that post for ya) so there’s lots going on in our casa – both duck related and beyond! I say duck related because, well… I snagged this odd little wooden duck for $4 at a thrift store here in Richmond (Diversity Thrift). The date? Oh, about a year ago. Yes dudes, I’m about to get on something after twelve solid months of the “thinking about getting on that” stage (you

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There’s something in the air…

Nope, not a crisp fall chill. Not falling leaves. Not the smell of apple pie and pumpkin spice. Ok, so maybe those are in the air too, but you know what else is floating around? A certain challenge, that’s what. So who’s with us? Here’s how to play along. Just pin some inspiration and do your own spin. Yup, this highly embarrassing collection of our old Halloween photos can only mean one thing: we were into odd things as children it’s high time for a fall Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie Bower to make us stop pinning and start doing). I’m laughing the most at my wolf

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Drilling Holes In Your Pumpkins For Spooky Wood Snakes

Just to be clear, that post title is meant to be said in a Dr. Dre-esque fashion like he does in this song (aw yeah, $herdog still rocks out to the clean version of this 1999 classic). And now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about something hardcore. Pumpkins, yo. This year we got lumpy bumpy orangy-red ones instead of the usual smooth yellow-orange guys just for kicks. The coolest thing about them is that they have stems on the bottom and top, which is kind of fun. Pretty much as soon as we got them home we got to work hollowing them out, and I directed John to make a

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Landscaping Updates In The Backyard

Update: Thanks so much for all the kind words and general awesomeness on yesterday’s post. You guys rock my socks. Ladies and gentlemen, we actually have a backyard. Well, we still need to get some grass going on, but three phases of digging and transplanting and weeding (here’s phase one, and here’s phase two) have definitely turned our Jumanji-esque backyard into a nice clearing for Burger & Clara to run around in… once that aforementioned grass makes itself at home. And we still have a ton of giant trees on the side and back of our lot to keep it from feeling too open and stark, which seems to be the sweet spot for us.

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