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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Thrifting A Vintage Moroccan Side Table

This morning we shared pics from our recent thrifting trip and I promised you more details about a certain table that we adopted (along with my cleaning/restoring ritual for old musty wood) so here’s the rundown. We really liked this cool Moroccan accent table that we found at the first place we went (Love of Jesus Thrift here in Richmond). Especially since it reminded us of a few designer ones like this that are selling for $260+. So at $25 for a solid wood table with awesome lines, we took it home. Boy was in rough shape, so I: gave him a wipe down with a damp cloth with a tiny amount of Mrs Meyers

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A Day Of Thrifting

Occasion: The thrifting bug struck on a lazy Saturday morning Location: All over Richmond to six of my favorite thrift stores with the hubby and toddler in tow (Burger very smartly stayed home to nap) You know we love a good thrift-fest (like these thrifty adventures of yore), so let’s go secondhand window shopping, shall we? First we went to Love of Jesus (on Midlothian for any locals who are wondering), which is an awesome place for larger furnishings. Of course like most thrift stores it’s hit or miss, but when you hit, it’s a good time. We actually got a lot of pieces that we transformed for our book here (like a $15 desk

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Budget Blooms: Tulips, Take Three

Things I’m great at: making up words to songs when I don’t know them, eating Oreos, dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld. Things I’m bad at: loading the dishwasher, remembering to get haircuts more than once every few years, and apparently doing monthly budget bloom posts. I used to do them once a month for over a year, but then I fell off, struggled to get back on it six months ago with one measly post in February, and just never got it together in any sort of regular pattern. So here’s a random Budget Blooms post after over half a year of absence in that department. Won’t you forgive me? In return I played around

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Multiplying Egg Chairs…

I’m back as promised with: an egg chair update (since I just tossed pillows on it but promised to share the rest of the details once we figured out a real seat and all that jazz) three new egg chairs that we recently brought home I guess we should skip right ahead to those huh? Don’t worry, our living room doesn’t look like an egg chair family reunion. They’re of the dollhouse variety (you can read more on Clara’s DIY dollhouse here): When a super sweet reader (thanks Nicole!) told me CB2 had them on clearance for 50 cents each (wahooo!) I couldn’t resist. They’re actually Christmas ornaments (hence the super sale price so far

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How To Turn A Basket Into A Pendant Light

This is the story of making an old basket into a pendant light using just this $10 thrift store basket that we found along with two other simple supplies. Here she is all wired up and hung in front of the fireplace. But allow me to further illuminate the basket to light conversion process. Har-har. The first step was heading over to a local lighting outlet (The Decorating Outlet) to check out any existing pendant lights that they were selling cheaply (that way we could convert one into a pendant for our big basket shade). While we were there we saw this awesomesauce basket pendant that was selling for $322 (originally $460). Wowsers. Feeling inspired,

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Replacing An Exterior Light

Let’s talk more about things that were too tiny. But instead of yesterday’s mini-mirror, this time we’re taking things outside. To the carport to be exact. See that tiny little lantern hanging from the ceiling? Yeah…. she’s not looking so hot. Rust? Check. Cracked glass? Check. Teeny tiny dollhouse-ish scale? Check. So we’ve been keeping an eye out for a larger light since we moved in back in late 2010. You name it, and we’ve looked there (at stores like Home Depot, online, on Craigslist, at local outlets and secondhand stores like The Habitat For Humanity ReStore, etc). Ideally we wanted a big chunky clean lined lantern in a rich dark oil-rubbed bronze finish and

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Hanging A Mirror Over The Mantel

We’re reaching the point in our house where we’re finally trying to slowly upgrade the “we’ll-just-put-this-here- for-now-since-we-just-moved-in” phenomenon that happens when you unpack and just toss things anywhere (yes, we are just getting to this phase after over a year and a half of living here, haha). So we finally decided to address this old mirror that used to hang in our first house’s den, which we then popped above our fireplace mantel with a tiny finishing nail the first week we moved in. Why do we need to address it? Because it gotz to go. Why does it gotz to go? Because it’s way too small! Comically small. Here’s an older shot of it

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Listy McListerson: Updated

Warning: this post contains more words than a handful of housewives can sling around in one of those two hour reunion episodes. So feel free to skim it or read it in three sentence intervals over the next five years. These posts actually came about when people asked how we organize all the stuff we have on our to-do list. We explained that we basically just have one long run-on document, and when folks kept asking us to share it (and update it as we went along), it sounded like our idea of a good time. So it’s high time that we actually updated it (sorry to everyone who has been asking for this for

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A Curvy Armchair For The Kitchen

Chairs are definitely one of those high/low things for us. In the low category we have our $30 thrift store egg chair… … our $32 stools from a school supply website… … and our $35 secondhand office chairs just to name a few. And then in the “high” category (although I guess that’s all relative since some folks might spend more) we’ve also invested in a few of the chairs. Like the $230 leather chair from Target that we have in our office (which used to live in the master bedroom of our first house)… … the $199 armchair in the corner of our bedroom from Joss & Main… … the two $118 Dolce lounge

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Organizing Our Closet Shelves With Bins

That’s right. I pulled a Benita Larsson. For anyone who doesn’t know her, she’s the mastermind organizer over at Chez Larsson and I adore how simple, functional, and beautiful her Swedish home/lifestyle is. So this quick little closet update totally reminds me of her clean/organized/wish-I-was-that-on-top-of-things house that I adore. Benita, among nine other super secret guest bloggers, actually pulls a little cameo appearance in our book, but that’s a whole different story (speaking of which, a million and one thanks to everyone who was insanely sweet and made me happy-cry repeatedly after our little book announcement yesterday). But let’s cut to the chase. This is just a simple tale about some simple white bins. See,

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We’re One Trimester Away From…

… birthing this book baby of ours! Seriously, somebody get us to Lamaze class. Yup, it’s coming in early November (our official “due date” is the 6th, although it varies slightly depending on where you look). Excuse me while I practice my deep breathing (hee, hee, hoooooo, hee, hee, hoooooo). Perhaps the craziest part about it is that this might be the longest baby gestation ever recorded – over three whole years! Seriously. Labor of love could not apply more. So for everyone who has been asking about pre-order details, you can click on any of the logos below to pre-order from any of these affiliates. And of course don’t forget the local guys –

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How To Spray Paint A Frame

Please sing this to the tune of The Brady Bunch Theme Song. Here’s the story… of two cheap black framies… … found at Target and then spray painted bright white… … then they both looked pretty sleek… like twin brothers… … they make me want to twirl. Ok, that didn’t quite work out like I hoped. But I’m sure you got the crux of the story. I grabbed two inexpensive black frames at Target (they didn’t come in white and I think they were $21), sprayed them with the same built-in-primer-plus-spray-paint that I always use (Rustoleum Universal in Satin White), let them dry, and then framed some prints (like the one I mentioned here) which

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